R: Some of the projects you've been involved in seem intended to use games as a form of education, others such as I Love Bees are ultimately focused on marketing a product, others seem to be making a kind of political argument, and others seem to be art in the traditional sense of art for art's sake. Do you see games as useful in all of those various contexts and how, as a practitioner, do you balance those various purposes?

JM: I start from a core belief that a well-designed game is beautiful. A well-structured experience, an elegantly architected interaction, is a form of art. So any game that I am working on, regardless of the purpose, falls into art practice. Likewise, I do believe that there is a real social good that comes out of encouraging people to play cooperatively, and giving people an opportunity to be powerful and superheroes in everyday public spaces. That means for me there is something political in all of these games, as well. Now, whether is it educational, or a marketing experience, or just something I am doing as design research, I will stand behind every game I work on as art and as a political intervention.

Because I think it might be helpful, let me just paste in a very short manifesto I recently wrote in response to people asking me about my motivations for the Ministry of Reshelving project. I call it "A Minor Statement on Avant Gaming."