The academic year 2010-2011 starts officially only in September when the teaching starts. However, there is much going on already in August. I made an early start last week by lecturing in ‘Äidinkielen ja kirjallisuuden opetuksen foorumi 2010’ event (the literature and Finnish language teachers conference), where I argued (among other things) that we are moving in media technological terms more complex and ‘messy reality’, but that does not mean that traditional literacy skills and contents would suddenly become worthless. There does not really exist a separate and isolated thing called ‘multimedia literacy’, but rather an intermeshed complex of different skills, some of them related to images, some to text, but the skills of actively making media (and other materials our world offers us) our own, as well as interpersonal & communicational skills, become increasingly central for the future. – Link to the conference page: http://db3.oph.fi/koulutuskalenteri/ophtilaisuus.asp?ID1=1039
Category: digital culture
digital cultures, digital lifestyles – you name it
iPeng. iPhone. Spotify. And Squeezebox.
This has been one of the most fun recent everything-is-now-connected experiences: after upgrading into a Spotify Premium account, I first did find out that Spotify has a very nice mobile client for iPhone, then that there is also a plugin (still at beta though) to make Spotify work as an online radio component in my Squeezeserver/Squeezebox setup at home (making possible somewhat more hifi experiences in our library room). The only issue was the UI, and seaching for music with our trusty old Squeezebox Classic and its rubbery remote control was not so much fun. Here stepped in iPeng, an application that turns iPhone into a Wifi remote that makes browsing and playing Squeezebox’s music collections really fun — and it suits perfectly for remote controlling Spotify, too.
The only real irritation so far has been “no player connected” message that comes when the connection between iPhone and Squeezebox is lost. I have tried to set iPhone into a fixed IP address in our router, and also limit its connection into Wifi g standard only (which should make it supposedly more resilient to disturbance), but I am not sure I have managed to crack that problem completely yet. But otherwise: it is great to notice it is possible to get things — music, services, hard- and software — to interoperate, finally, at least to a certain degree.
On reception and playlists
Working today in our cellar I developed a theory that people generally fall into two categories in their attitudes towards music: the playlist people and the radio people. While the former take care to build their own playlists and choose music to match the mood, situation and company, the latter just open the radio. I mostly belong to the latter category, but it is sometimes surprisingly difficult to get the exact radio station where you want and need it. For example, I often work with media (or do house maintenance work) in our cellar, where the earth and concrete walls block the reception. In the picture you can see one work-around: take iPhone and purchase a RadioBox app (or just use a free flash player if you have a Nokia or some open device like that), then tune up those favorite Finnish YLE radio channels, and plug it into your Philips brightlight-radio-combo-device. It works!
Fantasy, horror and games panel in Tracon V
The fifth fantasy and anime (visibly also cosplay) convention of Tampere, Tracon, took place last weekend in Tampere Hall. I took part as the chair to the “Fantasy, Horror and Games panel”, and even while we ended up having half the time we had been originally promised by organisers, at least we managed to evoke some essential questions on the subject matter, like:
- Is fantastic focused on the ‘sense of wonder’, whether the art form is literature, cinema, games, or something else?
- If we are talking about horror, is the key in the management of moods, or emotions: on the careful evocation of suspense, thrill, terror, horror, revulsion (to adapt Stephen King here)?
- As contrasted to narratively controlled horror and fantasy, is the player freedom in games more likely to lead into instrumental, problem-solving style of player attitudes, rather than to emotional involvement with the fiction?
- In contrast, there is the alternative: that player involvement while acting within the game’s reality is likely to lead in deeper — or different kind of — involvement or immersion than narrative fiction?
There were many more interesting topics that our panelists discussed, many only briefly, before the panel was closed. Thanks to: Jaakko Koivula, Nestori Lehtonen, Mixu Lauronen, Markku Soikkeli, and Jukka Särkijärvi.
Avatar: The Second Nature?
I just saw Avatar (dir. & written by James Cameron), in 3D, and I must say I am impressed. Not necessarily deeply moved like some other great films I have seen, but impressed as in made to think about cinema and the role it will have for us in the future.
Many people who have written about Avatar have started by dropping a long list of other movies it has borrowed from; my take would be Avatar is “Aliens meets Dances with Wolves meets Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” style of movie. But there is enough originality in this particular blend that the intertextual or -medial reference listings do not make justice to its real essence.
Looking at the film through the thick and rather dark 3D goggles, I felt the basic scenario built around the avatar technology of the movie was sort of metaphor for my own situation Continue reading “Avatar: The Second Nature?”
Gamelab at Facebook, Twitter
We are adopting a more active role in our utilization of social media networking tools in order to distribute information and awareness of what is going at the Game Research Lab at the University of Tampere. You can now both follow us in Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/UTAgamelab) and in Twitter (https://twitter.com/UTAgamelab). See you around! 🙂
Kolumni, Profile 2.09
Kolumni, Profile 2.09, originally uploaded by FransBadger.
(This column piece is in Finnish, but the main point is to set the ‘learning through games’ discourse in context, and challenge it by approaching games and play as an end in themselves, as autotelic phenomena.)
Kolumni: “Oppia Peleistä” (julkaistu: Profiili, 2/2009, s. 26-27)
Pelit ovat näinä päivinä näkyvästi otsikoissa: toisaalta hehkutetaan peliteollisuuden saavutuksia ja pelimyyntilukuja, jotka tuntuvat uhmaavan taantumankin vaikutuksia. Toisaalta pelit helposti nousevat otsikoihin myös silloin kun haetaan syitä nuorison henkiseen pahoinvointiin tai fyysisen kunnon rappioon. Harvemmin pysähdytään pohtimaan, mitä pelaaminen itse asiassa nykyihmiselle merkitsee. Mitä pelatessa oppii? Continue reading “Kolumni, Profile 2.09”
Games as Services: Many still prefer having game with a box
The Games as Services research project (Pelit palveluiksi) studies the impact of online distribution and publication to game industry, game design and player experiences. Recently some new results were published, pointing out how online gaming and game playing in general has become more acceptable among wider audiences. On the other hand, one finding of the study was that many (60 %) of the respondents still preferred to have a physical product of the game at hand. Link to more information (in Finnish): http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/infim/tutkimuskeskus/ajankohtaista.html?id=39949.
New study: more than half of the Finns play digital games at least once a month
Our new survey, Player Barometer 2009, provides comprehensive information about all types of game playing in Finland. The study is freely available as a Finnish language PDF download from here — and it also includes a short English abstract.
iPhone 3G S experiences
I promised to post my iPhone experiences at some point so here they come, even if in rather short form (realities of busy life these days). The key points are very positive ones: particularly the use of social media and Internet in general was radically transformed when I moved to iPhone. Everything is so much faster, more intuitive and pleasing to use. Listening of music, following video podcasts and Internet radio went up, too. The available applications (games, media, utilities) are fun and mostly moderately priced, but the App Store is also one of the obvious points of criticism. Apple has implemented a controlled environment for the use of iPhone, to a degree that the user sometimes starts to ask, who is really the owner of the phone, the actual owner, Apple, or even the operator that the user is locked with in the deal. It is of course perfectly possible to jailbreak iPhone, but the default situation for the regular user does not change. In this sense Symbian/S60 or Google Android based devices appear parts of much more open ecosystem. The lacking support of existing Internet standards is also obvious in the lack of support for Flash and Java in the iPhone browser. You can watch Youtube videos, since they have a specific iPhone format supported, but not regular Flash videos or animations that the net is full of. Also, and this is my final gripe with iPhone, the camera is below the standards I have gotten used to while being a Nokia N95 user. Images are blurry, too dark and more soft than you would expect from a 3 mega-pixel camera. This is a real pity, since the magnificent user experience and accessibility of all kinds of interesting functionalities would really make iPhone my dream device if camera and these other — relatively minor — issues would be dealt with. Now I continue to live in a two-phone (plus laptop, plus netbook, plus workstation…) configuration. Not everything can be expected from one environment, or manufacturer, I guess. Might be a good thing, even?
frans goes blog 
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