Category: digital culture

digital cultures, digital lifestyles – you name it

Mia Consalvo's visiting lecture

[Here is the info bulletin in Finnish about Mia Consalvo’s lecture in 22nd May in room B3108 — the lecture itself will be in English, welcome!]

Professori Mia Consalvo pitää pelitutkimuksen alueelta avoimen yleisöluennon perjantaina 22.5.2009 klo 12-14 otsikolla:

Hardcore casual: Game culture Return(s) to Ravenhearst

Luento toteutetaan tilassa RH B3108 (Pinni B).

Professori Consalvo on tunnettu pelien ja Internetin tutkija joka toimii nykyään Ohion yliopistossa (USA). Hän on erikoistunut digitaalisen mediakulttuurin ja teknologiakulttuurien kysymyksiin. Hänen tunnetuin julkaisunsa on pelikulttuurien suhdetta huijaamisen käytänteisiin tarkasteleva teos Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames (MIT Press, 2007).

Mia Consalvo vierailee Tampereella informaatiotutkimuksen ja interaktiivisen median laitoksen pelitutkimusryhmän sekä Pelikulttuurien synty -tutkimushankkeen kutsusta.

Lisätietoja:

Mia Consalvon kotisivut: http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~consalvo/
Pelitutkimusryhmän kotisivut: http://gamelab.uta.fi/
Pelikulttuurien synty -tutkimushanke: http://finnishgamecultures.wordpress.com/

Professori Frans Mäyrä: email frans.mayra[at]uta.fi, gsm 050 336 7650

Olli Sotamaa's PhD videos

I used my mobile phone to take some videos from Olli’s PhD defence yesterday, as well as from the karonkka party afterwards. A great event, many thanks for professor Aphra Kerr on probing questions and insightful discussions — and the evening party afterwards was also excellent: warm-hearted speeches, delicious food, drinks, music, colleagues and friends gathered together for a special day. Congratulations to Olli once again!

Pelitieto.net

Julkistus [Our Finnish language online course on games literacy basics is now released]:

Pelitiedon peruskurssi julkistettu: http://pelitieto.net/

Erityisesti opettajille suunnattu verkkosivusto digitaalisista peleistä ja pelikulttuureista on julkistettu tänään Hämeenlinnan ITK-konferenssissa. Sivusto sisältää tietoa niin pelien ja pelaamisen historiasta kuin tarkemmin suosituimpiin pelilajityyppeihin perehdyttäviä osioita. Itseopiskeluun ja täydennyskoulutuskäyttöön soveltuva verkkosivusto vastaa tarpeeseen: nuorten ja vanhempien välille kasvanut digitaalinen pelikuilu on jo vuosia kaivannut myös koululaitoksen reagointia, mihin Pelitieto.net tarjoaa nyt osaltaan työvälineitä.

Lisätietoa: professori Frans Mäyrä, frans.mayra@uta.fi / puh. 050 336 7650
Tampereen yliopisto, informaatiotutkimuksen ja interaktiivisen median laitos (INFIM)
Game Research Lab: http://gamelab.uta.fi

Playful Experiences seminar starting today

The Playful Experiences seminar will start today, and feature an interesting mix of papers discussing games and other playful phenomena from various perspectives. You can find the final, updated program here: http://playfulexperiences.wordpress.com/programme/

GameSpace Tool: Game Design and Evaluation Research

(Crossposting from DiGRA’s list) — You can now access the public deliverable pack from the two year research project carried out by Games Research Lab in the University of Tampere from here:

http://gamelab.uta.fi/gamespacetool/

GameSpace looked at the design and evaluation of games that are characterised by three main features: they are casual, multiplayer games in a mobile use context. The published results include information about the new design spaces, results derived from the design and evaluation method innovations, as well as practical knowledge about carrying out academia-industry partnerships in the area of game design and evaluation research.

Best regards, The GameSpace Research Team:

Frans Mäyrä, Scientific Leader
Janne Paavilainen, Project Manager
Annakaisa Kultima, Researcher
Jussi Kuittinen, Researcher
Johannes Niemelä, Researcher
Hannamari Saarenpää, Researcher
Anu Jäppinen, Researcher

Special thanks to Tekes and a consortium of companies (Nokia Research Center, Veikkaus, TeliaSonera Finland, Sulake Corporation and Digital Chocolate) for the funding and collaboration in our research work.

http://gamelab.uta.fi

GameSpace Tool
GameSpace Tool

Kirjastoon! Award to Ilkka Mäkinen/INFIM

I am today talking in the Kirjasto ON seminar in Helsinki, and was pleasantly surprised as the seminar was opened by an award ceremony where Ilkka Mäkinen, docent of library history and colleague from our INFIM department was given applause for his long history in the study of libraries and teaching of library professionals. Congrats! Ilkka’s home page: http://www.uta.fi/~liilma/

Olli Sotamaa's PhD Defence

I don’t think this is yet in any official web page, but here is the key information:

MA Olli Sotamaa will publicly defend his PhD thesis titled “The Player’s Game: Towards Understanding Player Production Among Computer Game Cultures” in April 25th 2009 in University of Tampere, hall A1. The opponent will be Professor Aphra Kerr (National University of Ireland) and the custodian is Professor Mikko Lehtonen.

In Finnish:

FM Olli Sotamaan tiedotusopin alaan kuuluva väitöskirja “The Player’s Game: Towards Understanding Player Production Among Computer Game Cultures” tarkastetaan julkisesti lauantaina 25.4.2009 klo 12 yliopiston päärakennuksen A1-salissa (Kalevantie 4). Väitöstilaisuudessa toimii kustoksena professori Mikko Lehtonen. Vastaväittäjänä on professori Aphra Kerr (National University of Ireland).

Microsoft envisions the future

It is always (well, almost always) fun to see how people illustrate the future; and usually we can learn a lot by studying the past future visions. Microsoft has a bit more money than most of us, and can thus create rather fancy futuristic videos:

Some of these things appear rather likely, incremental evolutions from the present paradigms of interactive and augmented computing. Some were a bit unclear to me — what was the point, how that was supposed to work. And in general, the feeling was a bit similar to after watching Minority Report — fascinated, but also a bit put off, in classic dystopian style.

Moblogging with a camera phone

I have been playing with some mobile tools in my kitchen and living room (the mobile weekend of a family man, I know). The camera phone that I am mostly using, Nokia N95 8GB, just got a new firmware, V 31.0.015, which brought along some nice additional or enhanced features. These include better integration to online photo sharing services. I am using Flickr, and now it is just one click away to share a photo through the default Internet service provider. Also, I noticed that the phone screen automatically tilts to vertical/horisontal (this sensor tech might have been in the previous firmware, too, I am not sure). In the background I am running Location Tagger, which captures the GPS coordinates into the photos’ metadata in a format Flickr can also read. You need to be close to a window for this to work indoors, of course. The app can cache the location data, though, which is handy. I have also Fring now running in the background, which is a mobile instant messenger program that is able to tap into Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk and Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm and SIP Internet phone services, to start with. The downside now is that there is always something “interesting” going on in the damned device, so I might turn this off at some point. But the always-connected, automatically location tagging camera is something that I’d like to see in my SLR/main system, too, to look into the future.

Games researcher meeting in Tampere

Today takes place (in Telakka restaurant, Tampere) the games researcher meeting organised by DiGRA Finland, Games as Services research project, Finnish Yearbook of Game Studies and Neogames centre. Pictured is Olli Sotamaa and some of the other, c. 30 participants. Much interesting talk and good company!