Tag: Computerspil

Post-GDC

GDC 2005 has played itself out. It did so with great pomp, some fascinating talks, some entertaining talks, quite a bit of mingling, immodest amounts of high-quality coffee and a considerable number of visits to Lori’s.
Most distinctly the air was loaded with some trepidation over the coming console generation and particularly buzzing with energy during Will Wright’s “Spore” keynote (advocating a solution to next-gen woes in the form of player-generated content). See Jesper’s blog for more on this.


Oh, and here is Jesse Schell, Edward Castronova, and Jim Paul Gee discussing “What Researchers Can and Can’t Tell You About Your Games“. Castronova pitches his game design idea that will “enable social scientists to finally make studies with the precision of physicists” – yep, that’s more or less what he said.

Videogame doctors

A recent ill-informed CNN money article asked “What’s next: a Ph.D. in video gaming?“
Well, duh! – but I started a small count and actually, the number of game PhD’s to be is quite impressive.
Below is a list of people that I can think of, top of my head, who are speeding towards ludic doctor-hood.

But first the ones who made it (strong focus on games only):
– Mary Ann Buckles (see post on Ludology.org)
– Espen Aarseth (no decent link, as Dr. Aarseth believes the WWW thing will blow over)
– Lisbeth Klastrup
– Jesper Juul
– Lars Konzack
– Dmitri Williams

En route (in order of randomness):
– Gonzalo Frasca, IT University of Copenhagen
– Miguel Sicart, IT University of Copenhagen
– Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, IT University of Copenhagen
– Sara Mosberg, IT University of Copenhagen
– Troels Folmann, IT University of Copenhagen
– Jonas Heide Smith, IT University of Copenhagen
– Chek Yang Foo, Curtin University of Technology
– Mirjam Eladhari, Gotland University
– Elina Koivisto, Nokia Research Center (Finland)
– Lisa Galarneau, University of Waikato
– Constance Steinkuehler, University of Wisconsin–Madison
– Kristine Jørgensen, University of Copenhagen
– Gitte Stald, University of Copenhagen
– Charlie Breindahl, University of Copenhagen
– Anne Mette Thorhauge, University of Copenhagen
– Marinka Copier, University of Utrecht
– Christian Ulrik Andersen, University of Århus
– Julian Kuecklich, Ulster University
– Peter Zackariasson, Umeå School of Business and Economics
– Laurie Taylor, University of Florida
– Sean Fenty, University of Florida

Okay, this list is hopelessly incomplete. Please tell me some of the names that my tired brain didn’t come up with.

The package has been delivered… I repeat…

One should not fail to mention that esteemed former PhD student, long-time Age of Kings show-off and much besides, Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, handed in his massively multi-page PhD dissertation on games and education quite recently.

We who are about to write salute you.

Update: Simon’s timely thesis will be the third game dissertation from our center. The two first were Lisbeth Klastrup‘s Toward a Poetics of Virtual Worlds and Jesper Juul‘s Half-Real (warning: Pretty big PDFs).