Computerspil

PhD defense completed – get ready

This Thursday I succesfully defended my PhD thesis entitled Plans and Purposes: How Videogame Goals Shape Player Behaviour (slides / ~~preliminary dissertation~~ final dissertation).

The opponents asked reasonable questions, the technical equipment worked flawlessly, the post-defense red wine was half-decent, and any post-defence tension was relieved through honorable Guitar Hero combat. Thanks to everyone who showed up.

And a warm congratulations to ex-roomie Miguel Sicart who defended his thesis on games and ethics yesterday (Miguel’s preliminary thesis).

I’ll be uploading the final version of my thesis as soon as it’s ready.

Mission completed.

(oh and I love the Germanification of my name on the ITU posters. It has a nice academic ring).

– “Look, players ARE rational. End of story”.

Study results

Study results, originally uploaded by Agent Smith.

Very roughly, this graph shows the prevalence of various types of verbal statements in my dataset.
The data is verbal communication during multiplayer console play.

Jane McGonigal lectures at ITU, 30 November

The Center for Computer Games Research (game.itu.dk) is happy to
present:

Jane McGonigal, a world-leading ubiquitous game designer and researcher.
She will lecture at ITU on November 30th (16:15, Auditorium 2)

The title of her presentation is “This Might Be a Game! Pushing the
limits of ubiquitous play”

For more details about her talk and bio, see:
http://game.itu.dk/events/mcgonigal.htm

For any enquiries, please contact Gonzalo Frasca at frasca@itu.dk

The lecture series are an event of the Center for Computer Games
Research – game.itu.dk
IT University of Copenhagen

Thesis on advergaming (or whatever the term is)

This paper suggests advertisers should experiment with in-game advertising to gain skills that could become vital in the near future. It compiles, arranges and analyzes the existing body of academic and industry knowledge on advertising and product placement in computer game environments. The medium’s characteristics are compared to other channels’ in terms of their attractiveness to marketers, and the business environment is analyzed to offer recommendations on the relative advantages of in-game advertising. The paper also contains a brief historical review of in-game advertising, and descriptions of currently available and emerging advertising formats.

Download PDF and more

First European symposium on Computer Games and Emotions

… will be held at ITU on Monday 27.11.2006.

From the official page:

Monday November 27th 2006, 8:30-16:15

IT University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 Copenhagen s, Auditorium 2. How to get here.

The emotional dimension of computer games has has in the recent years became a popular focus for game research and development. While new games appear dubbed as “emotional rollercoaster rides”, academic research projects attempting to understand games and emotions pop up on the fields of game studies, psychology and HCI, to name a few. Even if one does not subscribe to David Freeman’s statement that the next revolution in games is emotional, the topicality of emotions as both a subject and an approach for computer games research seems evident.
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