Van Burnham has spent three decades making the argument that video games are a legitimate art form — pretty much before anyone wanted to hear it. She's the author of Supercade (MIT Press), one of the most important books ever written about this medium. She has collected nearly 500 arcade machines, interviewed the people who built this industry from the ground up, and is now working to build what she hopes will be gaming's first world-class museum.

In this conversation, Van and Greg cover her origin story — born in Raleigh, raised in Cary (now home to Epic Games), then New Jersey, where her dad brought home an Odyssey when she was five — and the mall arcade in Cherry Hill that Supercade is actually named after. She talks about arriving at Wired in the mid-90s as the default "games evangelist," the leap from magazine writing  ...