Author: Jonas Heide Smith

Gamer brain scan study

A recent brain scan study of gamers playing a violent games is reported to conclude that the brain treats on-screen violence as real and that these games train the brain to react in a certain pattern.
The study was described in New Scientist and commented on in This Is London.

From those brief descriptions it all seems remarkably vague. Also, New Scientist is hardly a scientific journal in itself making it odd that the study was “published” there.

More coverage from BBC – it now seems that the study is not about game violence, but about aggression in itself. The game part, according to BBC, is incidental. Interesting news angle, in that case.

Post Digra

The Digra 2005 conference has come and gone. It was about half the size of the previous one but otherwise similiar in form and scope.
To be sure there were interesting talks but also less exuberance than two years ago. The wild energy seems to have been channeled into more everyday work-life, for good and bad.
In particular I enjoyed Lin and Sun’s grief play paper and the Georgia Tech people’s work on space in games – the latter feeding into something I’m writing for the text-book project.
Also, Janet Murray’s keynote was entertaining and presented ideas for an interesting investigation into the “Why are there games?” question couched in the language of evolutionary biology/psychology. In book form, this would be quite worthwhile.

Of recurrent memes, ye olde ludology/narratology debate would not ease its grip entirely. I have no particular stake in this discussion and I guess I’m torn between finding the whole controversy rather entertaining (sure isn’t much controversy in the field apart from that) and finding the whole meta-ness of it all rather tiring (the discussion is now whether there was ever a discussion etc.).


Here’s Matteo Bittanti frozen in a rare moment of semi-mobility during his interesting speed-talk on Manhunt.


And here’s Celia Pearce taking questions about the alleged non-existence of participants in a debate that never took place.

More pictures? Check out Mirjam’s collection.

Video games – passion, practice & fresh perspectives workshop at ITU in August

19. – 21. August 2005
Department of Digital Aesthetics & Communication

From 19th to 21st of August 2005, the Department of Digital Aesthetics & Communication (DiAC) will be home to video game aficionados who feel that the subject of their passion hasn’t been exhaustively explored yet and who mind the current gap in video game studies and -design.

See event website

Of DIGRA things to come

This year’s DIGRA conference is almost upon us. All in all, I much enjoyed the previous instantiation, and will be looking forward to Vancouver surrounded by game research greatness.

In particular, I’ll be looking forward to (although I have not yet read the papers):

Styles of Playing Violent Video Games: An Individual Differences Research Methodology
Amanda Bolton, Gregory Fouts

Addressing Social Dilemmas and Fostering Cooperation through Computer Games (full paper)
Mark Chen

Gaining Advantage: How Videogame Players Define and Negotiate Cheating (full paper)
Mia Consalvo

The “White-Eyed” Player Culture: Grief Play and Construction of Deviance in MMORPGs (full paper)
Holin Lin, Chuen-Tsai Sun

/hide: The Aesthetics of Group and Solo Play (full paper)
David Myers

Law, Order and Conflicts of Interest in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (full paper)
Daniel Pargman, Andreas Eriksson

A Brief Social History of Game Play (full paper)
Dmitri Williams

Oh, and then of course there’s TL Taylor’s keynote and Jesper Juul’s dissertation talk – not to be missed by anyone who don’t have the pleasure of their everyday pleasantness.

But all in all it seems those Vancouver days will be quite packed.

BTW, here’s my own paper abstract and the full version.