game studies – Page 41 – frans goes blog

Winter Assembly & DiGRA Finland meeting

Winter Assembly & DiGRA Finland meeting
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Aki Järvinen, Elina Koivisto, Tony Manninen and Olli Sotamaa are here explaining how they became games researchers. This is part of Winter Assembly, a 1000+ gamer event in Tampere taking place this weekend; Neogames centre and DiGRA Finland co-organise a games researcher meeting with kind support by Assembly organisers. Lots of interesting talks, huge numbers of games sessions and a good example of fruitful cooperation among all sorts of parties.

Transit

Transit
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Location: Stockholm airport. I have written earlier about airports as particular kind of transitional spaces, comparing them to Limbo from Dante’s Inferno, among other things. This has been a busy day, starting with short talk about games and virtual worlds as “mafufactured realities” in a professional seminar in technical documentation (wonder how much the audience really got out of my talk, though?) Then I was commenting on Olli Sotamaa’s PhD thesis chapter in a graduate seminar in Media Culture. After that, busily to the airport, and happy to find that the SAS strike had not affected my connections, I am now on the road to Malmö in Sweden. We are having the kick-off meeting with some Nordic partners about a new games research project, titled Mobile Learning Environments (MLE). The use of games in learning is an interesting field, of course, even if I wonder how long it will take to really have the constructivistic spirit and emphasis on creative problem-solving that games excel in to take over a typical institution of formal learning — not to speak about things like using games to learn about games cultures, games literacy and games design, that they would be most immediatelly suitable for. My main concern currently is that structurally MLE is a typical contemporary response to the demands that this much-touted increased competition and international collaboration is bringing us: a large international and interdisciplinary consortium with a very moderate research grant and ambitious goals that quickly turn into the reality of tiny fragmented resources that are not enough to hire a full-time person (or not even a half-time one, in this case!) — and then there is the real threat that organising inter-partner communication and the administration will end up eating all resources the funding body (NICe) has granted us. Sad. Lets hope we can find ways to join this kind of interesting research extensions of our pervasive gaming work with some other initiatives to pool resources

FENIX seminar on Interactive Computing

FENIX seminar on Interactive Computing
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

This is Wanha Satama, a seaside conference centre in Helsinki where the results seminar of FEXIX takes place today. FENIX was a four-year technology research programme that funded also some important research projects of ours that looked into games and gameplay experiences, among other things. Some of its results are available now; more about those later.

Gamers in Society seminar

Gamers in Society seminar
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Olli Sotamaa and T.L. Taylor here at the front row of Gamers in Society — Play in Culture seminar which takes place in Tampere today and tomorrow. Really interesting papers and discussions — one could almost hear the ideas clicking together as the dialog continued. — Edit: another photo, from T.Wright, taken in Café Europe in the post-seminar get-together:

Christy Dena in Helsinki

Christy Dena in Helsinki
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Christy Dena from Sydney is today speaking about Alternate Reality Games in Helsinki. She is a co-author of ARG SIG Whitepaper, and has a good overall view of the development of this field. Rabbit holes, mailed mysterious objects, videos, quicky shown phone number in a fake tv ad — that is all some people need in order to dive into an ARG adventure. But what is it in human nature, that we cannot resist a (playful) challenge?

This week on the road (& in media)

This week on the road (& in media)
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

After arriving home late last night from Kuhmo (where the seminar was interesting and music good), I had time to vote in the Finnish parliamentary elections with Laura, trouble-shoot more the Linux Ubuntu upgrade which went wrong (see a previous post), and then get up before 6 am to catch the morning train to Helsinki. YLE1 radio station will air a long interview/discussion between me and Sonja Kangas from VTT around 1pm this Thursday (we talk about games and gender in programme called “Kaapin Paikka”). Me and Sonja were also interviewed for Helsingin Sanomat for a story discussing the “next next generation”, a piece related to Sony PlayStation 3 arriving to Finnish markets. We were joking that we soon learn each others views by heart, if this continues. Tomorrow will also be a “Helsinki day”: travelling into the Nokia HQ to listen Christy Dena from Australia talk about pervasive games — hopefully there will be some interesting discussions also. We recently were given a grant by NiCE to expand the study of pervasive games into Mobile Learning Environments project, something that we will work on with our Nordic partners. Wednesday will surprisingly be a day in the office, but Thursday will again be travel, as the GameSpace steering group will be in TeliaSonera’s rooms in Helsinki. A pretty typical week. Train trips will be the moment to do the work, reading, writing and doing review wor for journals and conferences, the usual stuff. Sometimes it feels good to stop for a minute, look at the snow-covered landscape, trees, an old building, and think about time, life, passing of generations, all this human humdrum. And then: continue, tracks taking from the past, into the future.

The Inauguration Day, March 9th, 2007

The Inauguration Day, March 9th, 2007
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

Friday was when the inauguration lecture to the new professorship took place, followed by a great party in the Hypermedia Laboratory. Million thanks for everyone involved, this was a really memorable day. Photo shows some of the gifts (the other one is an axe, something every professor needs, but who recognizes the other, round object? 😉

More photos in: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fransmayra/tags/inauguration/

Inauguration day

Tomorrow will be the day when I’ll have my inauguration day, with all its rituals, as I officially step to the chair of hypermedia professor, digital culture and game studies as my defined field. I think this is the first time game studies (pelitutkimus in Finnish) is part of the definition of a full professorship in Finland — a symbolic moment. See: http://www.uta.fi/ajankohtaista/tapahtumakalenteri/ilmoitus.php?v=2007&kk=3&id=9279

The Big Future of Games discussion in the Pelit Magazine

I noticed a few days ago that the special issue of Pelit Magazine is now out; it includes the long brainstorm discussion between me, Tony Manninen and Sonja Kangas on the future, including the next 15 years of development in game technology, design and culture. It was fun and intensive discussion, and runs several pages in the magazine — hope you enjoy it, too. See: Pelit.fi

New experiences in Helsinki

New experiences in Helsinki
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

I will be visiting two very different kinds of events in Helsinki today. The first is the FinNet seminar, which is focused on educational games in the context of Finnish language learning. I gave a short talk that tried to discuss the educational and cultural framework for games in rather general terms, and the rest of the seminar has more detailed experiences coming from participants of Minerva project who have been doing SanatOn the language game. Really interesting and much new stuff for me. Later in the evening I’ll participate in Pelit Magazine’s “KyöPelit Gaala”, the semi-official “game oscars” of Finland — first time of this experience for me, too. The day is otherwise exiting but since me and Laura were moving my stuff to wee hours last night, I have to battle keeping awake, which is a shame. (The shot shows how advanced city Helsinki is: they have a skating rink next to the railway station, in the city centre!)