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 so my reading has been dragging itself slowly toward summer. I like the way Huizinga defines play. I’m reading it in Finnish, as I was lucky enough to find the book in my native language - it makes reading a bit more enjoyable and faster, but it also means I have to get my hands on at least the English version for comparison. Finnish is a tricky language for writing about play. Luckily, I found the definition in English also, so I don’t have trust my own translation for commenting on it. ...

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 something related to play (or gaming), and was given thumbs up by the professors in charge of tutoring us. Now I have to discover what I am going study in my thesis; it seems that all the ideas I had have been examined by someone before me. ...

Remember that game of Shadowrun I mentioned before? It died after some three playing sessions. However, it had too much potential & time spent on creating the ideas behind it to go to waste, so we decided to have another go at it, with a different GM. The basic idea is that each character has a single theme related to activism, with social activism and environmentalism being the main topics. As the antagonist we have the all-powerful & ever-present corporations which symbolise all that is wrong with the world of 2070: pollution, inequality, social instability, racism etc. What brings the characters together is the common goal of breaking away from the flawed society and creating an utopia somewhere where the evil companies can’t touch them. What is still left to be seen is how they intend to do this in practice - it is quite possible that it won’t happen at all. Regardless, it will be (and to some extent has been) an interesting chance of looking at society and how it is changed, through the medium of role-play. ...

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. I’m basically going to claim that 1) railroading is not (entirely) bad, 2) it happens in all games, and 3) it is not even a very good way of talking about the phenomenon, instead one should use the terms Montola uses. This is a warning, so that if you already agree and (or) know what I’m talking about, you can skip the rest. ...

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) game has “role-playing elements” if there is any progression in the abilities of character played. ...

Kouvola Chronicle is finally (and regrettably) over. Now for the traumatic recovery.