The Rule Book (review)
The Rule Book is a great book that fails as a theory of rules.
Posts by Category
- game-studies 49
- role-playing 34
- philosophy 15
- digital-culture 13
- events 9
- academia 6
- meta 5
- reviews 2
- technology 2
game-studies
Clarifying Interpretive Challenges
In 2018 I wrote about interpretive challenges. Rules of notice seem to explain something about what I was trying to get at.
No, Wittgenstein Didn’t Think You Can’t Define Games
One of my pet peeves in game studies is the claim that Wittgenstein thought you can’t define games.
Player Typologies in Role-Playing Games
What do people want out of a role-playing games? Probably five different things.
What Was GamerGate Really About?
GamerGate was mostly active in 2014–2016, but you can still see the hashtag being used on Twitter. What was it about?
Island Utopia
It’s been a while since there have been blank spots on maps. If one would like to start over, away from everything, there are few options left.
Turning Everything into Paperclips
It might not be immediately apparent that to make paperclips, you need to take over the stock market. But every step in Universal Paperclips follows logicall...
Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations
A bunch of role-playing game scholars wrote a handbook for role-playing game studies. It’s published by Routledge, but as an academic handbook, it’s fairly e...
Things Best Expressed by Games
There are, I think, some things best expressed by games, as opposed to other media. When I say ‘games,’ I mostly mean videogames, but some of this probably a...
Magical Computers
I read a lot of texts on computers and games from the humanities and social sciences perspectives. They are usually non-technical papers that deal with the h...
Common Problems in Writing About Games
After reading game studies for years, there are a few issues that I regularly encounter and that I find problematic. I thought about writing a more thorough ...
Misusing Emotes
What do players do when they can’t talk to each other directly? Argue on the forums, it seems to be. We studied the forum users of the popular card game Hear...
Intentionally Bad Interfaces
Most of the history of games has been an evolution from hard-to-use interfaces to better interfaces. This makes old games painful to play – I don’t mind that...
Can Games Really be Separated into Core and Shell?
Frans Mäyrä’s An Introduction to Game Studies delivers what it promises. It’s probably the best introduction to game studies available.
What’s Hybrid in Hybrid Games?
Hybrid games may not yet be a household name like VR and AR, but they seem to be getting similar attention at least from developers and researchers.
Counterplay 2016
Counterplay was an odd experience for somebody like me, who mostly goes to academic conferences. Some of the program was very much like you would experience ...
Choose How The World Will End: False Choices in Videogames
The next Deus Ex is a few months away, and there are already hints at what the next Mass Effect will be about. I think now is a good time to reflect on how t...
Shared Playful Politics
I presented some preliminary observations on playful politics at the Sharing the Play -seminar. Here’s what I talked about.
Adult Play, Day 2
The second day of Adult Play seminar discussed sexual play, parents and mature players and understanding some basic features of games through psychophysiolog...
Adult Play, Day 1
The first day of Adult Play seminar was an interesting combination of all kinds of different approaches to play and playfulness, and how they relate to toys,...
Real-Time Hermeneutics, the Book
My dissertation Real-Time Hermeneutics: Meaning-Making in Ludonarrative Digital Games is now available on this website.
0 Unread Emails: Rewards in Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Deus Ex: Human Revolution starts with an explosive start that shatters the life Adam Jensen was trying to build, and launches him into a career of chasing do...
GamerGate and Language
I recently tweeted a high-profile article on the Guardian about Felicia Day and GamerGate, the online movement mostly visible on Twitter, but also making wav...
Gamer Identity
So, are you a gamer?
Surveillance in Online Games
I recently presented a paper at the Internet Privacy summer school. While preparing for that, I looked at how government agencies viewed games as tools for s...
Critical Evaluation of Game Studies
I participated at the Critical Evaluation of Game Studies conference at Tampere this week. As the name implies, the theme was very meta, with commentary abou...
Real, Fictive and Virtual
The concepts real, fiction and virtual get tossed around pretty casually around game studies. It seems that “virtual” is a lasting favorite, used to rescue a...
Free-To-Play
I’ve recently had to reflect on my attitude towards free-to-play games. I recognise there are two sides to the issue, and I’ve been trying hard to reconcile ...
Dissertation Summary
I recently gave a mock-lectio praecursoria as part of a course I’m taking. It summarises some of the work I’ve done for my dissertation.
Meaning Effects in Video Games, Talk
I gave this talk at the Games and Literary Theory -conference at Malta. It describes the contents of the paper I submitted to the conference.
Understanding Player Interpretation: An Embodied Approach
Here is a slightly edited version of the talk I gave at the Philosophy of Computer Games 2013. Today I’d like to tell you how game studies could benefit from...
Journals in Game Studies
Because I occasionally search for this information myself, I’ll post it here for future reference to me and others. A list of journals in game studies in no ...
Ingress as a portrayal of American politics
I’ve played Ingressfor several months now. It is interesting to note that it happens to reflect the binary nature of American politics so clearly:
Gamified apps and tools
I’m taking a Coursera course on gamification and as part of that I looked into what kind of things have been gamified and how. Here is a short list of the mo...
Embodied Control Schemes
Modern games often use control schemes that rely on our intuitive understanding of the human body. With modern controllers, this has become even more true.
Meaning Effects in Video Games
I’m writing a paper about the tools authors can use in literature to convey certain meaning effects, but applied to video games. There are several tools avai...
Interactive fiction
Len Talmy writes in Toward a Cognitive Semantics (2002) that:
Pervasive Games
I recently gave a lecture on pervasive games. In preparing that lecture I took some notes that were almost an introduction to the subject itself. It seemed a...
Games may be art after all
It seems that Roger Ebert has changed his opinion of games. The acclaimed movie critic admits that he cannot make the judgement that games are not art becaus...
Master’s thesis & Changing the world with games (not related)
I finally managed to finish and return my master’s thesis. It is about the theory of games, but unfortunately only available in Finnish. You can find it onli...
Politics in FPS-games
To a great surprise to everyone, this post is not going to be about the fuss surrounding the killing of civilians in Modern Warfare 2. Instead, I’ll write ab...
While on the topic of games as art…
Recently, I touched upon the subject of games as art. This is by means unexplored territory; in fact it is so well traversed that the great movie critic Roge...
The Practice of Theory: Seminar of Culture Studies
I attended the seminar of Society for Cultural Studies in Finland. It is a two-day seminar, so I’m missing part of it as I’m writing this, but the most inter...
(a)Games
When reading about games I’ve come across some very peculiar things that may not entirely be called games, but which resemble them very closely. They also di...
The Player of Games
I recently read Iain M. Banks’ The Player of Games, and besides being a good book it’s got special kicks for anyone into game research. I’m not giving away t...
Seminar paper
After moving into a new apartment and catching the most awful flu you ever experienced I’ve found that trying to keep up any kind of schedule for writing her...
On the sociology of games
I’ve been working on my second thesis seminar paper roughly from the beginning of the year.
Why games?
There are two ways to understand this question:
Huizinga and play
Johann Huizinga’s “Homo Ludens” is one the classics in the study of play. I’ve been trying to read it but I also have a lot of essays to return during spring...
role-playing
Player Typologies in Role-Playing Games
What do people want out of a role-playing games? Probably five different things.
Eclipse Phase Second Edition Review
Posthuman studios has always been confident in how they sell their books: they licensed Eclipse Phase with Creative Commons, meaning that the files are free ...
Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations
A bunch of role-playing game scholars wrote a handbook for role-playing game studies. It’s published by Routledge, but as an academic handbook, it’s fairly e...
Halat hisar
Note: This is not an explanation of what Halat hisar was. If you need to understand the context, you can read an explanation written by the organizers.
Nights Black Agents and Zalozhniy Quartet
We recently finished a campaign of Night’s Black Agents, after playing it for 1.5-years and 29-sessions, making it one of the longest campaigns I’ve played. ...
PanoptiCorp, part 2: When Now Is Too Late
This is the second post about PanoptiCorp. The first was about personal experiences, so it actually makes more sense to read this first to get some context f...
PanoptiCorp, part 1: the Soul of a Corper
Warning: this is long, rambly, and has no context. I will write a part 2 with more context, when I’ve had some time to process what I experienced.
Jeepform scenario, iteration 2
I ran a simple jeepform scenario based on Reservoir Dogs a few years ago. I recently became interested in larp again, partly because of Monitor Celestra.
Advanced Dungeons & Discourse
A couple of years back I ran a game of Dungeons & Discourse. It’s based on the brilliant web comic, Dresden Codak. It ran very smoothly, but mostly thank...
Metaphoric Rules in Role-Playing Games
It is very common for role-playing games to extend rules meant for one thing to cover other fields. The archetypical example of this is using combat rules fo...
Mage: The Re-Awakening
I used to run a lot of Mage: the Ascension. Nobilis has almost perfectly taken its place, but for a nostalgia trip, there is no replacing the original. Havin...
Gender in Apocalypse World
I’ve recently been playing Apocalypse World in our weekly playing session. It is a generally good game, at least if you prefer the style: violent, apocalypti...
Post-Mortem: Tyhjyys joka meidät yhdistää (The emptiness that binds us)
Recently, a two-year long campaign ended. With 53 evenings spent playing, it is the longest game I’ve been involved in. We played Heimot, a Finnish science f...
About Randomness in Role-Playing Games
When randomness in role-playing games is discussed, it usually means analysis of specific dice-mechanics. And since most rpg’s employ dice, it is a useful pu...
Ropecon and a new Finnish fantasy role-playing game
Ropecon was just last weekend and a friend of mine, the writer of Cafe Lax, published a role-playing game there: Bliaron. Apparently it sold quite well.
Gaming over great distances
I just played my first game of role-playing over the internet today. I’ve played IRC-based role-playing games before, but these have centered on the text; th...
For all I know, you’re the rat
Reservoir Hounds was a success, at least with some criteria (and some post-game lie). The game ran for less than an hour, but that wasn’t surprising as I wa...
Are Role-Playing Games Art?
The short answer: of course they are! The longer answer? Possibly, see more.
Roadtrip the rpg
Yesterday we drove some nine hours to deliver stuff. Surprisingly it wasn’t few hours of talking and then endless hours of being bored. We got company and on...
The Mountain Witch
I started a game of The Mountain Witch yesterday. I like this game particularly for being so easy to pick up and start with a moments notice.
Political games
Last Sunday we played the third game in my series of political games. ‘Political’ does not here mean that they included political action by the characters, b...
Liquid Crystal
Next weekend I’ll have chance to play Liquid Crystal again. It is a game in which players create and play robots with no personality to start with. The game ...
New year, new ideas
We were sitting in sauna and it was getting late when we decided that it would be a perfect opportunity to play a short game of role-play. Few hours of time,...
Between Heaven and Hell
We’ve been playing Nobilis for some time now. It is a campaign, led by me, about the diplomacy between Heaven and Hell. The players have two sets of characte...
Of theory and practice
A discussion I had with some local rpg-players got me thinking about the history of rpg-theory in Finland. The best known of theories was the one based on th...
ReNutopia
Remember that game of Shadowrun I mentioned before? It died after some three playing sessions. However, it had too much potential & time spent on creatin...
By train, for a change
It’s not something I usually write about1, but I read a few (older) posts by Thanuir about railroading, and I thought about commenting those posts. ...
Computers and role-play
I noticed something when I happened to watch a tv-program on games. It seems (and this is in no way rigorously analytical, just a hunch) that a (computer) ga...
Tähti
We’ve played Mike Pohjola’s new game Tähti (Star) for a few times. It’s a game about teenage mutant ninj- krhm, I mean about a teenage mutant girl band. It’s...
Nutopia
We’ve started a new role-playing game, with an interesting subject. It’s a game of Shadowrun, although we’ve had to make some changes in order to fit the rul...
Ropecon
Ropecon was some time ago. I’ve been trying to concentrate on reading, so commenting on Ropecon is several weeks late. It was an exhausting experience for se...
Dogmatic manifestos
I’ve finally read something I’ve been meaning to read for a long time: the manifestos Dogma 99 and The Manifesto of the Turku School. While I understand, at ...
Chronicle coming to an end
It seems we are finally reviving the larp chronicle we have been writing for several years now. We already agreed that the next part will be the last; maybe ...
Convention problems
We tested the questionnaire J. Matias Kivikangas has written for Alterations yesterday with mainly positive results. There were some minor complications that...
philosophy
No, Wittgenstein Didn’t Think You Can’t Define Games
One of my pet peeves in game studies is the claim that Wittgenstein thought you can’t define games.
Papers that Changed My Mind
I recently came upon a philosophy paper that seemed to tackle a problem I didn’t know existed and had a convincing argument for identifying and perhaps fixin...
The Age of Bullshit
“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit”, Harry Frankfurt wrote in On Bullshit (1986).
On Eugene Goostman, The Turing Test and The Chinese Room
A computer program called Eugene Goostman has recently been said to have passed the Turing test for the first time. But what does this mean? Are we about to ...
Computers Run on Metaphors
Computers are built to run on metaphoric relations taken from earlier forms of technology and human experience not related to computers. An obvious example i...
Google is Building an Ontology
Since the spring of 2012, Google has started to move from search of particular combinations of letters to searching things. This move from string-based searc...
Neural Correlates of Meaning-Making
In humanities research related to psychology there tends to be a tendency to look for answer from neurological research. Things like consciousness, language ...
SMBC, Frame Semantics and Political Speech
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal had comic a while back about political speech. The idea was that, if you replace everything except nouns with nonsensical w...
Methodological contemplations
While I wholeheartedly think that science is mostly methodically uniform, there are two things that seem to differentiate the social sciences (or humanities)...
Defining games
I held a presentation on games in the National Seminar for Philosophy Students (Filosofian opiskelijoiden kansallinen seminaari, FOKS in Finnish) last saturd...
Using role-play as a research tool
A while ago I attended a philosophy seminar where the last presentation was about using science fiction as a tool for research. For researchers interested in...
Your Eminence
According to Mike’s Philosophical Definitions Page an Eminence is a “famous living academic whose work is relevant but sloppy. I’d like to elaborate more on ...
Horror & Philosophy
Two of archetypical creatures found in horror movies, zombies and vampires, have also found their way into philosophy. To eat the delicious, undoubtedly larg...
Master’s Thesis
I’ve been trying to come up with a topic for my master’s thesis for some time now. In March, I have to have some idea what I’m going to research. I suggested...
Thesis
I’ve been writing my bachelor’s thesis since spring and it is nearly complete. It should, since I have to present it next month. I started with the vague ide...
digital-culture
Exploring Gendered Computing Permalink
When the Google Memo came out, I wrote about issues in how computing is gendered. I wanted to explore that topic further, so I wrote this interactive, longer...
Internet Research is Hard
At the end of last year, a group of researchers thought that they had a great idea for solving a common problem in social media research.
Pepe the Frog at Kiasma
Last year me and Johannes Koski published our study on a series of fascinating and confusing events.
Trying to Think Through Content Warnings
Content warnings have become a common feature on the internet. This is my attempt at trying to think them through.
Why is Mastodon Growing?
Mastodon is a decentralized Twitter alternative growing fast. What is driving its growth?
Context Collapse and Mastodon
Facebook assumes we have only one identity, but that’s never been true. Social media has to allow for multiple selves.
Surveillance Capitalism, Google and the Power of Defaults
Surveillance capitalism is the idea that we have entered a new phase in how capitalism works.
The Google Memo and Gendered Computing
The Google memo assumes that computing is naturally suited to men. But is it?
Surveillance Capitalism - A Case Study
Surveillance capitalism is the new default way of doing business on the internet. Even businesses that don’t need to collect data do so because it’s so easy.
Revolution in the Age of Social Media & Twitter and Tear Gas
I attempt to review Revolution in the Age of Social Media (2014) and Twitter and Tear Gas (2017) side-by-side.
Living with Algorithms
I spent last Friday at a seminar about algorithms. We discussed everything from health technology and citizenship in the digital era to the structure of neur...
How to Change the World with Memes
I gave a talk at National Meeting of English Students about the political use of memes. In case you missed it, here is what I intended to say. It might not b...
Everything is a Computer
You probably didn’t notice that there was a fundamental shift in how technology operates in and integrates into our lives. It used to be that there were cust...
events
Counterplay 2016
Counterplay was an odd experience for somebody like me, who mostly goes to academic conferences. Some of the program was very much like you would experience ...
Adult Play, Day 2
The second day of Adult Play seminar discussed sexual play, parents and mature players and understanding some basic features of games through psychophysiolog...
Adult Play, Day 1
The first day of Adult Play seminar was an interesting combination of all kinds of different approaches to play and playfulness, and how they relate to toys,...
Critical Evaluation of Game Studies
I participated at the Critical Evaluation of Game Studies conference at Tampere this week. As the name implies, the theme was very meta, with commentary abou...
PanoptiCorp, part 2: When Now Is Too Late
This is the second post about PanoptiCorp. The first was about personal experiences, so it actually makes more sense to read this first to get some context f...
PanoptiCorp, part 1: the Soul of a Corper
Warning: this is long, rambly, and has no context. I will write a part 2 with more context, when I’ve had some time to process what I experienced.
Ropecon and a new Finnish fantasy role-playing game
Ropecon was just last weekend and a friend of mine, the writer of Cafe Lax, published a role-playing game there: Bliaron. Apparently it sold quite well.
The Practice of Theory: Seminar of Culture Studies
I attended the seminar of Society for Cultural Studies in Finland. It is a two-day seminar, so I’m missing part of it as I’m writing this, but the most inter...
Ropecon
Ropecon was some time ago. I’ve been trying to concentrate on reading, so commenting on Ropecon is several weeks late. It was an exhausting experience for se...
academia
My Workflow in 2021
Here’s how I’m working in 2021.
My Workflow in 2020
I’ve worked in academia now for a decade. I tend to test out different tools and ways of doing things. Here’s how I’m working in 2020.
Why You Shouldn’t Read Your Academic Talks
I’ve recently seen more academic talks where the author has been reading out their paper out loud in front of the audience.
How to Build a Sustainable Academic Commons?
I’ve lately been moving away from the walled gardens I used to put my research in and trying to find ways of making my research as openly accessible as possi...
Writing Academic Texts
Writing academic articles is harder than it needs to be.
The Future of Academic Networking
I just deleted my accounts on Academia.edu and ResearchGate. I think we are currently in a crucial time in choosing how academia shapes up in the future and ...
meta
Migrating to Minimal Mistakes
I’ve used the Skinny Bones Jekyll template for several years now. Unfortunately, it’s no longer supported by the author, and I started noticing problems cree...
Indiewebifying My Website
Note: I’ve updated my site to use a newer template, losing the changes I describe in this post in the process. If you want to understand how IndieWeb works, ...
The Most Complicated Way to Build a Site
Update: I’ve changed my setup. See below how & why.
Jekyll
I recently changed the site over to Jekyll. The previous version was written by me in HTML5 on top of HTML5 Boilerplate and the blog was handled by Octopress...
First Deploy With Octopress
Thinking I could move all my blogging to a single place I tried using Octopress. It seems nice and light, converting markdown text to static html-pages.
reviews
Eclipse Phase Second Edition Review
Posthuman studios has always been confident in how they sell their books: they licensed Eclipse Phase with Creative Commons, meaning that the files are free ...
Revolution in the Age of Social Media & Twitter and Tear Gas
I attempt to review Revolution in the Age of Social Media (2014) and Twitter and Tear Gas (2017) side-by-side.
technology
Replacing the Fairphone
I will soon need a new phone. My previous one was released in 2015 and I’ve been using it for three years. That doesn’t sound like a long time, but in the cu...
Building the Yearbook of Finnish Game Studies
For the first six years the Yearbook of Finnish Game Studies was published as a PDF file, but few years ago I promised that we could publish it in three form...