I used to think Google Docs was a pretty limited tool; after seeing this, I do not think so any more (at least in much more skilled hands than those of mine). Something put together by three animators working together at Google’s Demo Slam project:
Author: frans
Professor of Information Studies and Interactive Media, esp. Digital Culture and Game Studies in the Tampere University, Finland. Occasional photographer and gardener.
Word cloud
Here are some random words, taken from the xml dump of this blog site. This looks pretty technical, eh? (It is the meta terms that repeat the most.) Looking back, it was in April 2004 when the first posts into this were written. So it becomes – what – seven years next spring? Seems I have missed the five-year celebration already…
OCZ Vertex 2
My work laptop is slowly but gradually getting slower, and with Vista, the power management and battery duration are not the best either. As one solution, installing SSD (solid state) hard-drive should get a system a boost. We have put in an order for OCZ Vertex 2 250 GB model, lets see when it arrives how installing it to Sony Vaio Z31 turns out, will keep you posted.
Gradu suomalaisesta pelikulttuurista?
(In Finnish only, sorry.) Tampereen yliopiston informaatiotutkimuksen ja interaktiivisen median oppiaineessa on mahdollista erikoistua tutkimaan esimerkiksi sosiaalisen median tai digitaalisten pelien kaltaisia alueita. Herätteitä mahdollisiin graduaiheisiin on nyt listattuna täällä. Erityisesti tässä yhteydessä mainostan mahdollisuutta tehdä gradutyönsä suomalaisiin pelikulttuureihin liittyen. Suomen Akatemian rahoittama Pelikulttuurien synty Suomessa -tutkimushanke tarjoaa taustatukea tutkimuksille, joissa syvennytään tarkastelemaan pelien mieltä, muotoja ja merkityksiä niin makro- kuin mikrotasolla. Kun hankkeen tuottama Pelaajabarometri-tutkimus tarjoaa yleiskuvaa pelaamisen jakaantumisesta eri sukupuolta olevien, eri ikäisten ja eripuolella Suomea asuvien ihmisten keskuudessa, tarvittaisiin myös tutkimuksia jotka tulisivat lähelle jotain pienryhmää tai jopa yksittäisen ihmisen arkea. Luontevasti tässä yhteydessä erityisesti laadullisia, ihmistieteisiä menetelmiä yhdistävä gradutyö voisi ottaa tarkasteluun vaikkapa jotain internetin pienpeliä harrastavan iäkkäämmän ihmisen, tai vaihtoehtoisesti nuoren peliharrastajan, ja pyrkiä haastattelujen ja osallistuvan havainnoinnin keinoin tallettamaan kuvan siitä, miten digitaalinen pelaaminen sijoittuu ihmisten arkeen vuonna 2011. Akatemiahankkeella on todennäköisesti mahdollisuus myös rahallisesti tukea paria tämän aihealueen gradutyötä esim. palkkaamalla graduntekijöitä kesätöihin hankkeen tutkimusapulaisiksi kesällä 2011. – Kiinnostuneita interaktiivisen median opiskelijoita pyydetään olemaan yhteydessä: frans.mayra (ättämerkki) uta.fi.
ZTE Blade & Android
I haven’t owned an Android phone before, but I decided to give it a try as Saunalahti/Elisa (a Finnish telcom operator) provided a nice deal with an unlimited dataplan, and I needed one for my iPad. They even provided me with a micro-sim so that I could put the new sim into the iPad and use the phone with whatever sim I preferred (it was not operator locked). The phone, a Chinese thing called ZTE Blade, is an interesting gadget: it claims to have a 5 mega-pixel camera, but camera quality is pretty crappy. I have not yet managed to tweak the touch input into a setting that would really work well – either I am using wrong input methods (Android supports several), or the delay and sensitivity issues in the capacitive screen ruin the typing experience. On the other hand, Android links very easily with the Google services that I am already using, so my Google calendar and contacts were instantly synced as soon as I entered my account details. Gmail works fine, as well as Google Maps and other standard G-services. The standard browser is pretty ok, but since the WiFi is breaking down every hour or so (there is some reported bug in Android 2.1 in this, if I remember correctly), I try to avoid using it and continue to use my iPhone 3GS for pretty much everything online/Web. But: the phone is cheap (or free, if you are after the dataplan like I was), Android has a lot of different downloadable applications, and it provides more room for tweaking and hacking than iOS devices, for example. If that is what you are after, ZTE Blade might be an interesting thing worth checking out.
iPad & Apple Wireless Keyboard
iPad has plenty of useful applications for multiple purposes; coupled with an unlimited 3G data plan, the tablet is almost there to be an all-around laptop replacement for productivity/utility purposes as well as media and entertainment use (its real forté). Almost. Typing with the virtual keyboard is really painful for anything except short notes like status updates in social media, or quick email replies. Since iPad supports bluetooth, it is perfectly possible to use it with full wireless keyboards. I have been using the Apple Wireless Keyboard for this purpose some time now, and it has made a real change in terms of usability for writing, of course. Unfortunately the iOS does not support keyboad shortcuts except for some basic actions, like copy-and-paste. I have not found a shortcut that would switch between applications in cmd-tab style — iOS 4.2 supports multitasking in iPad, after all. No way to go to the home screen and launch applications with keyboard only, either. Typing email with the keyboard is fine, but to send the message, you need to tap into the touch screen. The final resulting use experience is a sort of weird hybrid, having features of PC style interaction, and tablet/touchscreen actions, all mixed together a bit uncomfortably. But after some practice you can get it, I guess. The final lesson is newertheless that iPad is not intented as a full laptop replacement, and putting some extra money can you get something like the new version of Macbook Air, where keyboard and screen are already fitted together with an OS that supports a real desktop environment. But if your laptop is taken away for repairs (like my case), then you can get away with iPad and an add-on keyboard for some time, with some extra effort.
Games and Innovation seminar CFP
Call for Papers: Games and Innovation Research Seminar
May 5th-6th, 2011, University of Tampere, FINLAND
The games industry carries the image of innovation and creativity, but still we know relatively little about the innovation processes that take place within the industry. To date, games and innovation have been studied in several disparate fields, including cultural studies, design research and industrial economics and management. Perhaps due to such a fragmented nature of academic work on the subject, the bulk of the influential work on games and innovation is found in practically oriented guidebooks authored by experienced games industry experts.
The present seminar aims at bringing together scholars of games and innovation from diverse fields and stimulating dialogue between them. Moreover, the goal of the seminar is to encourage the further development of rigorous academic research on the topic while keeping the work accessible to game professionals.
The seminar is welcoming submissions on the praxis of game development, the characteristics of innovation in game context, supply and demand for innovation in games, creativity and games, and the relationship of game innovation and legal practices. It has been argued that the growing level of concentration of the games industry has rendered innovation virtually non-existent in game development. The submissions are encouraged to comment on this claim. What is innovation in games? How does it manifest? Can you measure it? How has it changed since digital games were first introduced? Is creativity in games domain-specific? What is the status of innovation praxis within games industry?
Full text of the CFP is here: http://gamesandinnovationseminar.wordpress.com/cfp/
Textual Demons and Demonic Texts
In the spirit of open access publishing, I linked also to the sidebar of this blog my early book Textual Demons and Demonic Texts (1999). I still every now and then come across studies of horror, science fiction, cyborgs and techno-culture that might had profited from having a look at some of its chapters, so: here they are, all of them. If you are interested in buying a physical book that also includes all the images, please contact me personally. Link: http://www.uta.fi/~frans.mayra/Demon_2005/.
Culture and Identity of Casual Online Play
I am visiting the Homo Ludens 2.0 conference in Utrech this week, organised by the Playful Identities project. Below is the text of my abstract:
“The Culture and Identity of Casual Online Play”
It is relatively easy to find examples of deep, immersive play that has effects on personal or social identity: an intensive psychodrama, live action role-play, and even some massively multiplayer online (MMO) game players report experiences that have affected the ways they perceive themselves, or human condition in general. Most of contemporary play, however, is not deep or transformative in a similar manner. This talk will focus on casual gameplay that takes place in Facebook games such as Farmville (70-80 million users in 2010), as well as through mobile phone applications such as Foursquare (a location-based game for smartphones). The aim is to discuss the significance and meaning making activities that takes place among this kind of games, and highlight their contribution to game cultures.
Casual play is typically characterised by short sessions of playful interaction with games that are not particularly challenging, complex or extensive by character. It is also possible to play this kind of ‘casual games’ in a manner that is very dedicated and immersive, but then the play style approaches that of core or hardcore gamers, rather than casual play. The non-immersive character of casual play allows participants to divide their attention to other activities and issues beside that of gameplay, making such games particularly suitable for various social uses and purposes.
Based on a series of research projects and participant observation, the expanding range of casual game experiences will be discussed, as well as the social, entertaining and cultural uses which the contemporary online casual games have been adopted for. From this perspective, casual play appears to be an enabler in different personal and social processes, sometimes momentarily moving to the centre of attention, while mostly keeping in the periphery. While the vocal parts of game cultures have mostly articulated the pleasures of strongly immersive gameplay, the players of contemporary casual games have started to put forward an alternative view on what constitutes ‘good gameplay’, based on a slightly different aesthetics of play.
– In my final paper my intention is to focus on the internal tensions and conflicts that relate to setting ‘casual’ in relation to identity, or creation of culture around such an internally ambiguous concept.
Games and Good Life
Another short article of mine (and also in Finnish): “Pelit ja hyvä elämä” discusses how research has addressed games’ negative and positive effects to quality of life, and moderation (the “golden mean”) in this context. This is in “Pelatkaa”, special issue of Pelit magazine 10/2010. Link: http://www.pelit.fi/index.php?id=tutustulehteen.
frans goes blog 
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