Growing up together with an academic field

"What do you do," somebody asked me, two decades ago in a MUD. "I am a scholar," I answered. That was immediately challenged. Apparently, that was a term that kept being misused. At the time I was an assistant professor, just finishing up my Ph D., and I was doing research right then and there. I explained this, and was grudgingly accepted as being the real thing.

I have had a few firsts in the years as a scholar. I built an education in strategic communication in the media department of a tiny college on the west coast of Norway, I studied computer games way before it was cool, together with Jill Walker Rettberg I wrote perhaps the first academic article on blogs. I created the second games research guild in an MMO - and it was the second only because when I told those pesky Americans about my plans at that conference, they went and made their own immediately - which inspired the first book on World of Warcraft, an anthology which served to open up what almost became its own branch of game studies - WoW-studies. I was part of the first group of editors for Gamestudies.org, the first academic journal for games, and a journal that will be 20 years old next year, and I was part of organising some of the first conferences specifically for the digital arts, the DAC conferences.

All of this, and a few other things, specifically the work I have done on the more problematic topics around games, the aggressive culture, the offensive and difficult content, the transgressive aesthetics, was part of why I received the acknowledgement from the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) as a distinguished scholar, this year.

You'd think I felt like I had gotten somewhere. But every time I sit down to teach or do research, it still feels like I have just gotten started. Like it's all at the beginning. The only times I feel old is when young scholars complain about the institutions that came up after I started. The lack of publishing opportunities, the problem with getting accepted to conferences, the positions in the field, the lack of relevant literature for their work, it all seems to be so difficult, and it all makes me feel so old, because I really, really want to tell them to do what we did, and create what they need. I am not here to make life harder for those who came after me, but sometimes I really feel tempted. Your reviewer was a bit harsh on you? Buhu, go create the journal where you will be accepted. You couldn't get into the conference? Too bad, go start your own. It's what we did. It's why you can stand there and complain. OK, I occasionally do say this, when I have a headache and really don't want to hold your hand while you cry over your rejections. I have rejections of my own (still) that demands tears.

But those moments of tired impatience aside, I am more worried about that day in the extremely far future when I will retire and no longer have the privilege of teaching, supervising and working alongside young scholars. Because that is still, after 28 years as a scholar, the best work I know.