After Leipzig

I just returned from the GCO - Game Convention Online - in Leipzig. Invited by some of the members of the very interesting Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg, I was fairly unprepared for the Leipzig experience.

GCO is a new convention startet as a cooperation between several actors with a vested interest in getting a larger "messe" or convention together to work, both as an attraction for the city of Leipzig, as a meeting spot for a group of game developers who are somewhat less oganised than the very established MMORPG designers, and as a place to promote and test games.

Just add academia, and you have quite a lot of different interests in the same object.

The different cultures became obvious from the first evening. In a regular academic conference I'd have been sadly overdressed for an opening, but the formal invitation where I had to write down the name of any company I wanted to bring was a hint that this wasn't a matter of a quick talk by some Headmaster before the wine and the cooling finger-food. Next to the expensive suits of the German businessmen and politicians I was still a sad, rumpled mess. What luck that I am a geek, and could wear an air of excentric distraction with authority obviously only aquired by much practice.

In the next few days the security level, the service in the speaker's lounge and the shuttle service to the hotel indicated that I was still in a culture not quite familiar. Also the sluggish internet connection at the conference grounds (totally lacking in the speakers' lounge - how did they expect us to prepare in there - free coffee does not make up for no net) and the lack of free wireless at the four-star hotel were indications that I was not in Academia any more.

The great part of the conference was however the opportunity to meet and listen to German scholars. I did spend a lot of time agreeing with Ren Reynolds that "There has been research done in this field, you know," but that's a common response in too many occasions, sadly. One of the better moments was spoiled by the speaker suddenly sorting the ludologists under "effect studies" - even after years of "please do a few google searches before you talk" that was a new one.

What I did find was where the psychologists studying games hunt. They are in Germany. According to one game researcher I talked to, most of German game research is on effects and consequences of games, with a heavy bias towards the problems games may lead to.

If we can somehow integrate the German game scholars in the European community, they might be a very valuable asset, as this is an angle which rarely is carefully discussed and explored in more game studies based English language conferences and journals. But such an integration needs to be desired by those who work within the field, and so far the lack of knowledge about what has become "common knowledge" among a fairly large group of game scholars is more a hindrance to being taken seriously than a challenge (which we need) to the hegemony of certain ideas in the game studies community.

The burden of the past

In New York I went to MoMA, where Beijing based artist Song Dong has an exhibition called "waste not" this summer. In this work he celebrates the values of past generations, by offering to our curious eyes that which is today considered waste.

Pieces of fabric used for clothes, saved in case of patches or alterations, old shopping bags, a broken kitchen oven, bottles, jars, boxes, ribbons, worn shoes, the exhibition was a large display of what you can find when you empty a house after the passing of its inhabitant, particularly if it was one of the thrifty ones of older generations.

This week my sisters and I have been looking through the relics of our mother, slowly sorting through her treasures. Modern-day women as we are, we are throwing it all away, wasting, as her treasures have been going to waste over the last 20 years. But each piece has its own history, poignant reminders of our past. And it's not just that we recognize the curtains, the old clothing, the boxes and bags, but we all know how it could have been used. We spent long hours cutting the old clothing into material for rugs, we made a lot of our own clothes and clothes for each other, we knitted, and remember the many spools of yarn - what they were used for, and what they were supposed to be used for. We know the year the old marmelade was made, we know the pieces of wood and the materials, and even the many rocks of our mother's collection for the hobby she wanted to engage in, cutting and polishing stones, are objects wose potential we know. This house was one of activity, of reclaiming the broken, the torn and the spoiled as well as of creating new things from nothing. The garden is a powerful reminder, even in its neglected state it hides secrets of herbs, berries and salad leaves.

Now we are carrying all of this away, throwing it out, and even in this context I choose for display a picture which does not fully display the disorder, the sad state of all these resources from the past. It helps, as I do this, to think about the exhibition at MoMA, which somehow prepared me for this process. My mother could have filled that museum floor with all she had stored up. And oddly, I wish I could have shown it to her, let her see how stored resources can be both trash and art at the same time.

I suspect the rest of my life will be filled with moments like this one, when I wish I could have shown this or that to somebody I have lost. It's part of still being alive.

Career-change?

I am seriously considering a change of career. Particularly the dress-code is interesting, not to mention the fact that curses, nasty laughs, wickedness and mysterious behaviour is part of it. Also, I would get to have lots of cats at work, and run and hide if somebody got particularly unpleasant. Candles will probably be a work expense, and it ought to come with its own cauldron.

From heaven to frustration

Just before Easter this year, I bought a new machine, a big, powerful gaming lap-top from Asus, on Hilde's recommendation. I loved it, despite the bulk (which makes it more schleppable than portable); the speed, the power the graphics - yes, I felt empowered.

So, what happened?

The motherboard is most likely dead. I have to mail the big thing in for repairs. And to do so, I have had to fill in their forms, and read the language on their sites. Now, the very polite and helpful clerk at the helpdesk had an accent which, for dialect-sensitive Norwegians marked him as originating from outside of Norway. He spoke perfect Norwegian though, no problem with understanding there. I don't think the following issues originate with him.

Once I started reading on the Asus help site, the problems started. First, the site did not like the signs I used. I eradicated all the Norwegian letters, æ, ø, å, which so often create problems. My mail was still not accepted. Then I removed all the "", and if that wasn't enough, the () was going next. This time it went through, though. And then I got to see the high point of the experience:

Registreringen er vellykket!

Vennligst merk at ønsket dato for opphentingen kan variere.
Den endelige opphentings datoen vil bli bekreftet på en email som sendes tilbake til deg i løpet av de neste 2 timene. (gelder kun Mandag-Fredag 07:00-16:00.
Vennligst forsikre om emailboksen ikke er full, eller din spamfilter ikke filtrerer bort emailen.

Now, if you're not a fluent Norwegian speaker, there's no problem. But Norwegian has genders, which influence pronouns, and the word "opphenting" means literally "upfetching", as ridiculous in Norwegian as in English - unless they arrive with a helicopter and actually fetch the machine "up". Also, they aren't fetching the machine at all, I have to mail it to them. Not to mention the simple typos. So: Bad grammar, nonsense words, typos and imprecise content.

Right, my English isn't perfect, far from it. That's why I, when ever I have a chance, use proof-readers. It's part of being a professional in a formal context: you make sure you make a good impression, and you can't be misunderstood. (Before I get slammed to death with my own typos, I don't consider this blog a formal context, it's just my personal writing, my responsibilities, my errors.)

I have a bad feeling about this experience. Very bad. It's making me regret I didn't spend a little more and got the Dell which was the alternative.

I am crossing my fingers, hoping, and hugging the new, shiny, functioning machine the college got for me, just a few weeks ago. Also I am praising the fact that I did some maniacal copying of the most important files just before I went to the states, and my recent habit of putting the pictures on a remote hard drive. I just may have been very lucky with that timing.

Dear Expert

I suspect Ian Bogost has met the same journalists as I do, although I am baffled that they managed to track down Ian, seeing as they can't use google and he isn't in the Norwegian phone-book. From his post:

I wonder: instead of doing research myself on the story I am required to write, would you be willing to talk to me by phone for an hour about it? During this time, I would pose a series of basic questions that demonstrate how little thought and time I have given to the topic, not even enough to Google its key terms.

Orient Point

After an exhausting spring, I am having something odd called "vacation". You know, when you're not making excuses for all the things you haven't gotten around to doing yet, and you only need to do the things you feel like doing.

Anyway, what I felt like doing today was to go for a bike ride from Greenport, where I am currently staying at a motel which feels overpriced in this crappy weather, but which I guess would feel cheap if I was lazing in the sun instead of uploading pictures to Flickr on a weak wireless signal

(lovely beach site, fantastic view of the water, big room and immensely comfortable porch). The goal was Orient Point, the easternmost point of the north fork of Long Island.

At the point of the fork, there's a ferry going to New London,

and that's where I went on this rather exhausting ride. The bike I had rented had seemed fine the day before, but what is OK for a 3 km ride from Greenport to the motel, becomes exhausting when we're talking 30 kilometers. Oh well, I got my exercize in today, that's for sure!

On the way, I passed some wonderful spots, a couple of nature preserves with a fishing egret and an osprey's nest,

a public beach which was closed at the time (I find "closing" a beach slightly absurd, but Americans obviously don't),

and several very american buildings. Not American in an overblown, overexclusive, "everything is bigger and better" way, but lovely pieces of Americana - intricate patterns on railings and beneath roofs, comfortable, wide porches with chairs and decorations, beautiful windows. There's a love of decoration and a surplus of time and skill which comes out in these incredible details to small and big houses alike, and definitely in their churches.

Pointing to the side

What am I talking about at State of Play? Peek into my blog on the Gamers' space project.

4.49 am

It's early morning in New York. I am jet-lagged as usual on the first morning in NYC, even after a serious lie-in. I was, after all, wide awake at 1.30, already feeling like I had overslept.

For the next few days I'll be busy at the New York Law school, first with a Graduate Student Symposium, and then with State of Play, the conference, not the movie.

Touch me, la la la

I find myself sighing with pleasure, as I settle down with my new computer. I knew it would be nice looking, because if it was just half as elegant as on the pictures it would be a great upgrade, look wise. Inside it has twice as much of everything as the last machine, my much loved and much used 12" XPS, also from Dell.

I thought I would be reluctant to give the other machine away. After all, I had it set up just as I wanted, it could handle everything I threw at it, it was small and light and I had found the perfect sticker for it.



Can a machine be better, I thought, particularly after they quickly and efficiently exchanged the keyboard and mouse when the first one broke down from frequent use. "Do you mostly play with the left hand?" one technician asked, after they had seen how used up the machine was. I had to admit that yes, I play with the left hand on the keys, the right on the touchpad (yes, I play with the pad, no mouse for me unless I want RSI).

For a lot of different reasons, I invested in a monster machine for the home - a private computer for the first time in years. Here's a review of it, in Norwegian though. It's a totally oversized 17,1" lap-top which I would never have spent money on if I didn't have such a problem with my back and shoulders, to the point where I need to be able to have the machine on my lap when I work. As things are, that machine is just amazing!

I thought I was pretty much set by then. How could machines give me a new experience? High portability from the little Dell machine, extreme performance from the big Asus, and a hard working, decent desk-top in the office.

That was until I touched this one. First, yes that really is leather at the bottom there. It's smooth and begs to be touched - particularly contrasted by the steel. I find my fingers caressing the leather and wandering over the steel stripe to daringly approach the shiny black laquer finish of the upper part of the back of the screen. It feels like walking the edge, as I touch the place where brushed steel meets black laquer, in terror of leaving fingerprints, evidence of my dirty pawing.

But the tactile pleasures don't end on the outside. Last night, as I was busy raiding on the big machine, my husband, the "as long as it works" functionalist, picked up my new machine and settled down to see what all the fuss was about. He was tracing the details, exclaiming over the responsive touch pad, playing around with the control panel for sound and video where a mere touch to the back-lit signal is enough. And as his hands touched the keyboard he sighed, deeply content. I knew then that it wasn't just me. This machine is seductive, plain and simple.

I haven't REALLY tested it yet. No raids, no 12 hours of constant typing, no running of games, presentation programs and video projectors simultaneously. I may start hating it when it starts failing me at vitals moments like those. But at the moment, I find myself humming along with a-ha:

Touch me
How can it be
Believe me
The sun always shines on T.V

And I don't even like a-ha that much. Should I be worried?

Why we don't like cell-phones in class

Thanks to Pattie Belle Hastings for posting this link, to a study about cellphones, ringtones and recall by Jill Shelton.

"Many of us consider a cell phone ringing in a public place to be an annoying disruption, but this study confirms that these nuisance noises also have real-life impacts," Shelton said. "These seemingly innocuous events are not only a distraction, but they have a real influence on learning."

Titled "The distracting effects of a ringing cell phone: An investigation of the laboratory and the classroom setting," the study was conducted at Louisiana State University, where Shelton received her doctoral degree. Her co-authors in the LSU psychology department include Emily Elliott, Sharon Eaves and Amanda Exner.

Apart from being annoying, distracting and rude, ringing cellphones makes students forget what they learned before and during the ringing of the phone. If the ring tone is a popular, well-known piece of music, this is even worse.

So: That mute button? Use it!

Etiquette and netiquette

As new tools are available to us, we need to learn new ways to use them. It seems like cell-phones and text messages is the new "issue" in manners at the moment. The article in NY Times is a very good example of how we need to develop new ways to integrate the new technology in our lives.

At our table, texting is no problem. Not that it never happens, but if you receive and send a text message at the table with our family, you're expected to share the contents. It becomes part of the family conversation. Often the sent messages are communally authored, or the person may receive the response from somebody else than they wrote to. That's a pretty efficient way to limit the texting, whoever does it. Sometimes it's nice too. Discussing the most recent cute picture of my daughter's kitten or the urgent issues at work are both typical dinner-time conversation topics anyway.

So yeah, I am more in the Danah Boyd camp here, where technology is integrated in the rituals of everyday life, rather than one of those with tech-free zones and blackberry-free hours.

Just to hang out

Like so many others, I have a facebook account. No shock there, hmm? Also, I play games on it! No shock there either, I guess! The facebook games are small and fun, but most of the time I find that I play them for the same reason I play a hand of cards or participate in the yearly winter games at the department (last day before christmas). I play because I want to connect with the people I play with.

And so I send and receive flowers, I read and do quizzes, I buy and sell friends, I bite and get bitten, and I have a little dragon that occasionally tries to help her friends. Poor little thing, robbed of all gold and dignity, but she still tries!

It's quite amusing, really. This is perhaps the oldest use of games in existance - playing in order to enjoy connecting with others - and it is still a revelation to discover that we do it in yet another medium.

End of spring term

Just to let you all know, you who think teachers don't work when you don't see them: We do. So when you all have dropped off your papers and gone off to get a summer job and wait for the grades, we work day and night to get everything done within the deadlines. And if you feel the grades are published slowly, it's not because we're not working. We are reading like maniacs, right up to the moment you learn about your grades.

And then we do some more assessments, and start planning next term, so you have something to think we're dodging next year, too.

Yeah, I know, a touch bitter here, but after yet another student claiming that "a little bit more work can't kill you", it feels like yes, actually, a little bit more work is exactly what would kill me right now.

Introverts

And thanks to Alex Halavais for linking to this article, which finally made me feel understood.

Games Convention Online

Despite the title, this is a convention over online games, not an online convention. Yeah, it confused me at first.

It's a grandly planned conference over online games in Europe, taking place in Leipzig. Despite having travelled extensively in Germany at one point, I never went to Leipzig, and checking the map I realised why. Most of my travels in Germany happened in the late 70-ies, early 80-ies, and my only trip into the then East-Germany happened in 1981, with a trip to Berlin, East-Berlin and Potsdam.

This is an extremely interesting part of Europe, which I have neglected visiting since travelling with children made it harder to jump on a train and roll through Europe for days on end, stopping at random places to sleep whereever there'd be a cheap hostel. Now the children travel quicker, lighter and easier than me, being the age I was when I was exploring Europe by the railway, and I am worried about not having booked hotels in advance. Who'd have thought the map of Europe would change so much, just in the time it takes a child to be born and grow into an adult?

Anyway, this isn't about Europe, it's about games. At the same time I wonder, can it not be about Europe? Or about Asia, Africa, Oceania, Australia or America, for that matter - it's all about culture, change, humanity and society.

I'll be talking in this session:

„Nutzung & Potenzial“:
In diesem Themenblock der Konferenz bilden die Nutzungsgewohnheiten, -präferenzen und -folgen auf Spielerseite sowie die damit einhergehenden Erwartungen, Chancen, Herausforderungen und Risiken den Schwerpunkt. Faktoren, die die Angebotsauswahl und Spielenutzung beeinflussen, sind ebenso relevante Themenbereiche wie aktuelle Nutzungsmodi, Genrepräferenzen, tatsächliche und potentielle Vergemeinschaftungspotenziale und Spielzeiten. Damit einhergehend sind auch Fragen exzessiver Spielenutzung zu thematisieren. Zu beachten sind die Potenziale von Online Games und Mobile Games etwa für Sozialisation und Berufsfeldkompetenzen

However, when I can, I'll sneak over to this session:

„Gesellschaft & Politik“:
Im dritten Stream sollen die gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen der steigenden Nutzung von Online und Mobile Games im Zentrum stehen. Welche Debatten in welcher Form in der Öffentlichkeit geführt, und welche Risiken und Möglichkeiten den Spielen zugeschrieben werden, können eine differenzierte Sichtweise auf das Phänomen erlauben.

Auch die regulatorischen Herausforderungen, die sich aus den Spielinhalten und -formen, der aktuellen Technologie, der Vereinbarkeit von Erlösmodellen mit dem Verbraucherschutz und den veränderten Rollen der Akteure sowie den sozialen Komponenten der Angebote ergeben, werden hier Thema sein. Zudem sollen die bisherigen Reaktionen von Gesetzgeber, Regulierungsbehörden und Politik diskutiert werden.

And if you want to see the topics in English, you'll find the program here. Me, I am taking this opportunity to start brushing up my German. It used to be much better than my English - before those two young adults were born.

Slowed shock

12 days ago my mother died. When I learned of her death, I sat there, expecting a jolt of some kind. Nothing happened. Then I started taking action. Apart from the persons who found her, two of the wonderful neighbourhood ladies who looked in on her after they started worrying, I was the first to get the message. I had to talk to a lot of people very fast, then figure out what to do about the practical issues surrounding a death.

It's not something you can rehearse. It's not something I had researched. Even now, when it's all done, I shy away from it. I don't want to remember the details of what I needed to deal with.

My mind is very busy shying away from topics right now. It knows there is this big minefield, and stepping into it needs to be done carefully. I loved my mother, but I was also incredibly angry with her. Much of that anger was justified, but now I can let it go.

All of this takes time, my mind tells my brain. The brain wants to get on with things. I have always had an impatient brain. But the mind has a - well - can a mind have a mind of its own? Not really, huh? Anyway - I want to move on, but since I am moving through this mindfield of issues that slip into the past with each step, everything is slowed down.

And that's actually what I was getting to today. Just takes some time to get there.

So, this post is to tell people who wonder why I am extremely passive and out-of-the-loop that no, I am not that passive, I have this mindfield I need to walk through. I am ok. Just slow.

(And yes, at first it was a typo. But sometimes my fingers are smarter than me. It is a minefield of the mind.)

The sense of the absurd

Sometimes, truths can only be spoken through the impossible, the absurd, ridiculous and surreal. For my funeral, I would like all to act like dadaists. Don't even try to make sense, and please, put the established objects to new use. And if you feel you need to throw something in some grave, don't use flowers. Throw seeds.

Out of touch

I will be unavailable for anything but emergencies until May first. That means most likely no internet, and very limited phone access.

Games and public relations

Most of my readers know I play games, write about them and talk about them. Some know about the blogs too. Well, the meta-part, not just the blogging. And then there's the group that mainly knows me as the teacher, occasionally leader, of a public information/public relations education.

I have been working with this side of communication since 1991, and it's how I entered into studying games. The original study I did of games was the study of one called "Det store manndomsspranget" - the great leap to manhood. This game was finished in 1998, and was just about to be published when it was said to be stopped by the the government which - at the time - had a christian people's party representative as the prime minister: Kjell Bondevik. Even before it was published, the game was critizised for the extreme effect it would have on young people.

The game was designed to teach young boys about relations to others, with and without sex. Mainly it rewarded communication, willingness to wait until both parties were ready, acceptance of alternative sexualities and different cultures. The critics claimed it would make young boys want to try out sex. Also it would lead to negative feelings about monogamy, and encourage polygamy and homosexuality. As you understand, an extremely dangerous game. If you would like to test your personal integrity and are willing to risk ending up polyamorous, gay and obsessed with sex, in 2001 the game was available from Helsedirektoratet, in Norwegian, of course.

My own work with this game was to analyse and discuss its potential as a persuasive game. Since it was created by the Norwegian board of Health in order to educate and persuade boys about/into safer and generally more well considered sex, it was a very interesting experiment for me to write about. I was in general working a lot on health campaigns and information concerning gender, sexuality, abuse, pregnancies and abortion, using several large Norwegian campaigns as examples for my students. Most of the different aspects of these campaigns were however targeting girls. Girls are a lot easier to find, if you want to communicate with them strategically. They read magazines, they watch certain programs, they surround themselves with certain objects, such as school journals. Boys at the age of 13-17 are however much harder to reach. At this age they disappear into their own interests, and very little can pull them back out of it.

What I wanted to learn was if a game could do it. Could I expect a game to be a sufficiently strong medium that boys would be able to take their learning experiences from the game world to the real world?

My conclusion after watching the game, playing it, testing it on a few choice subjects, discussing it against theories of the formation of ideas and attitudes and in general using what tools I had short of a very big and long experiment, was that no. At least not this game.

What happens with games, even extremely pedagogic, educational games such as The Great Leap to Manhood, is that when you start playing, you enter into a play sphere. It's more fun to see what kind of responses you can get out of the game (if I put the avatar's hand under the girl's skirt, will she slap him?), than to try and respond politically correctly. This could then encourage non-monogamous experiments in the game space (can the avatar manage to date both the girls?) Would this endanger the Norwegian core family? Hardly - the game was a point-and-click adventure which at no point let you forget that this was exactly that, a game.

I was thinking about this work now, because I was shelfing, unread, Ian Bogost's Persuasive Games. Spillets leser - leserens spill was in many ways before it's time, and it was looking at connections between games and persuasion which is frequently overlooked.

First of all, as public relations research shows us, it's not easy to create attitude change. It happens slowly, and the media have a limited influence on our attitudes and values.

Second, coming from reader-response theory, which I run into only rarely these days, the analysis of The Great Leap addresses a theory which originally was abandoned due to the fact that "interactivity" in Iser's sense and "interactivity" in the game sense is not the same. Today it might be the time to go back to those topics and question the theories of the active reader more closely. What kind of reading IS gaming?

Third, boys know the difference between playing in order to satisfy the teacher, and playing to satisfy their own curiosity. The issues of oppositional readings must be huge with pedagogical, or "serious" games. Now, there might be a lot of research on this which I have just ignored as I haven't really followed the "serious" scene that closely, but so far I have seen very little on this.

Still, today I find myself thinking that going from Public Relations to games was not such a long step after all. The theories I have explored, the problems I have written about and the topics I teach have changed, but it's still all about how people behave while they communicate. I may straddle a gap, but it's not as wide as it looks.

Researcher's retreat for you?

My best writing is always done when away from the daily running of the department at which I have now worked for almost 18 years. While I am here, I know too much about what goes on, and I care and get distracted by it. Away it is true: Out of sight, out of mind. This means that 3 weeks at the end of a publishing process normally is all I need to write a decent article. Three weeks, somewhere peaceful to stay, an internet connection and a library.

Now, thanks to the generousity of Volda College, specifically the Media Department, others can have exactly this if they want to come to Volda! We're formalising this as soon as possible, but the outline of what the department is offering is this:

An easygoing, if sometimes very busy and focused staff, with which to have lunch and occasionally even interesting conversations. The main topics of research and teaching here are journalism, public information, animation, television documentary and new media.

An apartment, at an extremely good rate by any standards, for three weeks (time depends somewhat on how many need to use the apartment a given month).

A desk in a common office, with internet connection.

An ok library (not the largest, but with an extremely helpful and friendly staff).

For this we ask one 90-minute lecture over a topic of your choice - your speciality, the thing you would really like to share with others, the research you're most proud of. If you can't make up your mind, contact us to ask what we need, and we'll slot you into one of the many courses running here.

There's no funding for travel, and nothing to cover your work here unless you negotiate that directly with an interested party. This is an offer mainly aimed at making your own funding go a little longer than it would otherwise. It's a way to make it possible to get away from the daily grind and stay for a while in an extremely peaceful spot on the planet. Fresh air, small community, very little crime, amazing opportunities for hiking or skiing (get a map, you'll need it!), a few concerts while the students are active and organising it, otherwise just a quiet place to be while you rewrite that pesky manuscript.

Volda is far away from everything, but sometimes, that's just where you want to be.

Skype television

There's a show on Norwegian state television (NRK 2) that I didn't know about, it's called Sveip, and runs in the afternoons. It covers net news, and uses the net to do interviews and reportage. My upcoming trip to The Gathering appears to be good news for them, so yesterday I was on the air, live from Volda. It's in Norwegian, but for non Norwegian speakers, I can tell you that we were talking about this research project.

I am fascinated by the ease as well as the quality of the transfer. There was a problem with the light, I drew all the curtains but the sunlight still made me look quite washed out. I don't mind though - not all the details about me look good on television.

And you wondered

why there aren't more women playing games? Perhaps "Shii", the Wii for women gives you the answer.

Professor plans World of Warcraft book

It's big news in The Post Chronicle, that Bonnie Nardi has rceived a 100 000$ grant to study the Chinese approach to playing World of Warcraft. The article focuses on the fact that she's studying WoW - from my point of view it's more stunning that she got all that money to do it!

It's going to be interesting to read her conclusions. The attempts I have heard of to penetrate the Chinese gaming culture have so far failed, and any information about what they do will be interesting. However, considering what I am writing about currently (the community practices of gamers), I really hope that she has noticed that a lot of the mods being used by her American gamers are not created solely by Americans. A lot of the modding spring out of European communities, and if she is to play the geographic differences card, it would be a good idea to remember that Europe still hasn't been taken over by the US - even if much of it is part of NATO. Is it an English language thing? Do Europeans and Australians mod their UI as much as the Americans? What about the Russian, French and Spanish servers in Europe? The Japanese?

And that before we start talking about co-use of machines. My small survey, where I suspect not a lot of Chinese are participating, shows that more than 80% of the gamers play on their own machine. I don't think that number is much smaller for US gamers, although Europeans, particularly in the Nordic countries, have a high saturation of technology. But if you play on a machine used by any number of strangers, to modify the UI can become a real source of conflict. There's nothing as annoying as taking over an interface designed for somebody else. Yep, even in the 20 minutes since I read that little piece of news, the questions are popping up like mushrooms - which is a good thing. Nardi has hit an interesting area to question.

Anyway, Mez sent me the link to the news article, and she asked if Bonnie Nardi is a gamer. What can I say but "I sincerely hope so"? It would be too bad if 100 000$ was spent on gamer scholarship ignoring the game.

------------------------
PS: Of course, I forgot to congratulate Bonnie Nardi. I am such a barbarian, I forget simple things like that. I was too caught up in the topic and the possibilities. But here it is, a few days late: Congratulations!

Overwhelmed by game research surveys

In my quest to find good places where to post links to my survey, I happend on gamesforum.com, which I recommend for discussions, but not for posting research questions! I posted without reading through the entire board, and the administrators received my post in a friendly manner - but noted that I'd probably not get a lot of replies, as they had been flooded with surveys lately. That's when I started reading.

If you're interested in seeing what kind of research questions the coming generations of researchers are asking, check gamesforum.com! There they are, the links, and the questions and the presentations. Finland and California, the games researchers unite in the search for good respondents. It's quite amusing as well as, of course, an extra challenge to getting my respondents. And it gives me an idea about what kind of questions students ask.

Tracking

While we all hate to be tracked, supervised or in other manners controlled (well, ok, not all, some need to know they are supervised to be happy), to be able to track other things is oddly satisfying. I am watching the progress of a package that's making its slow way towards me, from it's sent, through the many terminals where it's re-loaded. With some luck I should have it tomorrow, as today's stop should be the last one before here. It might seem slow - this is the third day I am tracking this - but I was told it might take two weeks before this arrived. So, I am delighted, and if it's as nice as I think, there might soon be a new exstatic tech blog post!

The Gamers' Space

In order to understand more about the way gamers integrate digital gaming in their everyday life, I have made a survey for gamers. I am also asking for pictures of the spot where you spend most of your time playing games. More information about this project is available at The Gamers' Space, the weblog I have created to promote, administrate and keep participants informed about the development of this project. I'll also post links at the participants boards of some of the big games out there. If you would like to participate or you would like to spread the word about this project, please link to http://roomforresearch.blogspot.com

If you would like to send me a picture of your digital gaming set-up, whether it's a laptop or a monster machine with specially built chair, please send it to research dot game at gmail dot com.

Finally here

Isn't it impressive? All black and blue with some touches of green and purple (like a bruise you'll be certain to remember for a while) Perceiving Play, the art and study of computer games.


And I sincerely hope the impact if this book isn't too painful. It's a slim little thing, after all.

Navel Gazing

From the world of amazing research: Belly-button fluff. The research of the Austrian researcher Steinhauser has revealed what belly button fluff is made of, and how come it migrates to the belly button. It turns out that it is avoidable, you just have to shave your belly, alternatively get a belly-button piercing. Knowing that the main carrier of belly button fluff is an overweight, middle-aged male, the image of shaved bellies and pierced belly buttons is perhaps slightly disturbing.

Georg Steinhauser does not only stare at bellies though. From the Technical University of Wienna, 2008, a report of his research on the chemical fingerprint of volcanic eruptions through studies of pumice.

Used book

I just bought a used book, Tracy Fullerton's Game Design Workshop, after strong endorsement of it during a recent meeting. I am not working with games at the moment, lecturing on persuasion and democracy in the media mostly, but I wanted to write my name and shelf the book.

That's when I saw it. This book had a greeting written on the first page. In 2005, this book was a present from a loving father to his son.

What can I say - there's hope, when parents choose to challenge their children by offering them reading they can actually learn from, books that can give them structure and understanding of how things work. I do feel a little sad that the book is here. But it looks like it's been at least carried around a bit, although the back of it is unbroken - if he did read it, he did so gently.

In waiting

Today, in between preparing lectures and despairing at my own lack of discipline, I keep googling "bento box japan" or "bento lunch recipe". I have ordered a Bento box from Ebay, and am waiting, exited, for it to arrive.

Bento is a way ot organise a meal so that it can easily be transported. Many societies put a lot of effort into bringing meals with them from home. The Japanese bento boxes are the modern, often very high-tech (it's japanese), but always beautiful answer to the problem of bringing food. In India they have people who live from fetching lunch boxes in people's homes, dropping them off at work, then picking them up and taking them home. In Norway, we have two slices of dark bread, one with white and one with brown cheese, wrapped in waxed paper and eaten with coffee, milk or water, the infamous Norwegian matpakke.

With my food-issues, I haven't had a regular matpakke for almost 8 years. I have been lunching on salads or left-overs from last night's dinner, contained in tupperware type containers and sometimes, when possible, heated quickly in the microwave. This is ok, and works well, but imagine my delight when I started looking up different types of lunch boxes, and found the bento-boxes. Not to mention the community around them and the recipes and ideas this community generates: I love it.

While I am not all that picky about food looking pretty, and I don't think I'll be arranging pink bunnies or create desserts that look like cherry blossoms, I am looking forwards to a simple and easy way to separate foods which should not be mixed, this way giving myself more options while keeping the packaging compact and in one unit. Also, the boxes are pretty!

It's at Amazon

Not yet in a mailbox near me, but I can see it on Amazon. What? Oh, just the book of books: Perceiving Play - the art and study of computer games.

It's with very mixed feelings that I see it for sale. I have put a lot of work into it, and so have the editors and everybody else who have been in touch with the process. Now it's out there, and it is pretty scary, because that means others can pick it up, read it and tell the world everything that's wrong with it.

And I know it's not perfect. It's just the best I could do at the time, within the limitations I had given it. I think it should work pretty well to make people see that research on games is a lot more than researching violence and addiction (which does not happen in the proportions one might think from the media.) It should also be a fair enough place to start when you want to find other research on games. And perhaps it has an interesting thought or two. I hope.

But I am still pretty proud of it!
---

A better place to learn about the book may be a Peter Lang's website, where you will also find links to many of the other interesting books in the same series.

Seriously, NSB...

I normally don't complain about the much-harassed Norwegian railroad. I love trains, and one of my big complaints about living in Norway is that the country is so hard to build railroads in. I want much more of it.

But today I realised that NSB really could be smarter than it is. I am trying to find a way to travel from Oslo to Karlstad. I know there are trains there. But NSB refuses to let me see anything beyond the Norwegian borders, and this is just at the other side, 2-3 hours into Sweden.

When I use wideroe.no, I can book tickets all over the world, whether Wideroe or SAS fly there or not. With NSB I don't get any help if I want to pass the border. Perhaps it deserves some of the criticism after all? When I checked the Swedish railroad, going from Oslo to Karlstad (and back) was no problem at all. Go figure.

Hey, NSB, how come the SWEDES can do it, and not you?

(Oh, and if it IS possible to check the time-table on this distance from the NSB site but I was too stupid to find it - well, then a hard look at the user interface would be a brilliant idea.)

Dead blogs

There are a lot of dead blogs out there, and some of them are in otherwise live newspapers. The norwegian paper Dagens Næringsliv - a wannabe Financial Times, right down to the pink paper - has an impressive list of bloggers. Sadly, the last blogpost was written in 2007.

This makes me wonder, again, about the weblog and its function in the public debate. In this case the high-profile, eminently competent people who were asked to blog obviously did not find it worth while to follow up the task. This, while others are still blogging in many a little corner of the universe, calmly talking from much lower soap-boxes in more remote corners of the online public sphere. Is the weblog the commoners' medium? Is the prestige gone out of blogging with the hype, now that the big agencies are all thinking about how to twist the power of facebook to their service?

Hmmm.

I know what to do now

This week-end, things fell into place. I know what to do now. It's a really odd feeling, kind of a mixture between waiting for a dentist appointment and being in love.

I have been trying to write abstracts for AOIR and the Nordic Media Research conference, but not successfully. Every time I have tried, I have ended up with this huge project that has been getting in the way of any small things, like papers and articles. The project is horribly ambitious, it's going to demand a network of researchers and lots of funding, and there's no way I can do any of it before either conference. But it doesn't want to go away.

So, I am giving in to it. I am going to start planning a large research project. OK, fates, I am giving in, do you hear me? Stop nagging!

And yes, that worked. Now that I have put the PROJECT into my schedule - my pretty immediate schedule - I can start working on other things. It's going to demand some compromise. I will, for instance, for the Nordic Conference of Media and Communication research, base my abstract on a talk I gave this fall. I have the material ready, the research almost all done, all I need is to write the paper/article. Easy-peasy, and I was planning to do that anyway. For AOIR I'll run with an idea I had quite recently - and nope, I am not announcing it here just yet. That would ruin the whole blind-review process. I'll let you all know if it's accepted :) If it isn't, I'll pretend I never meant to go to IR 10.0 anyway. It's in Milwaukee. How does one even GET to Milwaukee?

Well, now you know. I just wanted to say this. A purely therapeutic blogpost for me, but at least you got links to a couple of conferences out of it.

All your typoes are belong to us

Have you typoed an url lately? Where did you land? The last times I have tried that, I have ended up in a site of mega religion cristian somethings, where the big news on the first site is something along the line that the bible is true. They now have testimonies proving that.

I have to admit that while this is great advertising, I am shocked by the way one organisation, this time a very fanatic religious one, has been able to hijack the Internet. There must be a mechanism somewhere that redirects all typoes that would otherwise lead to a "file not found" to this site. How has it happened? Have they bought the spot? Can it be bought? If so, what did it cost? Or have they hacked it, planted a bug that infiltrates your machine, and then sends you off to their site, rather than just google search site or something. Are there thousands of religious fanatics that keep creating websites with typoed versions of every website out there, which then redirects to this page? Have they taken over explorer? Did Bill Gates receive Jesus in his heart, and started preaching through the error messages?

It's quite scary. Fanatics are no more reassuring just because they are Christian.

And yes, I deliberately did not use exact phrasing or links in this post. They get more than enough hits out of me as it is.

I want electronic books!

I have started to look at electronic book readers, as I am one of those who like to write outside of the office, but the office is where my library is. Now, if I had a nice electronic book reader, that wouldn't be a problem, because I could just bring my books with me. Even if the limitation on the book reader was, let's say, 100 books, that meant I could empty it into an electronic library on a hard drive, and just bring the books I wanted. Or have them in an online bookshelf. It would really change my life. Why have nobody thought about this before?

Right.

Perhaps the best supported electronic book reader is the Amazon Kindle, . It can contain about 200 titles, is wireless on the satelite band and so is always connected if you want to update newspapers or download books, and there are 230 000 books available. The weight? 300 grams. It sounds like a dream come true! The price? Well, not as cheap as a book, but 260$ I'd definitely pay to have all the books I need available all the time. Now, just as I was getting exited, I checked if I could get this in Norway, and use it in Norway. No. I can't. Bummer.

Sony has a lovely reader though, and although it's a little bit more expensive than the Kindle, it looks very interesting. It's not as proprietary as the Kindle, reads more formats, which makes it a lot more available. My electronic journal access suddenly means I can download the relevant articles to the reader, and drag with me whole years of relevant publications to places where I'd never take a computer. What's that but major cool?

From the webpage: "You can also create annotations with a virtual keyboard, highlight text with a stylus pen, search for text in your digital book, and easily adjust the font size." Oh yes, I'll happily shell out 300$, even now that the Norwegian krone has dropped, for the opportunity to carry 2-300 texts with me in the backpack when I am off to work elsewhere. This has to have a downside. "Note: Use of companion eBook Store limited to U.S. and Canadian residents. Certain titles may not be available for download based on place of residence." Lovely. This is probably why this item doesn't show up at all on the Norwegian Sony site.

One should think that these days, with the tight economy, the enormous number of free hands and the need for cash flowing into the United States, buying things from abroad should be a tad easier. What are they afraid I'll read? Benjamin Franklin's autobiography?

That I could read, if I want to, though. Manybooks.net contains 22,900 free e-books, many of the same as Project Gutenberg. If I mainly wanted the reader in order to always have a great novel available, I wouldn't worry about the restrictions, and just buy one. Come to think of it, that's a great thing to have. Thousands of books available to be packed into a tiny space. Would save a world of searching for English book-stores when we're on vacations.

However, what I really want is the books we use, regularly, the ones standing in our bookshelves. The ones I have already shelled out thousands and thousands for, so I can have them close, and the ones I will pay as much for in the future. They are the books that stop me, when my colleague talks enthusiastically about a month in a remote village in Greece, to write articles. I would love the village, sure, but I'd not write much. This is why when I travel, I go somewhere with bookstores and libraries. I don't know exactly which books I'll need before I go, and the nature of my work makes it hard to write without a reference library. And it isn't available online.

Our books, the ones we want, the ones we read and use and cite and think about, they haven't been put online. No matter how savvy we feel, how updated on the cutting edge of net use - we publish on paper only. Yeah, dinosaurs. Lovable, useful, reassuring dinosaurs, which I don't want to be without, but still...

So, dear scholars, dear scholarly publishing houses: How about those electronic books? Wouldn't that be a great idea?

Professional data miner

No, that does not mean a herb-stealing, saronite-ninjaing gold miner, but an expert in quantitive data gathering in large databases. Such as, for instance, World of Warcraft. Would you like that job? Sifting through the information hidden in their huge storage sites, finding ways to gather, represent and analyse that huge stock of raw data, turning it into knowledge? Then by all means, apply for the job!

Pregnancy in games

I am flabbergasted. (Great word, I just had to use it.) I never thought to even look for this in games, and it's right there! Thanks Rene, for pointing to this great article on pregnancies and how it's treated in games.

DAC 2009

The website for the Digital Arts and Culture 2009 conference is up. This year it's in Irvine, California, in December.

DAC09 will be held on the campus of the University of California Irvine, for three and a half days in mid-December 2009

The Themes for this iteration of DAC:

* Embodiment and performativity
* Mobile/locative/situated/wearable practices
* Software/platform studies
* Environment/ sustainability/ climate change
* Interdisciplinary pedagogy
* Cognition and Creativity
* Sex and sexuality

Organiser and chair is Simon Penny.

Ja, vi vet alt for lite

At times I feel like giving up on what we in Norway call "forskningsformidling" - popularising and communicating research. All the efforts done, nationally and internationally, to understand what gaming is and how it influences society are made invalid to the Norwegian debate by plain and simple lack of knowledge and critical sense in Norwegian media. Friday's news item on games at nrk.no is another example of amazing lack of a critical approach to certain opinions. Forgive me, English-language readers. The rest of this post will be in Norwegian.

Fredag morgen, 6 februar, hadde Dagsnytt i NRK en nyhetssak om at kulturdepartementet setter av en million til opplysning om og forskning på problemskapende spillbruk. De sa imidlertid ikke "problemskapende spillbruk", de sa spillavhengighet. Mange mener dette er det samme, i alle fall ville en eventuell spillavhengighet være ganske problematisk. Imidlertid finnes det ikke noen diagnose som sier spillavhengighet. At norske media og enkelte grupper i den norske offentligheten, her representert ved NRK, på død og liv vil påprakke en gruppe en diagnose gjør den ikke til noen faktisk sannhet.

Det de gjør er imidlertid å skape en sosial sannhet. Saken slik den ble sendt på radioen var ganske ille. Den inneholdt alle de forventede ingrediensene, en bekymret mor, en interessert forsker som stort sett fikk si noen omtrentligheter og en ikke helt godt forstått melding om forskningsmidler om spillbruk. På Torsdagens Joingame møte ved universitetet i Oslo presenterte seniorrådgiver i Kulturdepartementet, Dag Asbjørnsen, nyheten saken sannsynligvis bygger på. I den sammenhengen presiserte han at Kulturdepartementet snakker om "problemskapende spillbruk". Han sa ingen ting om det NRK påsto i nyhetene:

Kulturdepartementet øker satsingen på dataspill, og jobber nå med en ny handlingsplan for å bekjempe avhengighetsproblemet.

Forsknings- og opplysningsmidlene som Kulturdepartementet satte av var, slik jeg oppfattet Dag Asbjørnsen, midler som skulle brukes til å finne ut hva problemskapende spillbruk er, og til å spre informasjon om dette. Når NRK presenterer dette som om Kulturdepartementet endelig vil utrydde spillavhengighet vil jeg i alle fall se/høre kilden til deres utsagn.

NRK påstår at et fenomen som er svært omstridt, og som spesialister som har arbeidet med feltet lenge avviser, er et faktum.
NRK trekker fram, først og fremst på nettsiden, andre problematiske saker som alle på ett eller annet vis har blitt tillagt spillavhengighet, mens de ikke trekker fram saker som sier noe annet. Dette er en form for ensidig rapportering som er noe helt annet enn god journalistikk.

Kanskje har NRKs reportere misforstått hva det vil si å være kritisk. Dataspillbransjen er i ferd med å bli veldig stor, og det er all grunn til å være kritisk til den. Et norsk eksempel er Dagbladets fokus på arbeidssituasjonen i Funcom. Internasjonalt er det flere ganger rapportert svært dårlige arbeidsforhold for ansatte i ulike spillfirma. Lange dager, lav jobbtrygghet og dårlig arbeidsmiljø er ikke uvanlige forhold for ansatte i bransjen. Med tanke på de svært mange programmererne og designerne som spesialiserer seg mot spill i norske utdanningssinstitusjoner er det grunn til å spørre om ikke nyhetsmedia forsømmer sitt samfunnsansvar når all kritikk av spillbransjen handler om kritikk av spillenes suksesskriterier, og ikke for eksempel ser på de framtidige arbeidsforholdene for alle disse entusiastiske studentene.

Det er all grunn til å spørre hvor pengene for spill går: hvem tjener på spillene? Spillbransjen er adskillig mindre dekket på dette feltet enn for eksempel musikk- og filmbransjen, og det sier ganske mye. Store multinasjonale selskap kjøper opp gode ideer og gjør dem til sine egne. De tar også over ideer gratis, ved at spillernes innsats integreres i spillene uten at de får betaling for det. Svært mange entusiaster arbeider mye med å gjøre spillopplevelsen bedre for seg selv og andre, og dette er gratis arbeidskraft for spilleiere som allerede tjener godt - hvorfor finnes det ikke et lett tilgjengelig system for å belønne denne innsatsen?

Forskerne får ikke tilgang til opplysninger om spillermassen, om sentrale element i utviklingsprosessen og om arbeidsprosessene i produksjonen: Er det akseptabelt at så store organisasjoner er så lite tilgjengelige for innsyn?

Dette er kritikk av spillbransjen som blir helt oversett i journalistenes "kritiske dekning av dataspill." Det er ganske enkelt å forstå hvorfor dette skjer. Det er veldig lett å finne folk som spiller mye, og andre folk som er bekymret for disse. En hvilken som helst journalist kan prate med foreldrene til noen ivrige dataspillere på ungdomsskolen, og vips har de en "kritisk sak" til et stort og kjent fenomen. Det er adskillig vanskeligere å sette seg inn i sosiale, økonomiske og politiske forhold som spillene blir produsert innenfor.

Det vi får er dermed en situasjon hvor journalistikken stempler en stor gruppe svært aktive spillere, påfører dem en ikke-eksisterende diagnose og er med på å rettferdiggjøre noe som kan være overgrep og frihetsberøvelse i godhetens navn. Når barn blir tvangsinnlagt på grunnlag av avvikende adferd blir det vanligvis knapt nok omtalt i pressen. Barn og ungdom har svært få rettigheter når deres foresatte ikke er fornøyd med deres adferd. Det hjelper ikke denne allerede svake gruppen at det blir akseptert i nyhetsmedia at enkelte blir tvunget til å kureres for adferd som vi faktisk ikke vet er det faktiske problemet, eller bare et symptom på helt andre og adskillig større problemer.

Utgangspunktet for den aktuelle nyhetssaken, og dermed denne bloggposten, var en rapport om at det skal komme litt penger til forskning på problemskapende spillbruk. Ja, det er veldig nødvendig med slik forskning. Det er imidlertid svært tungt å initiere forskning og forskningsformidling om hva spill er så lenge journalistikken er så ekstremt vinklet i en bestemt retning at det kan se ut som en systematisk fortiing av all uenighet med det rådende medieparadigmet. Hvor er det mediekritiske perspektivet i denne saken? Må vi som forsker på spill begynne å rapportere alle tilfeller av misrepresentasjon av våre utsagn til PFU? For å sitere fra vær varsom-plakaten:

1.4. Det er pressens rett å informere om det som skjer i samfunnet og avdekke kritikkverdige forhold. Det er pressens plikt å sette et kritisk søkelys på hvordan mediene selv fyller sin samfunnsrolle.

Nei, jeg kritiserer ikke pressen for å stå på sin rett til å skrive om at mange bruker spill på en måte som bidrar til problemer, nå og i framtiden. Jeg kritiserer pressen for å ikke oppfylle sin plikt til å se på hvordan den utøver denne retten.

Mythbusting

In this picture: Torill Mortensen, Faltin Karlsen, Jessica Enevold, Rune Klevjer and Snorre Bryne.


Links for an afternoon of discussions about myths around computer games:

Studies from NOVA on youths and computer culture - in Norwegian mostly.

NRK interview with Ole Jensen, concerned grandfather, Dagfinn Nordbø, childrens ward specialist, Leila Torgersen, researcher and psycholog and Rita Brudalen, from the Norwegian Media Authority: Verdibørsen, 24 januar 2009.
Dagfinn Nordbø argued against the idea that children are so impressionable that they don't see the difference between games and society.

Leila Torgersen presented her study of 12000 children and youngsters, and their use of computer games. She had found that children who are interested in violence in general are also interested in violent computer games, and that children from families that did not interfer with the childrens' media consumption and let them play as much and what ever they liked had a slightly higher preference for violent solutions after a some years. It was however not possible to establish a causal relationship between violent computer games and violence in real life.

She had a few very important points to add: Over the last 10 years youth violence has been decreasing in Norway, it is not increasing. In the same period children report less loneliness. This is the opposite tendency of the myths about the lonely, violent youths produced by the increasing use of computer games.

An interesting curiosity: Action games where the player identifies with a character who needs to solve his problem through violence showed a slightly larger tendency to create positive thoughts about violence than the much more directly violent first-person shooters. The difference was not big, we are talking small margins here, but it does change a few ideas about what kind of violence is really violent.

Her findings are also supported by C. J. Fergusons findings in his study of school shooters, which I wrote about recently.

Active gamers and health: Swedish research, which I wrote about in 2008.

Ragnhild Tronstad's blogpost about "interested or addicted" - "Hekta eller avhengig" at forskning.no. A good discussion about addiction and overwhelming interest, and the importance of making a distinction. Here she refers to the report by Jonas Linderoth and Ulrika Bennersted: "Att leva i World of Warcraft". This is a study of very active World of Warcraft players, where ten young players describe their lives.

Violence and violence...

A new study claims that there is no causal relationship between videogame violence and real life violence. In "The School Shooting/Violent Video Game Link:
Causal Relationship or Moral Panic?", C. J. Ferguson studied the people who were perpetrators in school shootings, and their relationship to video games. From the study:

Indeed, related to violent video games, the FBI report specifically stated, “The student spends inordinate amounts of time [although inordinate is never defined and is left subjective] playing video games with violent themes and seems more interested in the violent images than the game itself ” [italics added].

This confirms what media studies has been saying about entertainment violence for a very long time. It is a lot more relevant to the use of violence whether the person is interested in violence than if the person is exposed to violent media. If they are interested in violence (for instance through learning that violence is an acceptable tool to solve problems), they will seek out violent entertainment. It's not the violent entertainment that causes the violence, if anything, it's the other way around.

Tag this article, fellow media scholars. It's one of the few that looks with a critical eye on the methodology of other studies, and which looks for more than the one, simple and obvious connection.

Article found by way of Lisa Galarneau's notice on facebook. Thanks, Lisa :)

Torill talking this spring

While we're talking about where I will talk this spring:

February 6th I'll be in Oslo, at a seminar organised by JoinGame, a Norwegian network promoting game research and development. I will be there on the 5th as well, but then I'll just be your regular participant.

February 19th I'll be in Trondheim, for a meeting at the Norwegian Technical University (NTNU) - no public talking (I think), but I'll meet the always wonderful Sara Brinch.

March 6th I'll be at something which it surprised me that I was invited for: Leangkollseminaret, a meeting for medical doctors and psychologists, a traditional meeting place for discussions of addiction. This year's topic explains a lot however: "From technical spirits to facebook" (Fra rødsprit til facebook). I am a little apprehensive about this, as I am trying very hard not to talk about addiction, but I still want to go here. This is my best chance to talk to the people who really know what addiction is, to learn something from them and to perhaps be able to teach something about games, too.

Blikk

"Blikk" means "gaze" in Norwegian, and while it's probably a clever acronym, I haven't tracked it down to check for what. What I do know is that it's a conference for people who work with youths and culture, it's in March this year at Utstein Kloster, and I have been invited to talk. I just accepted, a little late as I had to make some decisions first, so I assume I'll be there. I was however very happy to see that Kristine Ask and Rune Klevjer, two active games researchers, had already accepted. The topic is: Games as a cultural phenomenon. This is going to be fun.

Electronic Frontier foundation

I am a little late to the party for blogging about this, as Electronic Frontier Foundation has been around for ten years. But the website is an extremely interesting resource for anybody interested in online freedom of speech, and I particularly recommend their list of legal cases.

The ethics of entertainment

This morning, as I was desperately trying to get into World of Warcraft (down for maintenance - on a Saturday morning!), the radio was on and playing Norwegian Broadcasting, program 2. After an initial discussion about the problems between Israel and the Palestinians (Norwegians are extremely torn about this issue - on the one hand, the whole European guilt, on the other hand, the very real suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza), the conversation turned to something entirely different: Entertainment violence.

I was just listening with half my brain, but almost woke up when I heard a Norwegian psychology scholar discuss game violence - in a sensible manner! I didn't catch her name, and I didn't catch the reference to her study (yes, I know), but I do have internet access. And so, for those of you who understand Norwegian and want to hear a refreshingly sane view on game violence, one which may actually be based on real and decent research, Verdibørsen, P2, January 4th. It's the second half of the podcast. Enjoy.

Weight and exercize

Now, something entirely different: weight and exercize.

People who have followed this blog for a while, know that I live with some allergies and health issues that occasionally are expressed here through recipes for low glycemic index cooking. While I don't eat low GI to lose weight, it has that wonderful effect to: I managed to lose a lot of weight and maintain my new weight when I changed diet.

This was something I did not expect. You see, I had tried it all by then: working out, eating less fat, you know, everything one should do. Working out has the effect of making me stronger, giving me more energy and generally making daily chores easier, so yeah, it is very good for me. But I didn't lose weight. I just gained muscle. So I had resigned. I'd gain a kilo or two each year, and by 60 I'd be obese. Rather depressing, so imagine my joy when I discovered that something actually worked!

Now, many years later, there is finally a piece of research that fits with my own experiences. If you read Norwegian, it's brilliantly explained at forskning.no. For those who don't, the essence of the research is this: If you try to cure obesity by taking in less energy than you use, the body will resist the process and either make you eat more, or shut down processes that uses energy. Starvation doesn't work in the long run, and the "less in, more out" strategy is basically a starvation strategy. What you need is to reduce the insulin in the body, as insulin stops the release of energy from fat, and leads to more storage of energy as fat. This was just what my change in diet did.

Now, I saw that once I had adjusted my way of eating to something in between low carb and low GI, I suddenly lost weight when I was physically active. The research explains this as well. Physical activity strengthens the insulin metabolism, and assists in releasing energy from fat. So, if you gain weight because your insulin metabolism is weak, working out will help you. My metabolism was screwed up already (I knew this, I have a condition that is not diabetes, but does mess with my metabolism), so just working out wasn't enough to help. For my family, who live on a normal, healthy diet and have a good metabolism, working out is enough to adjust their weight when ever it goes up. It's not that they eat less and use more. My son, the active climber, at times eats enough for the other three of us together, he is constantly hungry when he's active, and he's very, very skinny. It's just that they have a metabolism that lets them actually use what they eat. In the boy's case, this means that when he spends the day being lazy, he hardly gets hungry. Which is the way it should be.

Of course, in order to get to the point that I could lose weight, I had to work hard at learning what was good for my body. If I had known that one result would be weight loss, I think I would never have figured it out. We are so drilled in the "less calories in, more calories out" way of thinking, that it would have stopped me from finding the diet that eventually would help stabilising my entire body at a much healthier level. And even now I am not at what medicine says is a "healthy" weight for a woman my size. As for fashion? Forget it. Too many curves, and not in the right places, for fashion. But I am healthier, staying fit is easier, I have more energy as I can use it, rather than store it as fat, and I finish my meals with a very good conscience. Now I also understand a bit more about why this works, when nothing else did.

Discworld and World of Warcraft

Did you know there was a MUD based on the Discworld, the universe created by Terry Pratchett? I knew, actually, although I had never visited it.

The one who did visit is Faltin Karlsen, a Ph D student, and currently a doctorate candidate, at the University of Oslo. He defends his thesis Emergent perspectives on multiplayer online games: A study of Discworld and World of Warcraft tomorrow. I know, because I am one of the opponents.

As such, I don't really want to say too much about this. I just wanted to say this: The test lecture is at Forskningsparken Friday 16th at 9.15. The defense starts 11.15. I am going to do my best to make it an interesting, worth-while event.

Are you serious?

A fun email dumped into my box today, drawing my attention to a business plan that at first made me giggle happily. Then I checked the date. Nope, not April first. That's when my evil mind started looking for exploits.

The people in Seriosity, Inc. think the inbox should be a game - or at least, sorted through a virtual economy. And so, as the market economy ideal burns and crashes, Edward Castronova is an advisor to the company as it attempts to build a virtual economy by which to organise your mailbox. Prioritize depending on how much currency people are willing to pay for your attention, get Serios today!

Serios is the virtual currency you need to pay for the attention of others. It's expected that people will be careful with their serios, and not spend a lot of them, mostly splurging, according to the demo, on things like mails to the manager (50 serios).

From their white paper on email economy:

Attent users are given certain number of Serios every week. Serios are allocated equally to each user. Serios can be spent, saved or traded like a physical currency, and like an actual currency Serios are a scarce good that is valued among Attent users. Serios are traded using a secure, reliable financial system that keeps track of trades. And there are sophisticated monetary policies that insure the financial system stays healthy and the currency remains stable.

So, let's say I want to write one of my colleagues, and I want to let them know there's cake for the lunch break (no, there isn't, this is just an example!). That is the kind of information they really want to get (it's just an example! There's no cake in the lunch break today!!!), so I don't need to attach any serios to it. It's also not vital (one should think), so if they ignore it nothing really happens.

Now, let's say I want my colleagues to show up at a meeting to discuss next semester, and I want that meeting at the most peaceful time at the college: 08.00 sharp. If I want them to get that message, I would have to attach a huge load of serios, something like a million. Because it's January, next semester is almost a year away, and nobody have meetings at 08.00, as that's when the most eager of us stumble, still half-asleep, into the offices and start the procedure of waking up. I don't think they would get that message if I used a billion serios, no matter how serious the matter I needed to discuss was. Changing the time to 10 am, and adding cake, now that would get the message through at a much lower price.

Anyway. Now, as the middle manager sending off 5 emails with a million serios attached, I am broke. All out of serios. I got as many as the rest, but the others HATE the things I have to say to them (most of the time it means more work and less freedom to do their own stuff.) So the next email I need to send, which is a request for assistance in details for a letter to the students about their upcoming exams, gets no serios. I'll just have to trust that the recipients realise that this is more important than the cake during lunch (no, there is still no cake for lunch today). As a manager, trying to get the attention of colleagues who have a very different priority from mine, I'd quickly run out of serios. The system is then broken, as I don't have anything else to trade for serios - I am just a go-between and have no real power, just a big load of responsibility.

Now, I have to grind serios, by writing nice and serious emails my colleagues really want to read. I don't have time for that though, as I am working on all that stuff my colleagues don't want to know about. However, I have this contact in China, a nice young academic who is delighted to do such things as read books on public information and media theory, write short abstracts and reviews, make suggestions about how this can be used for teaching, and mail it to me - against a very modest fee. So I start my own little serios-farm, and pump out emails to my colleagues by flooding them with cheaply generated content. Soon the young academic in China is a well-established budget post, and I have all the serios I like and can spam my colleagues all the time with higly priced mails.

The problem is that my colleagues prefer the mails from the guy in China. You see - he delivers information they can use immediately, while I just make demands. So they start looking for mails with perhaps 2 or 3 serios attached, and ignore the ones with 50. The ones with big sums attached to them are now clearly mails I think they need to act on immediately, while the ones with small sums attached are fun and useful. And so even my little exploit is broken.

One of the exciting uses of the Attent system is that users have a new and extremely efficient way to give feedback to their correspondents. For example, if an e-mail recipient thinks that a new product idea sent with 50 Serios is valuable, they can reply with 60 Serios – a net reward of 10 Serios. On the other hand, if the e-mail recipient believes that a product idea sent with 50 Serios is not valuable, they can rely something less than 50, including zero Serios.

While this is a lovely thought, it assumes a lot about the rationality of human beings. It's the assembly-line taken to organisations all over again, assuming a system where all think alike, prioritize alike, and respond alike. If there's one thing organisation theory has taught us since the 50ies, it's that individually perceived importance and personal interest does not equal the best interest of the organisation.

The real problem with the broken exclamation mark on emails isn't that there is an exclamation mark instead of 500 serios connected to it. The real problem is that there is no common unit for measuring individual interest. What the serios may be good for are however to measure how co-workers feel about messages. As Seriosity goes on to say in their white paper:

In this group, outspoken members frequently clash with each other, while the ideas of other members get lost in the mix. As a result, the group is often unable to reach a consensus due to squabbling among members. When an idea is picked by the group, it is often due to the strength of an individual’s voice, rather than the appeal of the idea itself. In this environment, the talent of the group is wasted because all ideas are not heard equally. This creates hostility among team members, and slows innovation. In the competitive high-tech industry, this lack of innovation leads to product stagnation, ultimately resulting in falling sales.

Has currency ever given the world a solution to this problem? When money gets into this mix, it flows to those strongest voices, the person with more connections than talent, and it most certainly causes hostility. It creates a new, inventive way to silence the unwanted, disruptive voice: Don't respond with any serios! Soon the one with the really new and different idea will be as broke as the frustrated middle manager, and have no budget to draw on for Chinese serios-farmers.

Yes, Serios looks like a fun game I'd love to play with my friends and colleagues. I'd be more than happy to attach it to emails among folks I know will not abuse or exploit the system. The problem is: inside a flat, happy and friendly structure, you don't need that kind of a managing system, as people will respect each other's time and only write IMPORTANT in the headline when it is important. In a system with cut-throat competition, it will be broken 30 seconds after implementation.

So, I actually prefer to assume that whoever made this website and got Edward Castronova to play along, was not serious. As a joke, this is hilarious!

----
Castronova has responded to people's reactions to the proposition of serios, in two posts on Terra Nova. There is also a link to a post which describes the same email that set me giggling. Apparently it wasn't a joke.

Spring term in Volda

I have just finished planning the spring term (only one day after the students should have arrived), and I am quite delighted with the course I am responsible for this year - INF213, or, in plainer talk: the final semester of the bachelor in public information. Aside from combining some of my main interests in the teaching process: the net, the users and the communication that reaches the public, I get to have two really interesting guest lecturers. And this year I am really indulging, I have invited two friends of mine: Pattie Belle Hastings, who will be here in January, and Luca Rossi, who arrives in April.

In between this I will hopefully have time to produce a couple of articles - I have some half-chewed material that deserves to be finished, and one article I have promised to write for an anthology, which is worrying me. I haven't been able to write a single sentence in the chaos that was my "Christmas vacation" (I swear: "vacation" will from now on mean going abroad, or I will call it "work camp"), and while I feel like I am about to explode with the thoughts on the topic, I don't have time to actually let that explosion happen until the 19th. That is such a frustrating feeling: I know what I want to do and have to do, but work gets in the way of work.

On the up side: The book (yes, there is only one book so far - except all the other books of course, but I didn't write those) is finally really finished, and sent off to the printer. Expect it in March!

About research blogging

This autumn there was a slight stir in the Norwegian blog arena, as the forskning.no, the web site associated with the Norwegian Research Council, started a blogg with invited guest bloggers. Jill criticised the style and approach, while I said "yes please, and can I bring some friends?" when I was approached and asked if I wanted to blog for them.

It's the "bring some friends" part I am the most happy about, and it's also starting to spread on the blog. At first we (Ragnhild Trondstad, Kristine Jørgensen and me) were the only ones who blogged under a common name - spillforskerne, "the game researchers." Now there are more groups popping up, such as the sports researchers and the welfare researchers.

At the beginning, the blogs were an odd mix of too long and too heavy articles which could just as well have been printed in a journal, and too light articles which looked like "sex-in-the-city-goes-to-university." Now, a few months into the project, most of the bloggers have learned. Today's blogger is a typical and very good example. He's the dean of the medical faculty in Trondheim, but just before Christmas he slipped on the ice, fell, and broke 4 ribs. This leads to reflection on his field - medicine. A personal experience combines with his expertise to a process of contemplation and reflection which leads to sharing with others.

While this is not exactly blogging about ongoing research, it definitely communicates research. He links to other people's research, he puts it into a larger context, and he personalises it through sharing his thought process. By doing this he also describes how integrated research and reflection is in the life of researchers. He opens up to the process. Instead of spending his time dwelling on his considerable pain, he searches for a distraction through his job. Most researchers recognize this feeling. It's why we work until we get repetitive stress injuries, until we burn out, or until we are numbed with pains from the neck to the butt.

Also, he answers the question "when do you get time to work?" We get time to work all the time. Most of the researchers who publish regularly, who search for new projects and are active in their fields display a deep and abiding interest in the field, and can work while having a conversation with their children, going for a walk, or reconvalescing after accidents.

Of course, this means that we never really get to work. When you have the job pulling at you constantly, you're also constantly interrupted. The child does not want to listen to your lecture, your partner needs to talk about his own things while walking, the painkillers takes away your ability to really focus. Not to mention the distractions during the work hours. Students, lectures, meetings, colleagues, phones, assessments, reviews, deadlines, budgets, equipment - where are the ivory towers when we need one?

All of this is very nicely displayed on forskning.no. The system used for blogging is still not the best, and the approval process is comparably slow. But it has a good balance between the personal and the professional, it presents the people behind the research, and it's the most popular page on an already quite popular website.

It's the week before Christmas

Everything is slowly falling into place. The subject for which I am responsible this spring is taking shape. I have a few interesting dates for lectures and other public appearances in place. I am for instance scheduled to be part of Faltin Karlsen's defense in January. There are a couple of great people coming here to talk to the students. The book is finally out of my hands, and with the publisher, not to return here until in March, when the publishing date is.

I will be insanely busy during the Christmas week, but it will be good busy. I have to write a first draft for an article on e-learning and games, and for this I am planning to follow up the topic of theorycrafting and crowdsourcing. This means I have to read up on literature on how to be a better gamer, and test the theories out in World of Warcraft. Oh, the sacrifices we do for research. It all falls into the cross-over community topic I started to look into for the IR 9.0 conference in October 08, and aims at more work on collaborations and participation using multiple platforms. More about that later, I hope.

A lot of the work I am doing on games is now slowly falling into place with the work I have been doing on social software and the social web. Patterns are emerging in ways that makes it a lot easier to, for instance and rather unexpectedly makes it easier to lecture on Public Relations - which I am now doing regularly again after a break while in Umeå. I have always been in love with the process of seeing connections, caught in the web of knowledge as I am.

Now it's finally stopepd raining, after a week. The storm has relented, and I am optimistic about people coming home for Christmas. I'll be celebrating in one of the few spots the family controls which is still free from internet access: my mother's house, where I grew up with the most beautiful view I have ever lived with. It will be busy, messy, loud and not peaceful at all. But it will be a very different kind of mess, and I can't wait.

Ulsteinseminaret

I am currently in Ulsteinvik, half an hour away from Volda, but I could just as well have been on another planet for the distance from daily demands. The information education with our connections have left those mundane demands behind, in order to think and plan. This year we're looking at information technology, the Public Information/PR business, and the educaiton, and have a couple of guests.

Eirik Langås visited from Making Waves to talk about their practice and give examples of their online design projects. Right now I am listening to Pattie Belle Hastings, who is talking about teaching interactive media.

Less women than 25 years ago

According to New York Times there are less women in computing - or at least in the educations - than 25 years ago. And it's not just about building the right game to use to draw them in.

Wishlist

It's December 1st, and the kids have started hinting at what they want for Christmas. In that spirit, I have been trying to figure out what I want.

New umbrella.
I just went to Oslo and was dressed for cold, but ended in rain, with no umbrella. Home I checked the family store of umbrellas. We have loads of them, but only one or two that actually work, and none of the broken ones are worth repairing. So, a new umbrella, one with patterns and colour, strong enough to endure wind, but small enough to fit in the computer backpack.

Alice B. Toklas cookbook.
I got one years ago from one of my sisters, and I loved it. So did one of my friends, and she loved it so much it never returned. I'd really prefer to have the missing one back, but the recently published Norwegian translation would be good too. And no, I have never tried the brownies.

A red purse.
I have found the perfect shoes (despite not being able to search Copenhagen for them in October) for the Christmas parties this year, and now what I lack is a purse to match. As age progresses, I find that I need somewhere to put my reading glasses when I go out! So it has to be just big enough for a pair of glasses, some cards, cash, keys and a cellphone, and a deep, rich red. Yep, I have seen some already, but I just can't bring myself to paying 6-7000 kroner for something I'll use 5 times. Then I'd rather save the money for a lap-top for when I work at home, a semi-portable one that would be perfect in front of the television - but not really on the road. I'd use that probably about 340 days a year.

And that's where it stops. Somehow, my desire for more objects into my life has become quite limited. Sure, I'll be happy for presents, and there are things that make my life easier. I am starting to accumulate shopping bags, for instance - little nylon ones that lie peacefully in the pocket until I go shopping and say a slightly smug "no thank you" to the disposable plastic bags. Now, one may ask if it's better to have several nylon bags than plastic, but I have seen it work: bringing a bag keeps the content of the plastic-bag drawer down.

And that brings me to what I really want for Christmas. I need to unclutter my life. It feels like I just accumulate, rather than throw away. So if you have a brilliant de-clutterer...