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The new site design is up & running! In case your bookmark includes the 'index.html', please remove it - or replace with 'index.php' - and you should be able to access the new, Wordpress-powered site.

last entry

This will most probably be the last entry for this version of the blog. It has been running for almost three years, so an update is in order. I've been trying to find a suitable design from ready-made themes for Wordpress, but there does not really seem to be an optimal one out there...besides, WP is php-based, and I have no skills whatsoever in it. I've been trying to customize a couple of themes but I always manage to break the layout :(

Now I'm becoming totally frustrated and decided to settle for a proven, rather minimalistic layout. So, Games without Frontiers: The Thesis Edition, should be out in the next few days.

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 :)

GameGame 2.0 Released

My study leave kicks off with new version of the GameGame. Please visit the site for more info.

study leave around the corner

It's getting real. From next Monday, I'll be spending five weeks on a study leave. My goal is to produce a complete draft of the thesis manuscript. Realistically the ideal time span for the job would be approx 8 weeks, I guess, but I'll try to squeeze it in five.

In any case, I will blog away as I grind towards the goal. The countdown starts next week, so a bigger update is due then. Meanwhile I can also promise that GameGame 2.0 will be out next week!

New Year, Study leave

As the year draws to close it's another 360 days with no completion of the thesis. But there is a definite new hope, as I've secured a 5 week study leave period during February/March :) I've made an estimation that realistically I would need 8 weeks to complete the first manuscript, but now I'm trying to crunch it in 5. It's possible, if I plan ahead and spend a couple of weekends with the work beforehand.

I'm planning to leave Finland for the final crunch in early March, but don't quite know yet where. Wherever it will be, I will blog the final days like there would be no tomorrow - and metaphorically speaking, at least in the context of this blog and its original purpose, there actually isn't ;) In any case, the idea is to blog each day what I've accomplished, and actually publish the often-promised PDFs of each chapter as I grind through them.

So, with high expectations for 2006 in mind, I wish happy New Year to everybody!

GUTRPG

Work has once again taken over - only some very small progress regarding GameGame version 1.1 and vague dreams of the study leave looming in the future.

Meanwhile, do check out Markus Montola's research plan for the Grand Universal Theory of Role-Playing Games - my words, not his ;)

There just might be and end

...to the thesis. I've just secured a month of study leave early next year! I get a new boss for the start of the year, so once he's gotten into gear, I've been promised a month's leave period for finishing the thesis manuscript. So March might just be a valid deadline.

On other matters, the enthusiastic reception to GameGame has given me new energy. I'm planning some new stuff for the GG site - so stay tuned!

GameGame 1.0, finally

I finally managed to squeeze the PDFs together. Check out the GameGame blog for the files!

Back to normal

Oh well, the holiday is just a faint memory now. I've been back to work for 2 weeks, and it's busy as hell with planning, budgeting, etc for 2006. On top of that my boss is on leave, and I'm substituting for him, so in practice I've got two jobs...Which means no thesis progress.

It seems that each time I get a chance to work on it, I end with the same estimate: 'It would take me a month's work to finish the manuscript'. It's not really that I'm lousy at making estimates, but rather that each session with the Ph.D. makes you realize that different small subchapters and tasks (case analysis etc.) need still to be done...In summary, a dedicated man-month of work and it's done ;)

When I get a chance for that is a completely different matter :/

I've also let down people who have been asking for the GameGame version 1.0. I try to do something about it during the next two weeks.

from work to holiday

I'm having three weeks of summer holiday starting next week :) Since getting back to work from DiGRA 2005, I've been working on the thesis. It's been my first proper chance (notwithstanding the GameGame stuff) in more than six months.

So what is it that I've been doing? I've rewritten the genre chapter, refined my mechanics library, and wrestled with the structure of chapters dedicated to the study of games and emotions. I'm trying to finish the latter, which has grown into three chapters, by the end of the week. I've promised to post PDFs so many times already, so I should know better and not promise anything, but who knows...

I did not get into the stuff on game rhetoric yet, but I hope to take some notes during the holidays while playing games - that's something that will happen anyway :) I also made some sort of a breakthrough concerning an analysis method I've been working on, so playing games will also probably mean that the method will be put into practice. The case study section needs work anyway. It just might be that the 2nd draft of the thesis is ready by the end of September!

Also, my to do list includes GameGame release 1.0 before the end of July.

GameGame gets its own home

Well, it seems that the DiGRA visit has done millions to my motivation and inspiration - more posts in a week than in the previous six months.

Now I've even gone and put out another blog dedicated to the GameGame. It is also supposed to function as a hub for my other, future game design projects. Check it out:

GameGame: Ludology meets Understanding Comics

Intro to Game Dev out

Btw, the book Introduction to Game Development, edited by Steve Rabin, is out. With my colleague Jussi Holopainen from Nokia we contributed a chapter on ludology, titled 'Ludology for Game Developers: an Academic Perspective'. Rather than defining ludology in opposition to narratology, we defined it as a holistic attitude to game analysis and design.

Check the book out on the publisher's site, or order from Amazon.com:
Introduction to Game Development @ Charles River Media
Introduction to Game Development @ Amazon.com

DiGRA impressions

Yep, back home. The conference was pretty ok. Personally it was a success, with our design & theory symposium drawing probably the biggest crowd outside keynote lectures & other plenary events. My own talk on the Gamegame was also received very well, so I'm quite pleased that people are generally finding it an interesting and inspiring concept. Card & Manual PDF will follow during July.

I did miss out on several papers I would've liked to have heard (e.g., Costikyan) due to my programme engagements...I was a bit depressed about the 'we've finally banished formalism' attitude especially present in the final plenary event, where speaker after speaker everyone implicated that other perspectives imply progress, and therefore formalism is somehow derogatory. Well, is 'formalism' a monolith, and what is it, actually? I for one believe that there exists semi-formalism in game studies at best, and demonizing it only results in unproductive, introvert academic circles. It will be interesting to see come DiGRA 2007 where the so-called progress has lead us. (Yeah I know I should add the comment function.)

Other fragmentary notes: For the first time, I actually found a Janet Murray talk interesting. Everybody was talking about World of Warcraft, which I just don't get but I'm weird that way. Too much MMOG talk anyway me thinks. The international symposium was ok but lacked direction - I felt a bit of an outsider anyway being the only non-academic representative. The multidisciplinary symposium was entertaining but did not seem that multidisciplinary in the end. The IGDA panel with industry representatives was depressing. It was so predictable. One of them tried, at least. Regarding the unofficial conference activities, partying seemed relatively modest. I was a bit tired, though, and not at my best at mingling, but still the company was as good as usual.

Our five day post-digra holiday with Satu was great. Vancouver turned out to be so much more after we left the conference hotel and downtown business district behind. Stanley Park, West End, English Bay, Grouse Mountain, excellent :)

DiGRA bound

Ok, so it's almost time for some international globetrotting. I'm looking forward to the event - a huge amount of interesting work on display - and also a break from work. The 5 days we'll be spending at Vancouver after the event will certainly be something of a relaxation period.

Three sessions for me at DiGRA:

- Fri 17 1.45->: International symposium
- Sat 18 10 am: Bridging Theory & Design symposium
- Sun 19 1:45 pm: Short paper on Gamegame

I'm under pressure to produce a PDF with the Gamegame cards & rule maunal before leaving on Tue 14th, but we'll see if I'm up to it. In any case, I suggest anyone interested in the game & my thesis come and bugger me about them, so maybe the pressure will build up and I will get things done, eventually.

See ya soon, folks :)

bad me

I just haven't gotten around posting entries, shame on me. To be honest, there has not been much progress, thesis-wise. 'Real' work has eaten up all my time. I'm hoping to take 3-4 weeks of study leave at the end of summer to finish the manuscript. I just gotta do it during this year.

There has been progress, though, with the Gamegame! Which makes it all the more tragic that I haven't documented the play-test experiences and consequent design iterations - I have documented them elsewhere so I should just move them here...soon, hopefully.

DiGRA & Vancouver

Btw, I have at least three engagements at the June conference: my own short paper about the Game Game, a roundtable about Game Design Research, and another roundtable where I represent Finnish game studies among an international selection of people. Cool :)

See you there!

Games & Storytelling

This week has been spent designing games in the Games and Storytelling workshop in the Game Research Lab in Tampere. Katie Salen is tutoring us, and there is a nice bunch of enthusiastic and smart people present. More on the Game Game section later!

Happy Holidays :)

Phew. Another year has passed and I haven't stll completed my thesis. It's kinda grim, but hopefully things will work out come spring.

Still, at least the Game Game is in progress. Check out the first actual entry!

Merry Xmas & New Year to all my fellow game researchers & designers - I hope to see you guys next year!

breaking the making

I've removed the old PDF version of my rule typology paper, 'Making and Breaking Games', as it has become rather dated. It will re-emerge, when I will post the final draft of my thesis next year. When, i hear you ask?

When it's done ;)

Game Game is beginning to emerge..!

Finally, I've managed to do something about the Game Game case study. See its own section! Note also the link on the right column for future reference :)

Emotion-centred analysis & design

I have an opportunity to test my game-related emotion/mood typology on Thursday in a workshop. We'll see what happens, I hope to report later!

The Digra CFP deadline is approaching, Ive noted. It presents me with an opportunity to finally get myself to take care of another thing on the to do list, namely the design diary of 'The Game Game'. Hopefully opening via a link on this site soon!

Besides thinking of sending a contribution of my own to the Vancouver review process, we hope to build on the Game Design Research Symposium back in May with a roundtable proposal on the subject .

stabilizing

I guess things are starting to normalize - projects are starting to roll, the new home is emerging from piles and piles of things, and I've managed to write a draft of the second intro to the thesis. This one is more formal in nature with all the 'contextualizing into game studies' stuff plus a chapter-by-chapter introduction to topics. It'll be discussed in my post-grad seminar the coming Thursday.

In the middle of all the hussle, I did give a visiting lecture over at University of Turku (well, actually a unit located in Pori) last week, which was beneficial for the thesis as it more or less forced me to speak my theory of game elements out loud after a while. Inspiring!

moving

I've been quiet lately due to work on a project we're starting at work. On top of that, on the side of my private life, we're moving into a new apartment tomorrow - so things have been quite hectic with all the packing and other practical stuff.

No time for the thesis, really. I hope the situation will normalise in the next couple of weeks and I'll be able to start the Game Game section, put some PDFs up, etc. etc.

100th entry

Completely by accident, I noticed that this will be the blog's 100th entry! Henshin a go-go, baby!

In between not having time to dedicate for the thesis due to being overrun by 'proper' work tasks, I did stumble upon quite a furious flame war about the ancient narratology vs. ludology debate. It's going on across ludology.org, the Ludologist, etc. ...I am a bit dumb-struck by it. I find it puzzling that it is still alive and breathing. Well, it seems that the delayed arrival of First Person from MIT Press fuelled it.

Which reminds me that my Rules of Play review for Game Studies was proofed the other day and it should be published in a couple of weeks, hopefully. I wonder what it fuels!

back at it...sorta

Yep, been back from holiday for a full working week now...but haven't had time to even take a glance at the thesis. But my summer vacation was super :)

The irony is that I carried a whole bunch of research literature and printed the 1st draft with me to the holidays...but did not even touch them. I believe that is actually what holiday is supposed to be like ;)

I hope to clear out most of the 'proper work' in a week or so and get back to the draft. It would also mean that I put up the design diary for The Game Game, and - finally - also put some papers up for grabs!

I request patience, my readers. It's only a question of time ;)

crunch time!

A week left before my holidays, and there is a kind of 1st draft in the works...it has depressingly many blank spots, though. But I've made some progress with the game mechanics case study. The chapter on emotions is a complete mess, I'm afraid: too many references to be read and synthesized into something sensible -- that is my main goal for the remaining few days.

Then again, Game game is shaping up ok even though the documentation tends to lack behind. In any case, I'll hope to do some playtesting during the holidays and perhaps even manage to get the dedicated section up on the site.

It'll probably be August until my next entry. Take care, folks :)

Game Game - believe the hype!

After GDC I mentioned in an entry about a fantastic idea that I got on the plane from San Jose to Chicago. Well, I've been working on it for some time now, and here's some info:

--
Theory as Design: The Game Game

The ’Game Game’ is a card game that aims to illustrate aspects of my overall theory. It is about building up a game from the different elements that are defined in the chapter ’Theory of Game Elements’ and a case study about game mechanics, i.e. my 'Game mechanics library'. I also try to incorporate my discussion of game-related emotions in the form of emotion cards that are used in focusing the aesthetic goal of the design.

The objective of the game is to collect cards which make up a design for a game. There are mandatory cards that each design should have, and extra cards that the player may use to make his/her design more effective and sophisticated. Different cards and their combinations give points, and the after three rounds – ‘milestones’ – the player with most points is the winner. During the milestone phase, the players pitch their game ideas to the player who holds the publisher card in the hope of getting extra budget as a reward.
---

So, it's a bit like Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, as Eric Zimmerman was kind enough to point out to me ;) (Strangely I hadn't thought about it before...)

The design is a bit complex at the moment, but I hope some more simulating and actual playtesting (soon, friends beware!) will iron it out. I don't have any illusions about the game itself turning out brillianly innovative or anything, but naturally I hope to be able to balance and tune it out to be as enjoyable as possible - and perhaps inspiring, even.

I plan to open up a new section on the site in late summer. It will be dedicated to the Game Game in the form of a design diary. I also hope to put out the cards and rules as a PDF so that perhaps some crazy enough reader may try it out...and in the best possible case, I might get some feedback, too!

Work estimation

I've just made an estimation of how many full work days it would take me to finish the first draft of the thesis: around 55. I've got some 21 days left until the holidays, so the result of the equation is obvious.

I do hope to finish the theory parts before my summer holiday. I know I shouldn't say this, but most likely I'll be doing some work on the case studies during the holidays...but hey, its just gaming ;)

Anyways, I've scheduled the remaining stuff to the time period between end of August and beginning of September. Realistically speaking, end of September might be it!

the deadline is looming, again

I've shifted my first draft deadline for two times now, and the current one is little more than a month away. Scary. I should have most of the coming month and a half to dedicate for the thesis, but it will be one serious crunch if I'll make it. And, living in icy Finland, there's also the paradox of summer - any other season is so cold that its quite crazy having the most intense work period during the warm and sunny times. Actually, Finns really should spend their holidays during the winter when there is so much less light of day, and energy, subsequently - but no one wants to do that, myself included! Besides, my holiday is only the second full-time, paid holiday of my working life, so I'm really happy to have it...

Then there's another game-related issue hindering working this month - the European football (I refuse to use the ridiculous term 'soccer') championships. Screw the deadline - I will watch every single match. Forza Azzurri!

GDRS impressions

Jesper the Ludologist has posted his impressions on our GDRS event. Quite accurate ones, I would say!

I'm working on the pleasure types Jesper mentions at the moment, basically introducing subtypes and making some revisions with the help of theories about emotions' cognitive structures...I hope to post a bunch of my chapter drafts, including this one, during June/July.

Game Design Research Symposium - brief afterthoughts

Last week disappeared somewhere, and this one is a broken one as well...but our GDRS a week back in Copenhagen was basically a success. Sure, there's room for improvement, but generally we had an ideal bunch of about thirty inspired participants. Many good discussions, and I believe the first steps into defining 'design research' and its boundaries, especially in relation to games were taken. A selection of the papers will appear in a Game Studies issue later this year, so stay tuned for that. There is also a book project in the works.

Many ideas and suggestions for a follow-up event emerged, so I guess us organizers are trying to come up with a sequel within a year's time. From my part, thanks to everyone participating, and also to my fellow organizers!

off to Copenhagen

Later today, I'll hop to Copenhagen for our Game Design Research Symposium and Workshop. It should be good with lots of cool colleagues and friends! I'll post a recap next week.

Games & chance

I was lecturing about the element of chance in games at the local University of Art & Design last Friday. Here are the slides (PDF).

running around

I'm in the middle of a totally mad week, work-wise. I have a projet plan to finish and I'm running around town (and the country) in meetings and seminars...

In the morning, I managed to send a paper on game rhetoric for my post-grad seminar (two days late, totally unfinished). Yesterday I wrote a review of a master's thesis for new media at the University of Art & Design, and today I was present in its presentation. It was nice, and the thesis, focusing on board game design, was very good. I'll return to UIAH on Friday, when I have a lecture on games and chance. Tomorrow it's Tampere and the post-grad seminar.

It's of course all fun and about games...but a bit stressful at the moment =/

GDC in review

I decided to write a separate account of my trip to GDC. You can read it here. Some photos included!

... and back

... a day later than planned. I missed a connecting flight in Chicago due to delays, and ended up having to spend a night there. Now I'm back home, exhausted but happy.

GDC was excellent. Game Tuning Workshop totally rules. I'll post pics and my take on the event later this week. (Actually I began writing an entry while I was there, but then Gonzalo's laptop ran out of battery power...)

Anyways, a quick hi to all the great folks I was hanging out there with! Keep it real!

Going DC

All right, it's been a stressful week to say the least, with a crunch of getting things done before leaving for the Game Developers Conference. At the moment, all should be done and I'm packing. *phew* My flight for San Jose leaves early Sunday morning - we'll see if I get any sleep... I'll be back with some impressions, beginning of April!

Keep the memory alive

I beg you to check out the Madrid game the Newsgaming.com folks did. It's beautiful.

the deadline comes and goes

I've been co-organising a Game Design Research Symposium and Workshop with some good folks. It will be taking place in Copenhagen in early May.

What else is up, I hear? Well, I finished the Rules of Play review, gave a short lecture on game rhetoric, been sketching theories about that and different forms of pleasures games afford...the next couple of weeks before GDC are going to be incredibly busy planning a research project at work, and reviewing submissions for the Copenhagen workshop.

Oh, the thesis deadline. I should change it. June, before my summer holidays, is realistic...just maybe.

reviewing

My week of recording game play sequences is over - some 12 hrs of footage in the bag - and I'm in the process of writing a review for Game Studies on Salen & Zimmerman's Rules of Play. I won't kiss and tell - you'll have to wait for my humble verdict when it is published some time during the spring.

Silence - recording in progress!

Check out the Gaming diary section - that's what's happening at the moment!

getting things done

I've managed to cover about half of the to do list below. My apologies for not putting the Copenhagen lecture online, that is due to difficulties in making a pdf out of it - powerpoint/distiller crashes in the process. I guess I should reformat the figures somehow, or something.

Anyway, the genre paper is under scrutiny at my post-grad seminar on Thursday. I hesitate to put the mechanics paper up, as I haven't had time to revise the draft from last August...oh well. Asap.

P.S. Congrats to Dr. Juul for a successful defense! :D

To Do

Damn, it's hard to get back to work after the holiday period. Besides plenty of project-related work stuff, my thesis-related 'to do' goes as follows:

- an English translation of a 'Online games 101' article I wrote last spring

- a revised version of the Vice City article due to Matteo Bittanti for translation into Italian (cool!)

- a review of Salen's & Zimmerman's Rules of Play for Game Studies

- post game mechanics paper online

- post Copenhagen lecture material online

- finish first draft of game genre paper (due 19th Jan)

*phew* Let's get to it, then.

it's the holidays

I guess nobody is even checking back to the site, but the promised papers and presentations have been run over by some serious holidaying... and it goes on for a while, as I'm about to spend the New Year over at Oxford, UK, visiting friends. I'll be back, papers and all, in 2004!

back home

Back from Copenhagen, with x number of deadlines on my shoulders... Anyway, warm thanks for the discussions and partying, guys! It was good fun, and I felt that the discussion my lecture inspired was very worthwhile to all parties concerned. I'll be back there in May at the latest, co-organising a symposium on game design research - expect to find more information about that on the site, the gamesnetwork list, etc., in a few days!

game mechanics (& genres)

I've prepared my presentation for Copenhagen, but the truth is that I have material enough for two presentations. I'm afraid I won't have time to go to the genre issue properly... Oh well, I'm just happy to have the opportunity to visit and meet folks studying games. Lift-off!

Copenhagen calling

Falling down with a flu has made my calendar even more packed. In a couple of days, I'm off to give a visiting lecture in Copenhagen, hosted by the fine folks over there... I'll post some impressions next week!

Adios to the rule paper

I'll be pulling the rule paper off the site in the coming weeks. It is becoming dated as my theories evolve, and also because a compact version has been published in the LEVEL UP proceedings. However, as a Christmas present to my readers, there will be the long-awaited paper on game mechanics up before xmas.

toc updated

I finally got round to update my table of contents! It's been revised quite a bit, and I bet the structure will change at least slightly, but I'm pretty well set for following this one. The subtitle has changed a zillion times, and so it did again.

Still, I don't want to give too much away, so I'm keeping the case study games under wraps for now. You'll get hints by reading the gaming diary ... ;)

MMG or MM

Go and read Greg Costikyan's rant on why MMGs are games, or at least they should be - it makes a lot of sense.

game on workshop

Quick piece of info for my Finnish audience: Game on -luennon materiaalit, olkaa hyvä!

LEVEL Up critique

Positive feedback about the conference has been posted to the gamesnetwork list, among other places. As mentioned in the previous entry, it was inspiring and pleasant experience for me as well. Still, some critique is in order, too:

First, the cd-rom accompanying the book proceedings is produced in less than satisfactory manner. The PDFs are not typeset according to the book format, which was something that one would have expected. Images are not optimised for printing, and some tables are plain unreadable. There are even some papers with plain stylings straight out of a word processor. This not only makes the papers less readable but demotes them to a somewhat second class status - which they by default should not be, of course - even though the book vs. cd-rom might already contribute to promoting a hierarchy of sorts.

Also, it was observed in the gamesnetwork list that EDGE magazine seems to be the most often quoted reference in the proceedings. I'm a happy EDGE reader - but seriously, folks. This has to do with a larger issue. I'm disappointed at the fact that surprisingly few papers acknowledge the work in the Computer Games and Digital Cultures profeedings from the Tampere conference (2002), as many topics were discussed there and it was, unofficially at least, the 'birth' conference of DiGRA.

I believe that part of developing game studies into a creditable disclipline has to do with engaging with the dialogical nature of academic work - this takes the somewhat tedious shape of formal referencing, but on a more abstract level, a considerably less tedious and less formal respect towards peers and positioning oneself into a tradition (even if it was only a few years old, as with MMOPRG studies etc.). Innate theory, produced inside a bubble, might be possible, but it does not qualify to academic standards.

Referencing does not necessarily mean that papers and articles become less attractive and more cumbersome to read. It is the task of editing to take ensure that this does not happen. Editing is not only about suggesting cuts & revisions, but in an academic context, it is also about making suggestions about previous work that the author(s) should take a look at. I know that a conference proceedings is not the ideal case to do that, but an anthology that has run through the publication process of a distinguished publisher should be. This became evident when picking up the Video Game Theory Reader from the conference - even though it has quality papers, there are too many omissions of previous work, I argue.

That's my few cents - please comment by e-mail, or on the gamesnework list, if you wish.

inspiration & reorientation

All right, the LEVEL UP Conference in Utrecht was good. For me, it was, first and foremost, inspirational - I now have all this energy to round up my all-explaining superior theories ;) I just have to find the time to do it...as well as read many of the papers in the proceedings as well as Rules of Play by Eric Zimmerman & Katie Salen, whose workshop in the conference I enjoyed. I hope to drop some more impressions in an entry or two later, after reorientating myself back to the run of things.

While travelling, my article on simulations and Vice City was published in Digital Dichtung. I wrote it before coming up with my theories on rules, so I will revise it accordingly for my thesis. I also hope to include discussion of sports games, the most overlooked game genre ever, research-wise!

'bout to LEVEL UP

Utrecht calling, busy preparing. I'm sad to say that other things than my thesis have gobbled up my time after returning from Tokyo...But the conference should serve as a suitable place to get into that researchy mindset again. Also, I'm glad to say that I got an invitation to give a lecture at Copenhagen! :)

back, unquaked

Ok, I'm safely back from Tokyo just before the earthquake which fortunately was not that bad...I'm slowly catching up with things and should return to my theorising self in a few days. Also expect some notes on my gaming purchases on the diary section!

Meanwhile, congratulations to The Ludologist himself, Jesper, who has just submitted his Ph.D. Go Jesper! :)

another Tokyo-bound ludologist

Even after Gonzalo leaves Tokyo, the city's ludological quota will remain stable for an extra week or so - I will replace him! :) I'll leave on Saturday...I might even drop an entry from Akihabara or some other heavenly place, but do not hold your breath. Back to academic grinding around October 16th - maybe I should make a notable comeback with the promised mechanics paper and all.

Sayonara!

others on rules

Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman is certainly something to look forward to. And, as a researcher working on similar issues, it makes you worry that you are just re-inventing the wheel...

Back to normal

Workshop done, back to work with the thesis. I hope to put some new stuff (on mechanics) up before my trip - business and pleasure - to Japan at the beginning of October :D

september outline

Just a quick update: visited a World Lottery Association seminar at Visby, Sweden last week and now I have my hands full with preparing a workshop (see entry below). After September 16th I'll return to work on my thesis and intend to upgrade the site with new functionalities as well. Take care, folks!

Things to do

My work on game mechanics is meant to lead onto a thorough discussion of genre, but that wil have to wait for a while. At the moment I'm too busy with other tasks, 'real work' so to speak. But, it's not that different - I'm in the process of adapting the design patterns thinking for games of chance, and organising an in-house workshop on those lines in the middle of September.

After that, I'll tackle my mechanics-theme-genre-theory. I guess I should put up a revised version of the Rules paper... then again, probably I'll put the whole 'Formalist trilogy' ;) (rules-mechanics-genre) up when there's a draft ready. October, maybe.

On another note, my paper on game-simulations and Vice City is due to be published in the next (Scandinavian) edition of the net journal Digital Dichtung. I'm pretty pleased with the paper, although it was artitten before my rule and mechanics theories, so I'll have revise it considerably before including it in the thesis. The nice thing is that there should be no serious problems in doing that - rules and mechanics relate to simulations as well.

post-seminar rap

The seminar of game studies in Tampere was good: plenty of useful discussion and nice, smart people. Now I'll have to focus on revising and editing my rule paper for the LEVEL UP conference...

busy, bee-like

I'm pretty busy preparing a draft of the mechanics paper for a small game seminar at the Hyperlab in Tampere next week, with Espen Aarseth visiting...a chance to get some quality feedback!

Meanwhile, Drew Davidson's IGDA Ivory Tower column on game rhetorics is definitely worth reading.

interface tweak vol. 1

Ok, so, I a slight modification to the right-hand menu. I know that new entries are not quite as visible as they were before (as links), but this is closer to what I originally meant...linking to the main pages instead of archive pages. I suck at Movable Type, I know.

Mechanics 1-2-3

I'm in the process of listing different game mechanics, and it occurred to me that maybe I should start an expanding list on the site...and for these kinds of entries I really should find time to implement that commentary functionality :P

le premiere PDF

All right, as promised, here's my rule typology paper up for grabs. Check Chapter in Progress for more on the subject.

slowly evolving

Ok, so I'm glad to see that the site is getting visitors. Warm thanks are due to Gonzalo, ludologist extraordinaire cosmopolite :)

I will be adding stuff and functionalities to the site gradually. First, I'm working on putting some of my papers up on PDF format, starting with my paper on rule typology. Other things to look for are standard blog stuff: comments (scary!), search, and so on. As soon as I understand what this 'trackback' everyone seems to implement is, I might consider that too...

"What's up with your Ph.D?"

Is the question I get to hear frequently. From now on, this blog will provide the answer.

Games without Frontiers is a blog about my Ph.D. thesis bearing the same title. I have been working on it - more or less (mostly less) actively since 1998. The focus, scope and result of the project have changed considerably through the years, but during 2003, it is nearing completion. Or, at least there should be a first draft out. I have set myself a deadline, December 19th, that this blog reminds me of.

There's a lot still to do with this blog, mainly with archives and stuff, but even in this beta form, the basic purpose should come across.