Tag: Computerspil

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).

First rule of methodology club

One of the few universal rules of methodology club is that you are not allowed to say that all studies within a specific area must conform to a certain methodological approach. I’ll refrain from mentioning names here, but please believe me: You REALLY shouldn’t. If tempted, please recall your first methodology lesson where they told you that the “correct” methodology is a function of the research question. In this particular case “they” were right.

Dr. Egenfeldt I presume?

In 20 minutes Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen will be defending his PhD dissertation (preliminary version) here at the ITU (Auditorium 2).
All are welcome.

Update:

As we see here the candidate assumed a rather laidback position, a position not really changed throughout the event.

The panel consisting of David Buckingham, Jørgen Bang, and Espen Aarseth convince the candidate that they are really nice guys after all.

Addiction news

News24.com fears rapid increases in video game addiction.

“There are few long-term scientific studies on video game addiction… But the reach of the video obsession is borne out by the popularity of one online game Halo 2. By early 2005, one million players, had staggeringly clocked up nearly 100 million hours on the game, according to industry figures. ”

Each Halo 2 player doing 100 hours of game time? Must be a really good game.

Say/do

Many communication studies casually mention the “say/do conflict” i.e. the fact that interviewed people do not always respond in a way compatible with the empirical truth (even if not lying in a techincal sense).
We know that to be the case. It is commonplace.
But what are the most thoughtful/precise references/books/studies which try to explain and/or document the extent of the conflict in different contexts?

Gonzalo at Copenhagen University tommorow

The opposite of fun is not boredom: Videogames, art and communication

Sure, videogames are fun but is that enough? If television had focused solely on fun, we wouldn’t have news programs, documentaries, commercials or drama. Fun is just one element in the equation of making games, especially when you have a different agenda than just entertaining your players. This talk will review the artistic and communicational potential of videogames by exploring different examples of political, educational and non-traditional games. The language of cinema owes a lot to early art and political films (Griffith, Eisenstein, Riefenstahl): could a similar trend happen in videogames?

Thursday May 26
9.15am to 11.00am
Room 8.3.32 (KUA)

Gonzalo Frasca works at the Center for Computer Game Research at the IT University. He edits Ludology.org and co-edits Game Studies and WaterCoolerGames.org. He is the co-founder of Powerful Robot Games studio, leads the Newsgaming.com project and co-designed the first official videogame ever commissioned for a US Presidential campaign. He is also a former head of game production at Cartoon Network LA.

The Project takes a new direction… – or: At least the sub-title is still reasonable

Okay, I wasn’t kidding when I said this was a research blog of sorts. Not fully kidding, anyway.
Elsewhere on this site I have claimed to be researching the issue of social order/control in multiplayer gamespaces. That’s still an interesting topic, of course.
But recently I have drifted towards another main issue: How can analytical game theory help us analyze video games? What predictions as to player behaviour does such a perspective entail? And how do these prediction fare when confronted with empirically real players?
I approach the latter part by analyzing the behaviour of players who play a small series of multiplayer console games. The players are videotaped while playing (as hinted at here) and their behaviour/communication is then analyzed (for more details send me an email).

One thing quite interesting about this approach is that my study seems to be fairly unique. Of course, whenever people say that no-one else has done X one may follow the rule of thumb that they haven’t looked properly. But at least I’m working with the hypothesis that no-one has done really micro analyses of the interaction between video game players on a small scale (that is non-ethnographic) working with questions like: “What do players say to each other?”, “Do players play to win or to make sure everybody has fun?” etc.
Prove my hypothesis wrong and I’ll buy you a beer.

Update: Unrelated to this post both Jesper and Bryan have actually alerted me to XEODesign’s report “Why We Play Games” (11mb download) which in fact reports a very interesting (and ambitious) study of player behaviour – even if targeted at “why?” and not “how?”. Not sure what the rules are exactly, but I might owe both of you a beer.

Devil in the detail

Did you ever notice how some annoyances are so miniscule that everyone would be ashamed to actually voice their disapproval over something so tiny? A problem arises when these little details are repeated through sufficiently large series of instances. Also, this is a blog. There is no shame in ranting. In fact, “the rant” is a defining characteristic of “the blog”.
Henceforth, let the following practices be knows as Highly Annoying Little Things (HALTs):

– Double-spaced formatted papers manuscripts (unsuited for print and quite ugly)
– Endnotes
– Endnotes grouped into sections each covering a part of the actual text (highly unacceptable, much worse than endnotes in themselves)
– Using the term “ethnography” as a label for über-eclectic/unfocused methodology slightly prioritizing qualitative techniques
– The fact that many do not quote original emails in their replies.
– Gmail showing emails as “conversations”.

What else?