site re-design soon

Okay, I'm back home from my Grand European Thesis Finishing Tour. It was great while it lasted, but tomorrow the real job awaits, and the thesis fades to the background, once again.

I realise that I must keep working on the thesis on the side, especially now that it has gathered momentum and so much stuff really should be polished enough. Otherwise years will pass, again. I was really puzzled to realise that some of the stuff I was going through I had already written like in 2003 and 2004, which seems ages ago. If I don't put this stuff out now, it will be 2008 before I do.

So, I have decided to give the site a proper re-design to coincide with posting the thesis chapters, and hopefully, some analysis tools to go with them. I hope to publish the re-design no later than next weekend. The most cumbersome part is updating this blogging software, which I'm not so much into, I mean the technical part...but then again, I should update that side also.

I'll also put some pictures of my travels up soon.

shadow GDC at Angouleme

So us two GDC-leftouts, me and Frasca-sama, are having a shadow conference over here. It basically involves my short talk about the GameGame at the local design school and some lazy whining about the game industry and research over local wine and duck feasts :)

There already was a number called 'Gonzalo Does Cheese' to kick the conference off. Before that, I actually had some thesis progress on the train. The introductory chapters are almost done!

goodbye Riga

The two weeks are up, and even though it's been good times, definitely, I haven't quite been able to progress to the point of posting the PDFs. It mostly has to do with having to update references and all that tedious, miniscule stuff that always amounts to more than one expects. I've also given the table of contents, i.e. structure another treatment on a moment of revelation ;)

I've pretty much covered the whole work, notwithstanding my case studies, but they are meant to present the application of 'rapid analysis methods', a term I coined while over here. As a whole, I'm calling my ludological/design research approach and attitude as 'Applied Ludology'.

What that actually means, you readers will have wait to get a taste later. Depending on how I am able to go online in France, there might just be something towards the end of the week. On Sunday I'm heading back home anyway, so expect something early next week at the latest.

Riga rules, I'll be back!

slow progress

Ah, there is progress but it is frustratingly slow. When all things connect to each other the whole is like a Rubik's cube that you rotate into all kinds of configurations, back and forth. I'm starting to near the 'what the hell' point when small errors and inconsistencies that you know are there you just don't find the energy to attend to.

Anyway, I hope to post chapters before next wednesday when I leave Riga for a visit to France to say hello to my friend, ludologist extraordinaire Frasca-Sama!

post-it puzzle

Believe it or not, the image below has been the result of my work during the last couple of days. I've been re-reading Marcel Danesi's Puzzle Instinct on the side, so I thought I'd present it as a sort of a puzzle. If anyone can guess what this pop-up image is about, I'll buy you a beer at a conference or something :)

Aki's post-it puzzle

There is additional difficulty due to my sketchy hand-writing. The name of the image file gives a hint, though.

Table of contents updated

As I grind, chapter by chapter, towards the end, I finally got around to updating the table of contents on the site. (The last one was probably from 2004, or something.) See its own section from the menu on the right. A couple out of those 20 chapters might just appear on the site in the coming week.

Genre issues

Today I've been working with a genre chapter that originates from somewhere in 2004. I try to incorporate it to my theory of game elements, which is the card house of my thesis - i.e. if it falls, everything else falls...

All in all, the genre stuff is not that big of a headache. It is adaptable to the overall theory all right, but then I have these analysis tools with which you can store analysis of the core mechanics of individual games (and a bit more) and then sort a sample of games to see which kind of family resemblances there are, mechanics-wise. The problem is that the tools are Excel files, and they would be so much more useful and attractive as online applications...but I do not really know how to turn them into such. Probably would need some database stuff or something else I know nothing about. Well, the worst scenario is that my thesis includes appendixes as Excel files. Maybe I can live with that.

Tomorrow it's a return to the game mechanics chapter, originating from late 2003. God damn the years seem to go by. Expect a post later, now I'll head for a Korean restaurant here at Old Riga.

setting up study

All right, I've landed at Riga, Latvia, for two weeks. I will spend the time to squeeze the thesis manuscript to the finishing line. Expect more blogging, and a 'chapters as PDFs extravaganza'!

I took some friends, other than those of Animal Crossing: WW, with me to guard the progress, as you can see :)