This week has been busy with the first Pelitutkimuksen päivä (the seminar of Finnish game studies) taking place in Wednesday, Olli Sotamaa as the main organiser on behalf of the Finnish DiGRA Chapter. The first Finnish (masters’) degree price in game studies was also awarded in that event; the winner was Gabriela Rodríguez with her work Learning in Digital Games: A Case Study of a World of Warcraft Guild from the University of Turku. The program also included presentations by Tero Pasanen and Jonne Arjoranta (on the discourses of game violence in Finnish media) and Tero Huttunen (problem gamers as the customers of youth and social work), followed by my comment talk.

Wednesday was also the pre-workshop day of the Physical and Digital in Games and Play seminar — the Hybbi workshop focused on creating concepts for playful hybrid products. Thursday and Friday have been the main seminar days, with 17 presentations. Our invited commentators this year are Annika Waern and Katriina Heljakka.

It will probably take a few days to get my mind to digest all the interesting presentations. There has also been really great discussion going in all of these events, so many thanks again for everyone involved!

UTA Gamelab

The UTA Game Research Lab has got grants and started working on several new research projects recently:

• FUN, the Finnish-US SAVI project got funding from the Tekes in Finland and NSF in the US to catalyse trans-Atlantic collaboration particularly in games and education research; we have been working on gamification and player research survey collaboration on this one;
• in Services, the Tivit SHOK we are taking part in the Education work package to look into the potentials of game-like learning in mixed reality applications (MixLearn);
• the Gaming Behaviour literature survey is our new opening, started after winning the open European tender process for a research partnership with Norsk Tipping, the state lottery in Norway;
• we are now also starting the work on the Pelaajabarometri 2013, the comprehensive national survey on both traditional games and digital games play in Finland, with a grant from Pelitoiminnan tutkimussäätiö (the Finnish Foundation for Gaming Research)
• last but not least, Free2Play, the new two-year research project studying the multiple aspects related to the freemium model got funding from the Tekes  Skene program, and the consortium of leading Finnish games companies.

All of us – and me personally – we want to thank warmly everyone involved for the continuing support to the games research we are carrying out in the Gamelab! Together, these new initiatives rise the count of externally funded research projects in Gamelab over 40, and with a total grant budget of c. 5,5 million euros. (And I have already long time ago lost count of the publications our talented team of researchers has produced over the years…)

Narrative Minds and Virtual Worlds Tampereen yliopistolla 21.-22.5.2013

Narrative Minds and Virtual Worlds -konferenssi tuo yhteen kertomuksen tutkijat kolmelta eri tieteenalalta: kirjallisuudentutkimuksesta, sosiologiasta ja pelitutkimuksesta. Yhdistämällä kaksi monitieteisen kertomuksentutkimuksen uusinta innovaatiota, mielten ja maailmojen teoretisoinnin, konferenssi tutkii mahdollisuuksia yhtenäiseen teorianmuodostukseen ja testaa samalla teorioiden ja menetelmien siirrettävyyttä tieteestä ja kulttuurista toiseen. Pääpuhujina tilaisuudessa ovat Marie-Laure Ryan ja Jarmila Mildorf, ja yhteensä esitelmiä on valittu pitämään 47 puhujaa Euroopasta ja Yhdysvalloista. Lisätietoja konferenssin kotisivuilta

http://www.uta.fi/ltl/en/plural/research/mmk/narrative_minds.html

Järjestelytoimikunta etsii nyt opiskelijoita avustamaan erilaisissa konferenssiin liittyvissä käytännön tehtävissä. Tehtäviin kuuluu infopisteen hoitaminen, puhujien vastaanottaminen ja opastaminen sekä luentosaleissa avustaminen suomeksi ja englanniksi. Avustajien odotetaan olevan käytettävissä molempina konferenssipäivinä. Avustajille järjestetään perehdytystilaisuus ennen konferenssia.

Vastineeksi työstään opiskelijat saavat arvokasta kokemusta kansainvälisen konferenssin järjestelyissä mukana olemisesta, todistuksen työstään sekä palauttamalla n. 2-4 sivun raportin konferenssissa toimimisesta myös 2 opintopisteen suorituksen (informaatiotutkimuksen ja interaktiivisen median tutkinto-ohjelmassa kohtaan ITIA61, aineopintojen muu valinnainen opintojakso).

Lisäksi konferenssista voi saada 2 opintopistettä opintopassiin kuuntelemalla esitelmiä ja laatimalla luentopäiväkirjan. Luentopäiväkirjan ohjeeksi soveltuvat kirjallisuustieteen luentopäiväkirjaohjeet: http://www.uta.fi/ltl/oppiaineet/kirjallisuus/opiskelu/tyoskentelymuodot/luentopaivakirja.html . Päiväkirjassa tulee kuvata ja analysoida vähintään neljän konferenssiesityksen sisältöä, pituus on n. 4-6 sivua (1,5-riviväli, n. 300 sanaa/sivu). Raportti ja päiväkirja palautetaan sisäpostissa: Frans Mäyrä/Pinni B2058.

Ilmoittaudu avustajaksi 30.4. mennessä osoitteeseen narrative.minds@uta.fi. Mainitse viestissä nimesi, pääaineesi/tutkinto-ohjelmasi sekä kielitaitosi.

http://www.aka.fi/Tiedostot/Tiedostot/Julkaisut/1_13_Media%20and%20Communication.pdf

There is much interesting descriptive data about the work our unit and many others are doing, and also some good recommendations. Some of the most crucial ones nevertheless remain outside of our power, most notably the lack of resources that has its impact on many aspects of academic work. Prof. Thorsten Quandt, the chair of the evaluation panel, noted that the administrative work load of professors needs to be radically lowered in order to have resources directed to original research, yet it is difficult to see how this can happen if the direction in the university sector has been to move more and more to “self-service model” where everyone, professors included, do everything themselves, using various less or more usable information systems. The fundamental problem seems to be the dominance of managerialist mindset (over-reliance on measurements, systems, “meta-work”), and that is not something that is unique to the media and communication research, it is endemic to contemporary academia.

Tieteen päivien Verkkomaailmat-sessiomme on herättänyt sen verran mielenkiintoa, että se on tilattu myös osaksi Jyväskylän Tieteen päivien ohjelmaa. Tervetuloa tänään puolilta päivin Agoran Martti Ahtisaari-saliin, tässä puheenvuorot:

Klo 12.00-13.45 VERKKOMAAILMAT
- Puheenjohtaja, professori Frans Mäyrä (Tampereen yliopisto): Pelit, pelimaailmat ja fantasian kautta voimaantuminen
- Yliopistotutkija Janne Matikainen (Helsingin yliopisto): Identiteetti verkossa – keksittyä vai todellista?
- Professori Raine Koskimaa (Jyväskylän yliopisto): Virtuaalimaailmat – koodattua todellisuutta
- Professori Tere Vadén (Aalto-yliopisto): Kuinka monta ensimmäistä Internet-vallankumousta maailmaan mahtuu?

Linkki: https://www.jyu.fi/akateemiset-tapahtumat/tieteenpaivat/tiistain-ohjelma

International Conference Series in Games and Literary Theory
Inaugural Conference
University of Malta, 31st October-1st November 2013
University of Malta
Institute of Digital Games and the Department of English

This inaugural event in the Digital Games and Literary Theory Conference Series follows on from a successful International Workshop held at the University of Malta last year. That event established the scope, appeal and timeliness of interdisciplinary research involving Game Studies and Literary Theory. While there are ample conference opportunities for discussion of the impact of Game Studies on other fields in the Humanities and on the amenability, in turn, of Game Studies to critique by those fields, events where the affinities with Literary Theory take centre stage are, by comparison, quite rare. This is surprising.

There are, in fact, a number of reasons why a forum for formalised exchanges across the two fields is now overdue, and why the prospect of it should be exciting and enriching for both areas. For one thing, digital games’ modalities could be seen as reconfiguring and possibly subverting conceptualities and orthodoxies integral to literary theory (such as matters concerning textuality, subjectivity, authorship, the linguistic turn, the ludic, and the very nature of fiction).

Additionally, and conversely, theory’s capacities for close and rigorous critique finds ample opportunity for extension in digital games. The discourse on theory in the area of game studies is, by some lights, remarkably slow in bringing to bear those perspectives which theory is peculiarly well endowed to address (for instance, on matters concerning undecidability, the trace, the political unconscious, the allegorical, and the autopoietic, to name but a few likely avenues). To be sure, the encounter between Digital Games and Literary Theory is not inexistent. The lively debate around narrative in games and about the nature of concepts such as fiction and the virtual, as well as discussion about indeterminacies across characters, avatars and players, attest to that. But there can be no doubt that there is much more that can be broached within that encounter. A conference series providing for regular meetings where that could start to occur, allowing for new thinking on the mutuality and divergences between Games and Literary Theory, would be extremely helpful in energizing the debate further and in helping the two areas to find a congenial and productive space for their interaction.

To this end, the organizers of this First International Conference on Games and Literary Theory—based at the Institute of Digital Games and the Department of English at the University of Malta, and networked with a number of academics in the United States, Europe, Australia and Asia equally committed to this interdisciplinary undertaking—are issuing a Call for Papers that invites proposals for presentations that could focus on issues related, but not limited to, any (or a combination of) the following :

• Textuality in literature and games.
• Rethinking fiction after digital games.
• Characters, avatars, players, subjects: What changes occur for literary theory when digital games are considered?
• New forms of narrative and games.
• Games and the rethinking of culture.
• Genetic criticism.
• Digital games and literariness, and/or intermediality.
• Digital games and authorship and/or focalization.
• Autopoiesis, literary theory, and digital games.
• Reception theory, reader experience, player experience: new phenomenologies for critique.
• Gender in games, literature, theory: transformation or more of the same?
• Digital games, literary theory and posthumanism.
• Game Studies and the New Humanities.
• Possible Worlds Theory and games.
• Digital games in literature.

We invite scholars with an interest in the conjunction of games and literary theory to submit abstracts between 1000 and 1500 words including bibliography. The deadline for submissions is April 30th 2013. Please submit your abstract in PDF format to gamelit2013@um.edu.mt.

All submitted abstracts are subject to a double blind peer review, which will be the basis for the programme committee’s selection of papers for the conference. A full paper draft must then be submitted by September 30th.

Papers will be made available to participants on the conference website. A selection of top papers from the conference will form a Special Issue of Game Studies focused on Literary Theory and Games. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by June 15th , 2013.