Matthew Seiji Burns is an American writer, director, composer, and game designer whose career has moved between some of the biggest studios in the industry and much smaller, more personal experiments in interactive storytelling. He worked as a producer at Treyarch, Bungie, and 343 Industries on franchises including Call of Duty and Halo, before spending time at the University of Washington’s Center for Game Science, exploring how games might be used for research and scientific discovery.
He later joined Zachtronics, contributing writing and music to games including Opus Magnum and EXAPUNKS, while also creating his own interactive fiction. In 2019, he created Eliza, a visual novel about an AI-assisted counselling service that explored automation and the boundaries between human empathy and technology years before those questions became unavoidable. His latest work has takenthose concerns into a different medium: Process, his debut novel, is a darkly comic and psychologically intense story set inside Seattle’s startup culture.
LINKS
Matthew Seiji Burns – website & socials
Matthew Seiji Burns – official website
Matthew Seiji Burns – Bluesky (@matthewseiji.com)
Matthew Seiji Burns – itch.io (game experiments and back catalogue)
Process – the novel
Process – hardcover edition (Tune & Fairweather)
Process – softcover edition (Tune & Fairweather)
Process – audiobook (read by the author, Audible)
Process – free digital sampler (Tune & Fairweather)
Eliza – the visual novel (2019)
Joseph Weizenbaum – creator of the original ELIZA chatbot, Wikipedia
ELIZA (chatbot, 1966) – Wikipedia
The Writer Will Do Something (2015)
The Writer Will Do Something – co-written with Tom Bissell, itch.io
Tom Bissell – author of Extra Lives, previous My Perfect Console guest
Matthew’s Perfect Console
Of Monks and Max (HyperCard stack, 1988) – by Brian Thomas
Loom – LucasArts (1990), Wikipedia
ICO (PS2, 2001) – Fumito Ueda / Team Ico, Wikipedia
Rez (Dreamcast, 2001) – Tetsuya Mizuguchi / United Game Artists, Wikipedia
Rez Infinite – Steam (modern version)
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon – Steam
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon – Wikipedia
Other games and references mentioned
Opus Magnum – Zachtronics (Steam)
Exapunks – Zachtronics (Steam)
Dark Castle – remaster (Steam)
Cosmic Osmo – Cyan (HyperCard, 1989), Wikipedia
Call of Duty: United Offensive (expansion, 2004) – Wikipedia
Star Trek: Armada II – Wikipedia
Medieval: Total War – Wikipedia
University of Washington Center for Game Science
Mark Wynne – graphic designer of Process (Edge magazine)
Tune & Fairweather – publisher
Jason Killingsworth – founder of Tune & Fairweather
Support the show
My Perfect Console – episode archive and data
My Perfect Console on Patreon – early access, video episodes and monthly bonus episodes
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