Academic

I’ve been working on my second thesis seminar paper roughly from the beginning of the year. The paper is the second part of the seminar. Together they form my review of the history of game research - mostly the classic stuff starting from Huizinga. There was a lot of interesting things in there, but since I’ve already covered that quite thoroughly in my papers I’m not going to go over it again here. (The papers are, unfortunately, in Finnish. If you happen to be fluent and interested, feel free to ask me.) However, there was one text that was of particular interest: Roger Caillois’ Man, Play and Games. His analysis of game and play is very interesting, if a bit eclectic, but his idea of a sociology derived from games is quite positively intriguing. In the introduction, the translator Meyer Barash, puts it thusly: ...

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 that. Normally, an academic must either use proper reference or sound argumentation if one is to claim something. The greater the claim, the greater the burden of proof, or “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, as it is often formulated. On the contrary, an Eminence can make claims and the greater the assertion, greater the probability that it will be quoted as a fact. It is the task of the lesser academic to examine the assertion and if it is not immediately obvious to him, educate himself until it is self-evident to him. ...

On Matthijs Holter’s article in Lifelike: Holter argues that we (the writers, students and - ) should stop talking about immersion. He admits that there is something called ‘immersion’, but that it isn’t constructive to use immersion as a term in writing about role-playing games and theory of role-play. I disagree and this is why: ...