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.
game-studies
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...