game-studies

What Was GamerGate Really About?

3 minute read

GamerGate was mostly active in 2014–2016, but you can still see the hashtag being used on Twitter. What was it about?

Island Utopia

4 minute read

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

3 minute read

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...

Things Best Expressed by Games

1 minute read

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

1 minute read

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

2 minute read

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

1 minute read

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

1 minute read

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...

What’s Hybrid in Hybrid Games?

2 minute read

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

2 minute read

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 ...

Shared Playful Politics

7 minute read

I presented some preliminary observations on playful politics at the Sharing the Play -seminar. Here’s what I talked about.

Adult Play, Day 2

5 minute read

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

5 minute read

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

less than 1 minute read

My dissertation Real-Time Hermeneutics: Meaning-Making in Ludonarrative Digital Games is now available on this website.

GamerGate and Language

4 minute read

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...

Surveillance in Online Games

4 minute read

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

5 minute read

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

3 minute read

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

3 minute read

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

4 minute read

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

11 minute read

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.

Journals in Game Studies

less than 1 minute read

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 ...

Gamified apps and tools

less than 1 minute read

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

5 minute read

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

1 minute read

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...

Pervasive Games

9 minute read

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

less than 1 minute read

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...

Politics in FPS-games

1 minute read

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…

less than 1 minute read

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...

(a)Games

1 minute read

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

1 minute read

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

1 minute read

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

1 minute read

I’ve been working on my second thesis seminar paper roughly from the beginning of the year.

Why games?

3 minute read

There are two ways to understand this question:

Huizinga and play

1 minute read

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...