One of my dreams as an aspiring academic just came true. Oh boy, that was fracking awesome! I was invited to give a presentation on ‘social play through participatory culture‘ for a class called “The Gaming Mind” at the Communication Studies department of UCLA. Since I heard the class has been deeply involved in the hardcore essence of game studies, I decided to introduce the students to some jewels of game culture research: modding, e-sports and machinima.

I spoke.

They learned.

We lol’d at some machima.

Henry Jenkins’ way of dealing with his field of research inspires me. He inexplicably finds the time to sustain an incredibly informative blog and pull off research/writing books at the same time. My hero! Now you might all have heard of the documentary Moral Kombat, seen the trailer or read about it. Professor Jenkins took it up a notch and offers some very interesting remarks on why we all should actually go see it.

” Let me start with a simple and straight forward statement: Spencer Halpin’s Moral Kombat is perhaps the most important film ever made about video games and you should see it if you get a chance. The film will force people on all sides of the debate about games and violence to re-examine their own positions and ask harder questions.”

So here’s part 1 and part 2.

Source: HenryJenkins.org (via Joystiq)

Picture courtesy of Joystiq (Thx, I lol’d)

In case you’re not familiar with the holy 50, you might want to start off with this book and work your way up to the rest. Scott Steinberg offers some great insights in the industry machine that even gamers know nothing about. Add up a collection of witty quotes from famous game industry folks, and you’re set! Knowing your industry is becoming an important thing, even for game researchers.

Did I mention the E-book is free?

According to recent research by a firm called I-Play, casual gamers will be more likely to start playing games on their mobile phone. And guess what I-Play sells!

I-Play’s President David Gosen had to following to say: “The frequency with which online casual gamers play is noteworthy and the fact that this group have twice the propensity to play mobile games as the average mobile user is hugely exciting and positive for the mobile games industry. Further potential is shown by the fact that nearly half of people surveyed would want to play their favorite online game on mobile, providing another positive indication of the cross-pollination opportunities between the two gaming communities.”

Let’s hope you’re right. For your own sake!

Source (and some exact research results at): Next-Gen.biz

Edward Castranova sure deserves some credit for his economical approach to virtual worlds. His keynote addressed the results of our combined growth of interest in the economies of virtual worlds. Here’s an excerpt:

“Three years ago, we struggled to convince anyone of the economic value of items created in synthetic worlds. Today, legal battles erupt around the issue, developing already into legislative battles in some countries. Soon, virtual economy will spawn political battles everywhere. The party lines of Fantasists versus Commercants do not fit within Right and Left. It’s all very murky. Yet economic analysis provides hope for a calm and equitable solution.”

Quite. Here’s the edited version of his keynote:

World of Warcraft is very popular among game researchers. No surprise since its really suitable for various game related research. Though much of this research is often on the same topics, it sometimes brings forth surprisingly new themes. Enter Rene Glas from the University of Amsterdam. He looked at how people were playing another game in WoW: ‘twinking’. Here’s the excerpt:

“This paper investigates one of the more controversial player practices in MMORPG’s, twinking, not in terms of value judgement but as a play from negotiating, working against and even transforming a MMORPG’s intended structure and design. Making use of participatory ethnographic observations of one of the World of Warcraft’s particular forms of twinking, this devious behaviour is discussed as being luxury play, dominance play, transformative play and standardized play, each form having its own influence on the way these virtual worlds are experienced by the player community and, notably, twinkers themselves.”

This should’ve been Dutch pride #4, since Rene rocked the Digra audience with this one.

So Henry Jenkins actually interviews others on game related subjects? Talk about a dedicated scholar gone journalist! Or maybe he’s been doing this for quite a while. I should read Jenkins his blog more often. According to his academic profile, Hutchinson has been quite the busy bee on this subject.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Today, I want to introduce you to David Hutchinson, the author of a recently released book, Playing to Learn: Video Games in the Classroom. Hutchinson’s book promises over 100 game activities appropriate for classroom use, a selection that spans across academic subjects. [...] Hutchinson’s focus is on what we can do in our schools right now, using projects already on the market, to tap student and teacher interests in games. In the course of the collection, the models many different conceptual approaches for thinking about games — including many designed to foster core media literacy skills. The result is a book which will be valuable to classroom teachers or for that matter, parents who want to engage their children in meaningful conversations about the place of games in their lives and about how games structure the way we see the world.”

This sure beats the hell out of reading interviews done by a random game illiterate journalist.

Picture courtesy of playingtolearn.org

My apologies for keeping you waiting! Having spent the entire weekend in a bungalow with old friends didn’t really involve any Internet access (or videogames), which is odd if you consider that most of our group of 24 people are gamers.

It’s good to get away from it all. Some times. So here’s part two of Prensky’s keynote at the Digra conference!

Some said Prensky’s keynote was not exactly connecting with the audience. I’ll come back on that later. Nevertheless, it gave a clear insight on the problems that Serious Games are currently facing and the importance of social acceptance. Here’s an excerpt from the Digra program:

“In this keynote address Marc Prensky will suggest several things game researchers can do to make their work more accessible to, and to make life easier for, practitioners (and vice versa). Topics covered will inclued chocie of research areas, research design, writing style (especially the role of jargon), and presentation of findings. There will be a particular emphasis on the role of researchers inhelping the general public appreciate games’ positive effects on players, and in helping support the serious games movement.”

Here’s part one. And since I’m off to enjoy a peaceful weekend in a Bungalow, part 2 will arrive late on Sunday.

This is what we call an etnographic study folks. And most interestingly, a study that looks at videogame design as a learning activity. Kylie Peppler and Yasmin Kafai have taken up a more applied view towards the often discussed area of games & learning in their paper ‘What Videogame Making Can Teach Us About Literacy and Learning: Alternative Pathways into Participatory Culture.’ Here’s a excerpt:

“Here, we discuss game making approaches and their benefits for illuminating game preferences and learning both software design and other academic content. We report on an ongoing ethnographic study that documents youth producing video games in a community design studio. We illustrate how video game making can provide a context for addressing issues of participation, transparency and ethics.”

Check out Kylie’s magic fingers at 0.15

Remember me mentioning polished jewels between the unpolished lot? One of them and first up on VGVisionary is Gordon Calleja’s presentation on his paper ‘Revising Immersion: A Conceptual Model for the Analysis of Digital Game Involvement‘:

“It outlines a segment of a conceptual model that describes and analyzes the moment by moment involvement with digital games on a variety of experiential dimensions corresponding to six broad categories of game features. The paper ends with a proposal to replace the metaphor of immersion with one of Incorporation. Incorporation aims to avoid the binary notion of the player’s plunge into the virtual environment characteristic of ‘immersion’ while dispelling the vagueness of application that all too often surrounds the term.”

Very interesting Gordon. Please go on.

So you think you know everything about games, huh? Guess again!

After the fun we had at the Tokyo Game Show, the Digra conference literally made us go back to the school desks of the Tokyo University campus. Which was quite nice, with the Subway parlor, bright colored chairs and handy mini market around. The week was full of meeting interesting people, attending paper presentations and even a bunch of interesting keynotes! Not all of paper presentations were good though. Mainly because a good paper isn’t enough to make a good presentation. Pictochat was on a roll. Nevertheless, there were also some polished jewels between the unpolished lot.

So here’s a list of what you can be expecting to see here in the next couple of days (not in this particular order though):

Gordon Calleja will make us think about revising immersion. (Paper presentation)

Kylie Peppler shows us what videogame making can teach us about literacy and learning. (Paper presentation)

Edward Castronova, author of the book ‘Synthetic Worlds: the Business and Culture of Online Games‘ teaches us a thing or two on legislation in online worlds. And how to do it successfully. (Keynote) (Approval pending)

Rene Glas from the University of Amsterdam explains ‘twinking’ in WoW. Appears to be more then a synonym for ’sissy’. (Paper presentation) (Approval pending)

Marc Prensky, author of ‘Don’t bother me mom – I’m learning!‘ doesn’t like Jargon that much. He talks about his work and discusses the social acceptance of Serious Games. (Keynote) (Approval pending)

Dan Pinchbeck shows us how game research and design can live side by side through a revolutionary Half-Life 2 Mod. And how both kick ass while they’re at it. (Interview)

Alas. That’s all from the Digra folks! Mainly because of bad lighting or lack of working microphones on many occasions.

Picture courtesy of Jupiterimages.com

Good news everyone! A study performed by researchers from the University of Toronto shows that women playing games enhance their brains’ ability to process spatial information. Jing Feng, a psychology doctoral student and lead author of the study had the following to say:

“On average, women are not quite as good at rapidly switching attention among different objects and this may be one reason why women do not do as well on spatial tasks. But more important than finding that difference, our second experiment showed that both men and women can improve their spatial skills by playing a video game and that the women catch up to the men.”

That settles it. Asking a girl out for a game of Halo 3 is officially O-K!

Source: University of Toronto

I loved his keynote. It was so, different and fresh. Doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree with what he had to say. After all, is a keynote that everyone agrees with actually a good keynote? He got people talking. That’s what matters.

Missed out? Don’t worry! You will be able to view his keynote after we get it up in the VGV post production week.

VGV Digra Flickr filling has been updated. Enjoy!