publications – Page 6 – frans goes blog

New publications online

Our university has officially adopted a parallel publishing policy, and I have already since the 1990s made draft versions/author’s versions of my published articles and book chapters available online in my home pages. I have today made again some updates, making available draft versions e.g. of these publications:

Mäyrä, Frans (2011) ”Games in the Mobile Internet: Towards Contextual Play”. In: Garry Crawford & Victoria Gosling & Ben Light (eds.), Online Gaming: Production, Play & Sociality. New York: Routledge.
Mäyrä, Frans (2011) “From the demonic tradition to art-evil in digital games: Monstrous pleasures in The Lord of the Rings Online”. In: Tanya Krzywinska, Esther MacCallum-Stewart & Justin Parsler (eds.), Ringbearers: The Lord of the Rings Online as Intertextual Narrative. Manchester University Press.
Mäyrä, Frans, Tanja Sihvonen, Janne Paavilainen, Hannamari Saarenpää, Annakaisa Kultima, Timo Nummenmaa, Jussi Kuittinen, Jaakko Stenros, Markus Montola, Jani Kinnunen & Antti Syvänen (2010) ”Monialainen pelitutkimus”. In: Sami Serola (ed.) Ote informaatiosta: johdatus informaatiotutkimukseen ja interaktiiviseen mediaan. Helsinki: BTJ Kustannus. 306-354.
Mäyrä, Frans & Lankoski, Petri (2009) “Play in a Hybrid Reality: Alternative Approaches into Game Design”. In: Adriana de Souza e Silva and Daniel Sutko (eds.), Digital Cityscapes: Merging Digital and Urban Playspaces. New York: Peter Lang Publishers.

Links to the freely downloadable PDF files are available via my Publications page.

Encyclopedia of Video Games

It looks like Amazon.com has now the publication date for the massive Encyclopedia of Video Games (~~volume one alone is~~ 740 pages – edit: I think I this must be the total length for both volumes, but I am not totally sure). This two-volume, initially hard-cover reference book is edited by Mark J.P. Wolf, and will hopefully serve students, scholars and general public alike in providing some essential frames of reference for discussions about games cultures and scholarship in the future. I have contributed five entries to this work: “Casual Games”, “DiGRA”, “Immersion”, “Mobile Games” and “RPG”. Now available for pre-order from here:

http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Video-Games-volumes-Technology/dp/031337936X

Research Methodology in Gaming, S&G

Our Simulation & Gaming special issue (a “symposium”) in research methodology is now out:

A new issue of Simulation & Gaming is available online:

Symposium: Research Methodology in Gaming:
1 June 2012; Vol. 43, No. 3

The below Table of Contents is available online at: http://sag.sagepub.com/content/vol43/issue3/?etoc

Guest Editorial

Research Methodology in Gaming: An Overview

Frans Mäyrä, Jussi Holopainen, and Mikael Jakobsson

Simulation Gaming 2012;43 295-299
http://sag.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/3/295

Symposium Articles

Social Constructionism and Ludology: Implications for the Study of Games

Markus Montola

Simulation Gaming 2012;43 300-320
http://sag.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/3/300

Social Interaction in Games: Measuring Physiological Linkage and Social Presence

Inger Ekman, Guillaume Chanel, Simo Järvelä, J.Matias Kivikangas, Mikko Salminen, and Niklas Ravaja

Simulation Gaming 2012;43 321-338
http://sag.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/3/321

Studying the Elusive Experience in Pervasive Games

Jaakko Stenros, Annika Waern, and Markus Montola

Simulation Gaming 2012;43 339-355
http://sag.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/3/339

Natural Language Processing in Game Studies Research: An Overview

José P. Zagal, Noriko Tomuro, and Andriy Shepitsen

Simulation Gaming 2012;43 356-373
http://sag.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/3/356

Players as Coresearchers: Expert Player Perspective as an Aid to Understanding Games

Kristine Jørgensen

Simulation Gaming 2012;43 374-390
http://sag.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/3/374

Design for Research Results: Experimental Prototyping and Play Testing

Mirjam P. Eladhari and Elina M. I. Ollila

Simulation Gaming 2012;43 391-412
http://sag.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/3/391

Rethinking Playing Research: DJ HERO and Methodological Observations in the Mix

Tero Karppi and Olli Sotamaa

Simulation Gaming 2012;43 413-429
http://sag.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/3/413

Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens

Spreading the word of a new book in the Approaches to Digital Game Studies series (I am at the editorial board):

Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens: The Digital Role-Playing Game

Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens is a collection of scholarly essays that seeks to represent the far-reaching scope and implications of digital role-playing games as both cultural and academic artifacts. As a genre, digital role playing games have undergone constant and radical revision, pushing not only multiple boundaries of game development, but also the playing strategies and experiences of players.

Divided into three distinct sections, this premiere volume captures the distinctiveness of different game types, the forms of play they engender and their social and cultural implications. Contributors examine a range of games, from classics like Final Fantasy to blockbusters like World of Warcraft to obscure genre bending titles like Lux Pain. Working from a broad range of disciplines such as ecocritism, rhetoric, performance, gender, and communication, these essays yield insights that enrich the field of game studies and further illuminate the cultural, psychological and philosophical implications of a society that increasingly produces, plays and discourses about role playing games.

More information: http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=159141&SearchType=Basic

Totoro

I watched My Neighbour Totoro today with my boys (all three of them, while the youngest had some troubles in concentrating, he is only 5 months old). I sometimes wonder how does it affect your imagination and perception of the world to have access to such nuanced, beautiful works of fantastic art from very early age. I was reading Famous FIve by Enid Blyton and then, at the age of seven, was watching Batman (the campy tv series) and Thunderbirds doll animations from Finnish, black-and-white television. No wonder I grew up to become a gadget geek.

I should write more of Hayao Miyazaki’s work some time. I mentioned it briefly in my 2009 talk, and the related short paper, Japanese Fantasy and the East-West Dialectic (2010), but watching how traces of Eastern Shintoism mix freely with the great tradition of fantastic imaginary and storytelling (elements folk tales, even Alices Adventures in Wonderland are evident in Totoro), there is so much more to be said.