That little speck in the middle is Lord British (Richard Garriott), a childhood hero. His perspective is interesting both historically and because of his later experiences in cross-cultural collaboration with NCsoft in Korea. It proved very soon difficult to serve both American and Asian sensibilities in one project, Tabula Rasa.
Category: game studies
anything games, games research related
gdc gameplay
Third day of GDC’06 and first moment I have a moment to sit down and relax a bit. First day I was on the Social Dimensions of gaming, the second on Curriculum. Tragic part in GDC is that there is always something seriously overlapping, and at least I seem to miss the essential sessions, they are already overbooked etc. So I hang around in a cafeteria, or end up listening some amusing and/or irrelevant programming session because it is the only one with any free seats. Meeting people is fun, though.
oranges of california
Fruit used to be one of the main incomes in Santa Clara Valley, before it became known as the Silicon Valley. Took a long walk along Guadalupe River today, trying to readjust myself to the climate and time difference before GDC starts. Lovely country.
international study of games cultures
I woke up in snowy Espoo today, feeling slightly gnomish. The Finnish Cultural Fund granted support to our new initiative, International Study of Games Cultures in their annual Gala yesterday. This work will start this summer, initially looking at similarities and differences between Finnish, Korean and American games cultures. Cool!
the hitchhiker's guide – with some pics
Best things are often simple. I’d say it’s worth checking out this classic text adventure; BBC offers a 20th anniversary edition to it with a new interface. Link: BBC – Radio 4 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – The Adventure Game
time for science, fiction?
I took two days of holiday this week, starting tomorrow. This is to do some work, as every day that I am at “work”, will be spent on meetings, seminars, teaching or various administrative tasks, which need to be done, but which I do not consider proper work, in that deeper, more qualitative sense of the word. So, I have to get some holidays to focus on the creative aspect of science and scholarship. Perverse? Maybe, yes.
There will be a session on the relationship between science and science fiction in our university’s science fair “Tieteen iltapäivä ja yö” this year that I will be hosting. We have three professors, from different backgrounds, and from different angles, discussing the role of creativity in their work, and how they perceive fictional speculation from their own position. That should be fun enough — there should be interesting examples and discussions coming up. I just spend some wishful minutes in updating my Amazon.com Wish List to include some novels and short story collections from Neal Asher, Charles Stross, Richard K. Morgan and Dan Simmons that I wish I would have some time to immerse with.
GDC 2006 is also coming up. There will be two tutorial days (seminars) where I will be participating as one of the speakers, but happy to be in a minor role in both of them: The Social Dimensions of Gaming (DiGRA & IGDA co-operation) is coordinated by T.L.Taylor, Bart Simon and friends and will “bring together expert social scientists doing research on game design, play and culture to work with designers in generating useful vocabularies for making sense of the social dimensions of digital games”. There. And then there is the Game Curriculum Workshop, coordinated by Katie Salen and Katherine Isbister, which “brings together some of the best and brightest developers, scholars, and students to take an in-depth look at game curricula — now, and in the future”. Welcome to drop in and participate, if your road takes you either to Tampere campus, or to San Jose this year.
pervasive england
Well after midnight yesterday I got back from last week’s IPerG pervasive games workshop in Nottingham. If you take a look at my Flickr photos, you see lots of swan, geese and other wildfowl, that I only afterwards realised are the prime candidates for getting a lethal bird flu these days. Well, the flu seems to be the same old I had even before the trip, or maybe you could mix them together, coming up with new viral combinations, then letting them fight it out in your own body? Oh, just another rather tired game idea…
tracy fullerton at games and storytelling
Tracy Fullerton was kind enough to swap sunny California for one week into arctic Tampere. She presented a lecture on her approach into experimental game design, and oversees a workshop. She is analytical with her concepts, but her real aim is to provoke or stimulate us to conceive games in new ways. A worthy goal.
dinner in helsinki
Jane McGonigal gave an interesting lecture on pervasive games and puppet mastering in Helsinki tonight. Afterwards, a dinner in “Marco Polo” (old Paasitorni). Fun! And food was nice, too.
game education, jane mcgonical
Today I was speaking of games literacy and game cultures for an audience of educators in “Media Education Fair” they organised in Tampere Finlayson area. Good discussions, it is just so frustrating to know how slowly we can see games entering the phase of more diverse content, and increased applicability in normal classroom situations, for example.
As an advance notice, please mark into your calendar Jane McGonigal’s talk, taking place in Helsinki (and Tampere via teleconference) next Tuesday. (See: News and Events at the University of Tampere, UTa.)
frans goes blog 
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