The Video Game Revolution: "Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked" by Henry Jenkins | PBS

Tired of facing the same old myths about games being the direct cause for real-world violence, about the antisocial nature of game playing, of digital games being a child’s plaything? Well, Henry Jenkins of all people must be, but still he continues to set things right. Please check out his column “Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked” in PBS.org.

MGS User Research - Downloadable Talks

For anyone interested in researching gameplay experience, there is much of interest in the download area of MS Game Studio's User Research.

the horde is evil?

Ted Castronova has an interesting post in Terra Nova, titled “The Horde Is Evil”. To summarise shortly, he claims that we cannot wipe out the age-old associations of evil imagery, and thereby to engage in World of Warcraft activities as an Orc or Undead character is not simply an aesthetic choice, but also an ethical one.

I have been doing my fair deal of study of the evil and the demonic imagery (see Demon 2005), and basically I agree with Ted: to adopt some of the clearly ‘chthonic’ (underworld) imagery in a game does mean getting involved with the antisocial or ethical associations these traditions carry with them. The age-old stories, our mythical heritage, is crafted from a human perspective, and creatures who kill, mangle and eat human flesh are the traditional opponents of everything hold as good, acceptable, or indeed, human.

But engaging with stories of evil, or with fantastic game worlds with evil characters, is not the same thing, as exploring such evil in one’s own life. We know the difference, and even if engagements with fictional “evils” become more and more complex as the realities we inhabit become multiple and their ‘reality-values’ relative rather than absolute, we just need to learn how to negotiate the consequences of one’s in-game choices, as much as we need to recognize different contexts of life in other daily arenas. And I know that becoming a Horde or Alliance character is currently by no means a neutral choice for many people: some dislike the other alternative for clear, ethical-aesthetic reasons. (In D&D, these choices in character selection were related to two axis, the good-evil [altruistic-sadistic], and lawful-chaotic [systematic/orderly-hedonistic/associative] ones. The Horde-Alliance dichotomy seems to be carrying the echoes of both axis.)

puzzle ball game

puzzle ball game
Originally uploaded by Frans Mäyrä.

Ravensburger has created this transgressive concept: puzzle ball of the globe. If puzzle is no game (Crawford), then at least you can use it, ball game, puzzle and some education, all wrapped in one.

new year’s backup promises

You might as well start making the new year’s promises already. Since my server started losing connection to the main disk drive, I have got some creeps. All electronics will fail, sooner or later, and always in a bad day. So, why not promising to better your ways, and regularly back up your data? Finally today I got around to getting a USB 2.0 disk drive (‘Fujitsu-Siemens Storagebird XL’, a 250 GB model with a funny name). Now, Windows XP contains a backup utility (‘Backup’, ditto), the only trick is to get it automatically do the thing. You can take a look at how this is made in this article at the Microsoft site. The test run seemed to go fine, but the real test involves being able to recover some of that data too, I guess...

[Edit: Of course it did not work without some trouble. This time, the Windows Scheduler encountered the notorious 'keyset does not exist' error. Or, the scheduled backups just quietly did not happen. Luckily, at least the scheduler keyset issue can be fixed, see this link: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_21317289.html]

a gift (Switched On Santa)

Here is a little gift to all of you geeks wondering what to do with this Xmas thing, anyways: FaLaLaLaLa - Switched On Santa by Sy Mann (the entire vinyl album & artwork in c. 45Mb zip download).

happy holidays

Moderately Technological, (Al)Mostly Human, and Appropriately Fantastic Christmas for Everyone! 

wow group101

Interested in the gameplay strategy issues, I came across this flash "101" strategy guide into WoW group dynamics. Any other interesting ones out there?

fantasy season in WoW?

Now, during the Christmas period, there is of course an excellent opportunity to open that thick fantasy novel, and spend relaxing evenings, long into the night, immersed in an adventure. Or, then you can also spend also those precious moments by grinding in WoW. This night was actually rather fun, thanks to Aludra and Siedga who helped my poor old Dur Ût-Thure to get along in the hard road of saintly paladinhood. And the full moon is always perfect in the virtual world. I wonder how those weather effects will change the situation in the extension release? In any case, it will be a hard choice: an entertaining book, or entertaining adventure with your friends are both good ways to spend your holidays, even if very different ones. 

microsoft's vision of the future

On the BBC's Click Online site, you can find this fun snippet on Microsoft's vision of the future. Some of these concepts actually sound useful ("Whereabouts Clock", your basic social context awareness tool), but some are just plain silly. Interactive bowl?

graduation party

graduation party
Originally uploaded by Frans Mäyrä.

Once more: a great party. Tonight the University of Tampere celebrates its graduates. Evening in the great hall now has a distinctive feeling of a family event, academia opening its doors once for families and the surrounding society in general. Congratulations, Laura!

player-centred game design (pcd.. pcgd?)

I noticed T.L.Taylor posted this note about Olli Sotamaa's and our team's paper in DAC into Terra Nova (her last there, btw, pity), and discussed player-centred game design also more generally. There appears to be several interesting developments in this area, both in research world, and within the industry, but we also have to remember what are the realities particularly of the smaller studios and focus on how to make the player-centric processes also more designer-friendly. But I am a firm believer in PCD philosophy: only by hearing real people out there (rather than only following our own tastes and instincts) can we see the culture of gaming facing some real fundamental changes.

w-zero3 or communicator?

Gizmodo ran a short story about this new smartphone, nicely named W-Zero3, which appears (with its large screen, full qwerty keyboard, 1.3 megapixel camera - plus Wi-Fi, bluetooth and all the other usual communications stuff - as a worthy competitor for the Nokia Communicator line. Only question: will it come to Europe (and will I get mine with a Finnish keyboard). Make a guess...

mobile games' challenges

mobile games' challenges
Originally uploaded by Frans Mäyrä.

Every games market has its challenges, but making downloadable games succeed in those thousands of versions you need to produce from every single title aimed for today's fragmented global phone and operator market is perhaps even more challenging than some. Jami Laes from Sumea/Digital Chocolate spoke today in G&S series, emphasizing that mobile is its own medium. Design needs to understand 'casual' as easy approachability for any phone user, mobile as the "social computer".

portti sf prize

portti sf prize
Originally uploaded by Frans Mäyrä.

Tonight another party (guess it is the season), the evening of Portti SF prize, the best science fiction short story of the year. Jenny Kangasvuo, the winner, celebrates tonight after several years in second or other places. Fantasy story finally convinced us in the jury this year. A fine, ambiguous reworking of the ancient Seal Woman tale. Congratulations!

context/presence in mobile

The geek site Gizmodo ran this Airtime story on presence applications in mobile phones. Worth checking out also if you are interested in location-aware / pervasive games, like some.

demographies of the "active gamer"

If you are interested in the recent news on how the gamer demographies are widening, and mobile games playing gradually becoming more common, take a look at this BusinessWeek story of couple Nielsen Entertainment reports.

tv trip, thunderbird config

Another night in a hotel. At some point it was actually fun to be in a (relatively) clean room, where someone else takes care of your laundry. But the anonymity and rootlessness finally gets you. I am supposed to talk about games and simulation in national television (MTV3 morning show) tomorrow, and for those five minutes it was necessary to make two two-hour train trips, and spend a night in a hotel. (Added irony, BBC World show ‘Business Traveller’ just displays images captured from Rovaniemi, my old home town at the Arctic Circle. Things and people displaced, in a complex dance of matter and some mind.)

I am currently trying out Mozilla Thunderbird as the default email program at my work laptop. After years of working with MS Outlook, the simple act of transferring my contacts, mails and filtering rules into this other program is not so simple. Thunderbird crashed almost at the very start. After sacrificing perhaps 95 % of my correspondence archives (I still count on having a backup copy at my home PC), I got this Mozilla thing running. It has its benefits, I admit: it is not as heavy as that enourmous bloatware of Outlook, and it mostly does well those things you expect from a mail program. But there are some stupidities, too. Everyone with a laptop inevitably will also have to use several outgoing mail servers (SMTP). There appears to be no drop-down menu in the compose new message window that would allow you to select among those you have; there is only the tortuous process of going into the advanced mail account settings - and you have to do this every time you move from context to another! I am currently looking into Thunderbird add-ons (extensions), whether someone in this happy family of open-source software would have come up with a solution to this issue. But during the Tampere-Pasila train travel, Thunderbird was having numerous hiccups (endlessly trying to copy all sent messages into ‘Sent’ folder, without success, perhaps because of the breaky GPRS connection, even if it should be able to work off-line perfectly - and I even do not want to have outgoing messages copied into the Sent folder: I want them in those project folders I originally started to write that reply message!)

This is perhaps again one of those boring techno-rambles, sorry; but for a person whose work is extremely dependent on online tools, and email most of all, the decision over the email program is something that will have a major impact later on.

birthdays, parties

Yesterday, I escaped for a moment, skipping the second day of Kulttuurintutkimuksen Päivät, and took a train to Jyväskylä. Kanerva had a great party, fine gifted people with impressive music and theatre -- million thanks! There are far too seldom moments that are just dedicated to being together, and enjoying life. If you have some opportunity, anything, to throw a party, to yourselves, family, friends: grasp it! 

wi-fi ixus and communicator for the road?

Now this would be a nice combo for mobile blogging and other on-the-road work: the forthcoming Nokia 9300i Communicator has built-in Wi-Fi, and so has Canon Ixus. Together it should be a travelling dream combo, one with nice full keyboard, broad range of functionalities, good picture quality, and strong communication capabilities. But then again, the cost is rather steep: both of them together would make more than 1000 euros, oh dear...

Another dream: to have smart web service platform that could actually be relied to keep e.g. the links working, or removing them if needed. Just spent a couple of hours in fixing some obvious mistakes in the links of these 160+ blog notes.

rules of irrelevance

rules of irrelevance
Originally uploaded by Frans Mäyrä.

The last conference of this week (I hope), the bi-annual meeting of cultural studies in Finland takes place today and tomorrow in the University of Tampere. Aki Järvinen gave an interesting Goffman-inspired talk exploring the concept of 'context' from within the framework of his thesis-in-progress. Listening, it occurred to me that we need a theory of insignification, as much, or more, than we need signification theories. Among infinite polysemy, you need to know where not to watch.

pot of honey?

pot of honey?
Originally uploaded by Frans Mäyrä.

Lagavulin is one hard whisky to find, for some reason. Similarly, it appears that a mobile data application that actually works is a rare beast indeed. This is sent with a Nokia 6600 cameraphone with its internal email client, via Saunalahti (operator), into Flickr mail-to-blog service, which automatically posts it into Blogger, which uploads these pages into my personal server via SFTP. Still cannot really believe the damned thing works...

home again

Today is 6th of December, Day of Independence and public holiday in Finland. It feels really good just to be home, see the snow-covered landscape. We even have a small christmas tree already. There are also some pictures from the IPerG Commission review in Bonn, and DAC 2005 in Copenhagen that are now online.

documented life

This is sort of characteristically 'post'-style game, taking photo of a photo, documenting someone documenting themselves. Sitting here, listening to Jill Walker talking about digital photographs, and about portraying oneself with modern technology. Of course, a blog is a way of self-representation, too, but also a way of documenting the life, and world. It is sort of easy see this a a gratuitous and endless self-reference, but there are alternative traditions of perceiving these practices of reflection. And that is all the talk is all about, of course.

stopping for a moment in dac

Another busy travel week: trains, airports, cars. Lecture halls, computers, sudden flash of blue sky and then again, underground. Sounds of trains, receding.

Some thoughts were passing by, around mid-week. Now there is flu, ache in joints. Articulations never really fully meeting with their function.

Digital Arts and Culture 2005 conference in Copenhagen has its own wiki, it is interesting to sit here in this event, and see it being adapted (translated) into words and images, collectively, as moments pass.

Very fitting to the themes of the conference, digital aesthetics, experience, design and practice. But I found myself thinking about how this kind of developments will lead into increasing multitasking. Already, many are reading their emails in meetings rather than sharing the same thought-space (even if nominally the physical space). But I am also hopeful, paradoxically, as people not interacting with each other in face-to-face level might actually learn about something about each other in these alternative layers of (non-)presence with these familiar strangers. After all, blogging or making wiki notes during an event might create a larger collaborative space, make some links between interests, ideas, individuals and institutions more visible than would otherwise be likely. Or not?