My name is Alex Wiltshire. I’m narrative director for entertainment at Mojang, where I focus on storytelling for Minecraft, working on novels, comics, an animated TV series, and much more.

I have written a few books. My latest is Making Videogames, which examines the art and science of game art and is illustrated with screenshots by the incomparable DeadEndThrills. I edited two videogame histories, Britsoft: An Oral History and Japansoft: An Oral History (now on its second edition), wrote Home Computers: 100 Icons that Defined a Digital Generation, and several books about Minecraft.

Outside of all that, I like to take photographs, I walk our dog on the hills, I play board games and RPGs, here’s stuff I read on the internet, and I’m an occasional member of the popular PC gaming podcast The Crate & Crowbar, where I chat with my friends about cool games and design, sometimes coherently. Here’s some stuff I’ve made.

Previously…

I’ve written for many publications, including Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer, Game Developer, Eurogamer and Edge.

I’ve spoken at literary events on Minecraft, at universities and industry events such as the Develop conference, and often serve on judging panels, including the BAFTA Games Awards and IGF.

I was head of communications at a small studio called Sensible Object, working on the tabletop/videogame hybrid Beasts of Balance. I was a co-curator of the V&A Museum’s Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt exhibition during its early stages. And from April 2013 to August 2015 I was communications manager at Hello Games, where I worked on No Man’s Sky.

Before joining Hello Games I was editor of Edge, where I worked for six years across its magazine and website. I developed my journalism career on the design and architecture magazine Icon and as a web editor for Channel 4.

Things I’ve written

A few of my favourite things here:

• When She Plays the Violin — The wonder of witnessing my daughter’s talent
• Cuttings — A reflection on collecting, memory, and my grandma’s dementia
• Tactics — Advance Wars versus chess versus my mate Dave
• Last Day of School — My son, Spelunky, and open-ended games

Elsewhere, I wrote a fortnightly column on game design for Rock Paper Shotgun called The Mechanic, which took deep dives into the stories behind specific design features. Some of my faves are on Playerunknown’s Battleground’s cargo plane, how Playdead designed Inside’s levels, and the long, hard, journey behind the design of Dead Cells’ player builds.

Posts about my work

• Japansoft second edition ・ Sep 8, 2024
• I wrote a new book called Making Videogames ・ Nov 24, 2021
• On MiSTer ・ Jul 4, 2021
• Things I made in 2020 ・ Dec 30, 2020
• Playing with boredom ・ Dec 3, 2020
• I wrote a book called Home Computers ・ Apr 19, 2020
• Mechanic catch-up ・ Feb 18, 2020
• On Japansoft: An Oral History ・ Jan 16, 2020
• Cardboard, asteroids and other things I’ve written about ・ Sep 15, 2019
• I’m editing Japansoft: An Oral History ・ Jan 9, 2019
• Talking about Minecraft and Disco Elysium ・ Oct 3, 2018
• On Donut County’s hole and Exapunks’ code ・ Sep 14, 2018
• I wrote a chapter in the V&A’s Videogames book ・ Sep 4, 2018
• The precarious business of living off modding ・ Aug 18, 2018
• The daunting aftermath of releasing your dream game ・ Aug 13, 2018
• I wrote the Minecraft Mobestiary ・ Oct 5, 2017
• The beauty of GTA V through selfies ・ Jul 14, 2017
• Articles I wrote in January ・ Feb 2, 2017
• A year of The Mechanic ・ Jan 1, 2017
• Britsoft reviews ・ Dec 27, 2016
• The Mechanic ・ Jul 22, 2016
• I edited Britsoft: An Oral History ・ Sep 28, 2015
• I wrote the Minecraft Blockopedia ・ Sep 30, 2014
• Dyad review ・ Oct 14, 2013
• Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon review ・ Oct 13, 2013
• Sokobond review ・ Oct 4, 2013
• Steam in the living room ・ Oct 2, 2013
• Finding beauty in GTAV through selfies ・ Oct 1, 2013
• Still Playing: Crusader Kings II ・ Sep 16, 2013
• The Knightmare of 90s revivalism ・ Sep 13, 2013
• Still Playing: Spelunky’s Daily Challenge ・ Sep 11, 2013
• The slow, sad death of 3D games: a tribute ・ Sep 10, 2013
• Making history ・ Mar 12, 2007
• Oyster card ・ Jan 8, 2007
• Robots ・ Nov 15, 2006
• Second Life ladies ・ Nov 13, 2006
• UK videogame culture ・ Nov 10, 2006
• My first Wii review ・ Aug 11, 2006
• Barber Osgerby ・ Mar 22, 2006
• Dunne and Raby ・ Mar 1, 2006
• Sony PSP ・ Feb 12, 2006
• Nintendo DS ・ Feb 10, 2006
• Flock review ・ Feb 4, 2006
• Animal Crossing ・ Dec 4, 2005
• Tord Boontje ・ Nov 24, 2005
• Danish Jewish Museum ・ Sep 9, 2005
• Shin and Tomoko Azumi ・ Jul 14, 2005
• Marcel Wanders ・ May 21, 2005
• LA Climbs ・ Apr 24, 2005
• Thomas Heatherwick ・ Apr 7, 2005
• McLaren Technology Centre ・ Mar 20, 2005
• Gamespace ・ Mar 15, 2005

Colophon

This site is generated by Hugo, and it sits on a bottom of the range cloud server (2 vCores, 2 GB RAM, 80GB HD) provided by IONOS. I write and manage it in BBEdit and deploy it through Github.

I adapted the design from a theme called Rocinante. The fonts are ET Book for body text and Overpass for headlines. The image of the BBC Micro Model B computer keyboard on the front page and bottom of other pages was made for Britsoft: An Oral History by Hugo Timm.

Other tools include Pixelmator Pro and RAW Power for picture editing and iA Writer for writing. I made the above self-portrait with Retrospecs.