Category: game studies

anything games, games research related

Touring During January and February

Looking at my calendar, I will be mostly in Finland during this Spring (this is at least what I imagine at the moment). There are few engagements in the coming weeks worth listing here:

  • in January 16th to 20th I will be participating in the IPerG workshop and planning pervasive gaming research (in Palma de Mallorca, nice!)
  • in January 25th I will be in Joensuu, examining the licentiate thesis of Leena Vartiainen that is related to live roleplaying, arts and crafts and virtual communities
  • the following day, January 26th, I will be giving a talk in Forum Dynamo conference, titled Games Cultures & Games Literacy (PDF brochure)
  • in the 1st of February, I will be talking in Youth, Media and Library — Back to the Future seminar in Tikkurila about Cultures of Games and Cultures of Play
  • following Monday, 5th of February, I will speak in Tietoturvaviikot event in Helsinki (Online Safety Week) about Net Cultures, Now and in the Future

And then there will be the bi-weekly PhD & MA seminar of game studies that I will be running during this spring; welcome. As there are also other lectures, classes and several research projects and other work going on, it appears that I will have no difficulty in filling my hours this spring, either. 🙂

New article on online gaming

I wrote a short piece for Hyvinvointikatsaus (a magazine of Statistics Finland) where I summarise some of the developments in various sorts of online gaming; you can access this piece from:

http://www.uta.fi/~frans.mayra/Mayra_verkkopelaamisen_muodonmuutos.pdf

and the magazine home page is:

http://www.stat.fi/tup/hyvinvointikatsaus/

Pervasive gaming field day

Pervasive gaming field day
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

This week there is the second annual review of our IPerG research project. It involves much theoretical and strategic discussions, as well as some running around in the Nokia Research Centre corridors, as our evaluators here demonstrate. In Wednesday more people will participate, as the Open House presentations will take place in Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum. Welcome!

Edit: you can find more photos in Flickr, with ‘iperg’ tag. 

How to mess up your Wii controller connection

The first Wii experiences have been predominantly positive: the physical play style and basic sensory technology actually seem to work well. The remaining troubles have been either technical limitations or user errors. I will explain here one of my own from the latter category, so that others with same issue might get help quicker than I did.

Wii manual explains how to connect your controller (“Wiimote”) with the console by pressing the sync button simultaneously both in the remote and in the console. The trick is to press both buttons only once; somewhere I had got an idea that you need to keep those two buttons pressed down until the controller tells it has synced. That is wrong, and a bad idea. I ended up spending one or two hours pressing buttons for minutes without successful synchronization. The Wii console was of course inaccessible for all that time, which was not very happy situation — I was already calling help lines and was ready to send my brand new console back and order a new one.

Laura saved my day by pointing out that both two controllers sync perfectly if I just stop my futile attempts in keeping the sync buttons pressed down, and just press them once. Oh dear.

Another irritation is the lack of S video or component video cable from Wii (coming to Europe some time next year; out of stock in Japan). And I cannot get Dolby Surround sound out into my amplifier, even when both console and game (Zelda) advertise to support surround. But Wii Sports was really enjoyable, even sweaty. And Zelda Twilight Princess has the right kind of magic in it. It actually reminds me from both WoW, Fable and Beyond Good and Evil, which are among my favourites as far as contemporary RPG style adventures are concerned.

It's here

It’s here
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

The Wii Era arrives — in multiple little boxes…

SingStar in Pikkujoulut

SingStar performance in Pikkujoulut-2006
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

SingStar is a karaoke-style, singing game for PS2 that fits perfectly in a party or other social settings. Our department staff had the “Pikkujoulu” (Pre-Christmas party) night yesterday and this game was of course part of the fun. Other photos can be found in Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fransmayra/tags/hypermedialaboratorio/

hdtv adventure game

Now this is actually rather fun: as a an indication of games becoming the vernacular of Media Era, read/play this Dethroner spoof on adventure gaming books (remember them?) and ongoing HDTV discussions.

http://dethroner.com/index.php/2006/11/28/choose-your-own-adventure-the-cave-of-hdtv/

(Gizmodo, thanks for the link)

presenting on social gaming

Today was another busy day; meetings and then a quick trip into Helsinki, where I presented with Sonja Kangas on the social dimensions of digital gaming. The event was organised by the Finnish importer of PlayStation, and thus the PS2 party games (SingStar, Buzz etc.) were on the main focus in that sponsor part of the presentations. SingStar is actually rather fun: we tried that out some time ago with the Finnish “Legendat” version. I proved to be even worse singer than I had suspected. In Finland the pre-Christmas party tradition is quite active and this kind of performance oriented games are at their best in such (suitably relaxed) party setting. Pikkujoulut, here we come…

lecture about gaming skills/games literacy

I will be today presenting a lecture where I outline some of the fundamental skills and learning processes that are involved in playing digital games. It is a public, studia generalia lecture, so welcome to listen; it is part of the Media Education project that our department participates in, see https://www11.uta.fi/blog/mediakasvatus/?p=16

ubimedia & media adventure seminars

Next week it is again the time of MindTrek mediaweek, the new media festival. I will be presenting in two different seminars, Mediaseikkailu (Media Adventure) is focused on educators, and I will be talking about kids and games; the second one is titled Ubimedia, and there my talk will be on pervasive games. Links: http://www.opeko.fi/mediaseikkailu/ & http://www3.hermia.fi/in_english/ubimedia_seminar/