Brian Ashcraft is a journalist based in Japan. He is the Senior Contributing Editor for video game site Kotaku.

Prior to joining Kotaku in 2005, Ashcraft worked for Quentin Tarantino's now defunct film distribution company, Rolling Thunder Pictures, where he assisted on The New York Times best-seller "What It Is... What It Was!", a look at blaxploitation films.

He graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in Art History.

Writing professionally since 2003, Ashcraft is a Contributing Editor at Wired Magazine, where he has covered topics ranging from digital filmmaking to liquor chemistry and from Japanese politics to robotics. His work has also appeared in Popular Science, The Japan Times and design journal Metropolis Magazine as well as publications in the United Kingdom, Portugal, Italy and South Africa. He has been interviewed about technology and gaming on television in both the United States and Japan.

In 2008, Ashcraft authored his first book Arcade Mania!, which writer Warren Ellis called "a fascinating, funny and sharp-eyed look" at Japanese arcades. A French-language version was published in 2009.

Ashcraft lives in Osaka with his wife and two sons.

With a team of writers located throughout the U.S. and in Japan and Australia, Kotaku currently has about 3.5 million readers who view more than 50 million pages a month.

Send an email to the author of this post at bashcraft@kotaku.com.