Category: game studies

anything games, games research related

cfp: gamers in society

We have published the call for papers for a new seminar in our annual series of game studies seminars — Gamers in Society, Play in Culture. See: http://gamelab.uta.fi/socialgamer-seminar/

call into mapping global game cultures

I presented a short paper as a keynote in the Medi@terra Gaming Realities conference, inviting international collaboration on mapping the global game cultures — into gathering reliable information on who is playing, what, how, and how much, and perhaps even why. If you are interested, take a look at the version available in my home page, and lets be in contact.

medi@terra on multilayering of land

medi@terra on multilayering of land
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

The tightly packed days of medi@terra/Gaming Realities conference include many interesting presentations about reality and place becoming multiple, mixed, multilayered, hybrid. I’d actually claim that our reality, and lands we inhabit are always this kind of chimeiras; sites half-imagined, half put together by pieces we recognize from elsewhere. Athens is obviously a city to evoke reflections of this kind, pasts, presents and futures colliding constantly on its crowded streets.

gaming realities conference, athens

I will be travelling — to Athens (Greece) this time; this is where the DiGRA Assembly 2006 and Gaming Realities conference is taking place. It looks promising; check out the programme at: http://www.mediaterra.org/2006/en/conference.html

finnish game companies

It is not exactly clear how you define a “game company” these days, we are living the era of convergence after all. But take a look at suomalaiset pelialan yritykset list and neogames toimijalista, if you are interested.

digra 2007 cfp

Please distribute: call for papers into the DiGRA 2007 Tokyo ‘Situated Play’ conference is out: http://www.digra.org/digra_conference/2007tokyo/digra2007cfp/

multiculturalism in games cultures

After two days in Berlin (IPerG EB meeting), next a couple of hours sleep in Tampere and then an early morning train to Helsinki; we have got visit from Seoul, Korea, and there is going to be talks about multiculturalism and comparative studies of games cultures. Please check out professor Sang-Min Whang’s public lecture, titled “Youth culture in online game worlds: Emergence of cyber lifestyles in Korean society”. Link: Games and Storytelling schedule page.

last.fm for games

Home, working on an article discussing the concept of digital culture, and listening on Last.fm. Typing “trip-hop” as the tag into the tune-in box, it can find me my daily doze of Portishead, Lamb, Goldfrapp and Radiohead. There are attempts to add more profiling and recommendation functionalities on the online services of Xbox Live, PS3, and I suppose that probably also Nintendo’s WiiConnect24 (or whatever it will be) will include something similar. But currently, it is up to searching blogosphere to find games you like. (Revisiting my old favourite Samorost, I also did find out all the other ‘Samorost-style’ games Blue Tea has been blogging about.)

power of narrative

march of penguinsthe winged migrationContinuing on the subject of DVD and broadening scope of media available in general, some days ago we watched two nature films after each one: La marche de l’empereur (March of the Penguins, 2005) and Le peuple migrateur (Winged Migration, 2001). Both are semi-documentary, French big-screen nature movies (a rather rare species, even with its own tradition, going back to the days of Jacques Cousteau). I liked both, but the Penguin one I truly enjoyed. There was several unforgettable scenes in the Winged Migration, conveying the sense of flying among birds better than anything before, but the March of Penguins was a coherent, powerful narrative. And in a linear, narrative media that truly appears to be an important part.

PS. Check out this year’s programme in Games and Storytelling (starting in Tuesday with Sandy Stone’s presentation); the theme this year is ‘multiculturalism.’

wine, games and some late night blogging

peyfaures l'alphaSome nice wine (L’alpha du Château Peyfaures, Bordeaux Supérieur Rouge 2002) and a dinner at home tonight. There has been also a board game evening over here, sampling some classics, ranging from the ancient African Kalaha to Blokus, a board game variant reminiscent of games in the Tetris family. Quite nice; even if I continue to have some issues with this WordPress install (it insists on making internal references of uploads into /blog directory, rather than /fransblog — an irritating configuration error that I am not able to track down right now.)