You might have noticed this already, but a reminder: [player] conference has now its program online:
Category: game studies
Virtual world economy seminar
Today I will be participating in “Seminar on quantitative research in virtual economies” taking place in HIIT, Espoo. Vili Lehdonvirta here is opening the seminar. Link to the program: http://www.virtual-economy.org/blog/seminar_on_quantitative_resear
Participating in Digital Archiving seminar
Today I am taking part in the ‘Digiaika talteen’ seminar in the Finnish National Library in Helsinki. At the beginning of this year, a new law came into operation, concerning archiving digital cultural heritage. New kinds of ‘cultural materials’ have existed since the development of first computers, and exponentially when the Internet started connecting people using these digital technologies. We have actually lived sort of ‘digital dark Middle-Ages’ in terms of archiving, since so much of the early history of digital texts, images, games, web pages and other forms of digital expression have already been lost. Now there is at least a law that dictates how everyone, who publishes something in Finnish that is made available to public, is obliged to collaborate with the archivists to provide permanent copies into the National Audiovisual Archive (the old SEA, the movie archive). The job is huge; one estimate is that 50 million pages with c. 2–3 terabytes of data will be gathered in two automatic annual searches.
Levels seminar, Jyväskylä
Today I am speaking in the Levels game seminar in Jyväskylä. Featured here in the picture is Marko Siitonen, who talked about teamplay and leadership, in the context of learning taking place within MMOs. More: http://www.levels08.com/
Nokia N95 8 GB and the era of ultraportables
Along with some new research projects where we look into the service distribution models of games, my new primary work phone has changed into Nokia N95 8GB model. So far I have been mostly satisfied; and in contrast to E70, this time it is possible to connect my Sony DR-BT50 headphones to the mobile phone (N95 supports A2DP over Bluetooth). N95 is also a decent media player and it is possible to listen to mp3 music and watch videos. Internet browser has improved and social media sites like YouTube and Flickr are taken in with some special consideration – image upload from the camera application to Flickr is now just one click away.
Games are still perhaps the biggest question mark of the upgraded N-Gage brand. I am not particularly enthusiastic about rally or sports games, and those feature visible in the opening portfolio. More games should be arriving soon, including pet simulation (Dogz), more pets simulation (Sims 2 Pets), golf, yet another Worms and Snakes, plus action: Brothers in Arms, ONE. The service in itself looks interesting, with player profiles, buddy lists and other social service basics in place.
All in all, it is surprising how powerful contemporary mobile phones already are. Yet, the usability of Nokia OS is still seriously behind e.g. that of Apple iPhone. Where you just want to have one thing to happen, N95 will still ask you verifications for this and that, get stuck in dialogues or wait for input from softkeys, where iPhone would automatically just have started the default action. But I have not yet used iPhone for anything beyond most casual first impression, so a more thorough comparison needs to wait for later. (Timetable for 3G iPhone launch, anyone?)
I must admit I am so text oriented user, that the biggest drawback of N95 for me is that it does not have a QWERTY keyboard. The size is compact for that reason, of course, but this means that I still need to carry two devices with me always.
The happy note is that ultraportable laptops like Asus Eee PC, HP’s 2133 Mini-Note PC and other UMPC and upscale/next gen PDAs are blooming and a gadget freak will have happy times ahead. (Asus Eee PC 900 review here: http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/04/asus-eee-pc-900-video-review.html)
Not travelling
I have made few somewhat painful personal decisions and radically cut down the amount of international travel I do. Travelling might be something we are told we have to do, that our careers require it, and that internationalisation or globalisation even dictates that we should be flying around the globe all the time, busily collaborating with everyone else. But why? Don’t we really have any communicational tools that we could use to cut down this insane waste of time, energy — both human energy and precious reserves of natural energy, turning it into carbon dioxide? I think we can do better. I was supposed to present game studies papers in two important conferences, CHI 2008 in Italy, and Crossroads conference of cultural studies in Jamaica. It was a real pity, but I decided not to go. Continue reading “Not travelling”
Speaking in ITK
Today I am speaking in ITK (interactive technology in education) conference in Hämeenlinna. An event with nice atmosphere and idyllic location in Aulanko, it is always pleasure to visit. Topic of my speech concerns my new book of game studies (see www.gamestudiesbook.net).
Spring seminar 2008
Breaking the Magic Circle seminar is well underway, and the first three sessions take place today, more to follow tomorrow. Another intense two-day period, meeting of minds, exchange of ideas. Great! (You can see the two commentators, Simon Niedenthal and Markus Montola in the front row.) More: http://breakingmagiccircle.wordpress.com/
Edit: the seminar was an obvious success — many thanks to you all. Lets see what kind of publications will spawn out of it; meanwhile, we agreed to have presentation slides and photos available tagged with ‘breakingmagiccircle’. See: http://www.slideshare.net/tag/breakingmagiccircle
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/breakingmagiccircle/
Updating Gamestudiesbook.net
My original plan was to update the companion website of my textbook — Gamestudiesbook.net — daily, until I’d be satisfied of reaching representative coverage of this field. In reality most of the days have been so packed, I have just collapsed to bed (and got up again around 5–6 am). But I have now build a new schedule, where I focus all updates of one week to one evening/morning. That way, I should have my plan fulfilled by the end of this Spring term. Lets see how this works out.
Presenting in the AoIR conference
I just got information my abstract has been accepted, and I will be presenting my paper “Play in the Mobile Internet: Towards Contextual Gaming” in the Internet Research 9.0 conference, taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, from October 15th – October 18th 2008. Link to the conference web page: http://conf.aoir.org/index.php?conference=ir&schedConf=ir9
frans goes blog 
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