Stuff

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.

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.

Oriental September

Seems I’ll be visiting the (surely) fair city of Sanda not far from Osaka and Kyoto in September for the ICEC 2005 conference. This will also mean being forced by the pleasant circumstances to attend the fabled Tokyo Game Show.
Tips regarding lodging in Tokyo will be much appreciated.

LEEROY!

My glorious WoW days are over, and I’m sure you’ve all seen this, but it’s just hilarious: The Leroy Jenkins incident.
There’s a website as well, of course.

Garrg makes the front page

An article (intro article) in today’s Politiken describes the development of real-world markets for virtual world items (and such) including statements from yours truly, Espen, Miguel, Edward Castronova and Julian Dibbell (website down).

Among the more noteworthy features, well-known orc warlock and my former WoW avatar Garrg lights up the very front page of today’s newspaper (see picture above).