Category: game studies

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

Talks in ITK conference

The one-week Easter vacation is now all in the past, and I have been busily working — among other things preparing for the two days of ITK conference taking place this week. In Thursday I will be having a short lecture in the invited speakers track on the game playing and good life (an applied ethics talk, related to the ‘Beyond Good and Evil in Games’ that I delivered earlier in Tampere media education seminar). In Friday we have a thematic seminar session focused on learning in games and social media; speakers include Peppi Taalas, Tanja Sihvonen and me, all coming from our Alliance Cluster of Excellence on Future Learning and Games Research. See you there — or on the road! Link to the ITK pages: http://www.hameenkesayliopisto.fi/itk/.

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/

Beyond Good and Evil in Games Education

I embed here my slides of the talk that I gave today in a media education seminar in Tampere. The slideset is in Finnish, but the gist of the argument is that games have been involved in a polarising discussion where they are seem as sources of ‘good’ or ‘evil’ effects, while I would argue for accepting the fundamental ambiguity of games and media, and call for responsible and “playful media educators” or “playful parents”, that would be in genuine interaction with the children and young people, having an eye on the individual differences, uses and contexts — understanding what games stand for in the lives of these real individuals.

Pelien hyvyydestä ja pahuudesta – pelikulttuurin ja mediakasvatuksen kysymyksiä

View more presentations from fransmayra.

Here is a link to the seminar program: http://www.uta.fi/mediakasvatushanke/uutinen.php?item=29511.

Global Listing of Games Research Centers

Another pick from DiGRA’s Gamesnetwork listserv, Michael Liebe from Germany has put forward an initiative to list the key games research centres worldwide. While there must always be some gaps in a listing like this, there is already I think more than one hundred of such centres listed, which is pretty impressive. Take a look at the beta version here:

http://www.digarec.org/gamesresearchmap/doku.php?id=start:gamesresearchmap

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).

Elina Ollila's dissertation

There is some more information available (in Finnish) concerning Elina Ollila’s PhD dissertation that I will be examinging together with Tony Manninen next Monday: http://www.tut.fi/public/index.cfm?MainSel=1&siteid=0&act=news&NewsID=57049&ID=57049

The full English title of the work is: Using Prototyping and Evaluation Methods in Iterative Design of Innovative Mobile Games. I cannot find the online version of dissertation at this time, but hopefully it will be made available later.

Edit: there will be also a streaming video & sound link to the event here: http://www.ollila.com/live