I interrupt my regular blogging for a commercial message. Next week (September 9 in Amsterdam), I’ll do an Emerce Expert Session, or what some would call a workshop, on social media (in general) and the Obama 08 campaign’s use of social media (in particular). In an interactive setting we’ll talk about the latest trends in social media, participatory culture, a bit about games, hybrid campaigns, social politics, Facebook, Twitter, and much, much more.

If you’re interested, there are a couple of seats left. Head over to the Emerce page if you want more information. Or drop me an email (david @ gamespace . nl), or contact Tessa Sterkenburg on: (+31) 020-820 21 31 / tessa @ thenextspeaker . com. The session will be in Dutch and can be summarized as:

De lessen van Obama – De winnende combinatie van online & offline

De verkiezingscampagne van Obama was de eerste echte geïntegreerde digitale campagne, en een zeer succesvolle. Als geen ander wist hij online enthousiasme om te zetten in offline actie. De spontane fysieke en virtuele acties van fans, aanhangers en vrijwilligers werden slim geïntegreerd in een strak geleide campagne. Tegelijkertijd werden de sterke punten van oude media (TV, radio en kranten) gecombineerd met de kracht van social media. Obama was maandenlang altijd, overal te vinden.

Niet voor niets beginnen multinationals als Domino’s Pizza, Ikea, Pepsi en Ben & Jerry’s, verzekeraars, uitgevers, non-profits, overheden, en politieke partijen langzaam maar zeker de lessen van Obama te integreren in hun eigen campagnes. Ze bewijzen zo zowel de universele kracht van Obama’s campagne, gebaseerd op openheid, interactie en communicatie, als de inzetbaarheid buiten het politieke domein.

In deze Emerce Expert Sessie wordt gekeken hoe een geïntegreerde campagne op te zetten op een manier zodat oude en nieuwe media elkaar versterken. De killer app van de Obama campagne was de “ouderwetse” nieuwsbrief. De Expert Sessie stelt hierbij niet de techniek maar de gebruiker centraal. Oftewel, wat doen gebruikers, consumenten, fans, of kiezers precies met social media, nu, vandaag? En, hoe verhoudt dat zich tot het gebruik van oude media?

As with every academic publication, I am excited, honored and very happy! I contributed a book chapter to an edited volume called “Professional playground: Alles over werken in de game-industrie”. In the chapter I talk about working as a game journalist (in the Netherlands) and critically reflect on being positioned between (the expectations of both) readers and the game industry. As far as I know, this might be the first academic publication in Dutch on the subject (just saying, for many gamers on message boards being “First!!11oneoen” is a major achievement).

Talking about firsts, the book is one of the few books (in Dutch) on games, but also one of the few books on working in the game industry. There is some work done on working in the game industry (e.g. by Mark Deuze in his book on Media Work & his edited volume Managing Media Work), but none of that is in Dutch or from a Dutch perspective.

The book has three parts (developer, publisher and support/related industries), and has a wide range of authors (working in the industry, in academia, and lawyers). There is a .pdf of the chapter outline here, and chapter 9 on serious game is the sample chapter (in .pdf as well).

If you’re interested in buying the book, you can do so on Bol.com. If you are interested in my chapter, drop me an email (david @ gamespace . nl) and I’ll send you my latest draft.

During the weekend a story ran on e-sports for the NRC newspaper. I was interviewed and contributed the story’s title “Chess in 3D” (meaning to say, that playing fast paced first person shooters in an e-sports setting is much like playing chess on three boards at the same time in terms of complexity). The story can be read on Bashers.nl.

Monday morning started with an interview on Radio 1 for the NOS morning news. We talked about the to be published military themed first person shooter Medal of Honor. In this game you can, at least in the multiplayer part, play as a member of the Taliban. The British minister of Defense Fox found the theme of the game to be ‘tasteless’. You can read a bit on NOS headlines. There has been some more writing about it at Bright.nl. For your convience, you can also download the Radio 1 interview (.mp3, 4.3mb). Or listen to it here:

At Bashers.nl I did a short interview about the whole case. In the interview I talk a bit more about the ambivalence of playing shooters, realism, and the criticism on (war) games in general “‘Medal of Honor gaat niet ver genoeg’

And for the free daily newspaper Metro I contributed a short quote on the use of social media in higher education (Metro of Monday August 23). I think universities should lead, not follow (when it comes to using ICT), and “we” (in academia) should experiment with services like Twitter, Facebook, and all kinds of (preferably open source) applications to connect with students, facilitate discussion, share our findings and thoughts and be active in public debates. A scan of the article is here.

Yesterday I did a live interview for Radio 1′s NCRV afternoon show Lunch. I have been a guest before last March to talk about Second Life. This time we had a vivid conversation about the recent hoaxes on Twitter (particularly the “free money” incident which turned out to be a mere technological glitch, the rumor that Queen Beatrix would step down, and the fake Carglass Twitter account). Given that it is “cucumber time” (i.e. slow news in the summertime), these hoaxes get extra attention on TV & on the radio. Some go as far as to ask if this would make Twitter a useless tool. Although I did not mention it on air, I’ve been confirmed in my conviction that Twitter can be very useful after Clay Shirky’s wonderful “Here comes everybody”, so for those interested in the topic, I would recommend reading that.

Or, you can listen to the interview, download it here (.mp3, 8 minutes, 7.4Mb).

Wednesday marked an important ruling by a Dutch judge who decided that selling ‘mod-chips‘ and flash cards, especially those for the Nintendo DS (so called R4 cards) and the Wii, is now illegal (and the web shops who sold the mod-chips have to pay the court costs). [N]Gamer’s Nik Wouters has more on the story and interviewed Nintendo.

For Wednesday’s evening news (NOS Achtuurjournaal) I was interviewed as part of a segment on the ruling. The entire clip is below.

Read the rest of this entry »

As part of a special summer project, we did an extra Bashers podcast with (Dutch) Microsoft country manager Paul Naber. It turned out to be a very worthwhile conversation with the five of us talking about all things Xbox. Paul was very generous with his time and comments and I really enjoyed our discussion. Go check it out: “In gesprek met Xbox-baas Paul Naber over Microsoft, Xbox 360, Kinect en meer“.

As part of a pilot project, I wrote a review of Apple’s iPad (from the perspective of an academic/PhD student). I am very happy with the device and it is particularly useful to read books/PhD theses/articles. The review (with some pro’s and con’s and a couple of apps I like) is downloadable as a .pdf here (3 pages in Dutch).

*update* (July 10) Democracy in action! Dutch member of parliament Tofik Dibi (of Groen Links) asked the minister of justice a series of (very spot on) questions. Our combined efforts (of gamers, academics and journalists) to argue for better media literacy among parents (and against censorship), seem to have made a difference! Read the questions here. */update*

Our Dutch minister of justice Hirsch Ballin send a letter to the “Tweede Kamer” (the House of Representatives) regarding the banning of violent video games. His letter is emblematic of a (political) culture in which key politicians are utterly media illiterate and build their arguments on selectively quoting solid research. On top of that, a ban on violent film would be less desirable because that would lead to civil unrest (as opposed to games?). Well, I/we obviously disagree.

At Bashers, there’s more information. I wrote an op-ed to ask gamers to have their voices heard. “Neem contact op met Hirsch Ballin en bewijs dat een verbod op gewelddadige games weerstand oproept“.

At game industry magazine Control there is a crucial piece of information (of prof. Jansz) slamming the minister’s letter.

And at Petities.nl there’s a petition to sign.

I have to come up with better titles for these updates… Anyway, another sort of bi-monthly update. Still working on my PhD, progressing well, end date is set at Q4 of this year. In the meantime I did some miscellaneous writing/talking, listed below.

For Bashers.nl I wrote another “Uitgelezen”, a book review on a game related book. This installment is Osamu Inoue’s “Nintendo Magic, Winning The Videogame Wars” (2010). In addition, I did participated in this season’s last podcast “Bashers Podcast seizoen 2, aflevering 34: seizoensoverzicht”. We talk about game journalism, E3 and new game platforms. For your information, you can subscribe to the podcasts via iTunes (they are in Dutch though).

For MM Nieuws (Dutch magazine on management and marketing for the creative industries), I wrote a piece on social media and gamers, arguing that the game industry in many ways is quite adapt at facilitating user created content, or at least in many instances not regulating it as much as the movie or music industries. The piece is for subscribers only, but I put up a .pdf here of the unedited version. If you’re a subscriber, there’s more on the MM website.

In plaats van consumenten te zien als veredelde pinautomaten, als een eindpunt in de keten van productie, distributie en tenslotte consumptie, worden gamers massaal aangemoedigd vooral met games aan de slag te gaan. Parodieer maar, maak maar flmpjes, plaatjes en verhalen over de game die je zo tof vindt. En deel ze, met behulp van social media, vooral online met je vrienden en vriendinnen!

For the University of Amsterdam weekly magazine (Folia) I wrote a column on innovative ICT use at the university. I found that, to put it mildly, it is very hard to, for example, gain access to the wireless network and to be able to use ICT productively at my office. Got some reactions from university staff (agreeing with me), so I hope the ICT policies change for the better, if only for future generations of students. The piece is here: “Vooroplopen heeft een hoge prijs” (.pdf, see page 8).

Voor een iPad-gebruiker is het digitale leven aan de UvA een kafkaëske nachtmerrie. Waarom faciliteert ICT eigenlijk alleen de Windowsgebruiker?

Been a bit quiet here, it was election season here in the Netherlands so I’ve been (just a little bit) busy with doing interviews on social politics (the convergence of social media and politics).

Wednesday June 2 I gave a short comment on the ‘RTL Twitter debate’ on the RTL evening news. You can see the clip here. The segment talks about the purpose of the debate (i.e. Dutch politicians doing an election debate via Twitter), one of the party’s communication directors gave a short statement on the usefulness of Twitter. My view is that while Twitter is a tremendously useful tool (if used well) for journalists, researchers, students and politicians, I think using it as a debate tool does not add (enough) value to a (political) debate (compared to, let’s say, good ol’ TV).

For the weekly opinion magazine Vrij Nederland I gave some comments on the question whether or not social media are of any use during political campaigns. Arguing: “partijen hebben zich hebben overvallen door de vervroegde verkiezingen. Toen twee maanden geleden het kabinet viel, moesten de meeste partijen online nog bij nul beginnen.‘Er lagen geen plannen klaar. De partijen zijn webmensen gaan inhuren, terwijl die er al een jaar hadden moeten werken. En dat terwijl ze zoveel tijd hebben gehad. Een strategische blunder.” See the entire article here: “Heeft online campagnevoeren zin?”.

And last but not least, the game website Gamingonly.nl did an series of articles on games and politics (i.e. issues such as piracy, and games and violence). The articles feature Dutch politicians, (game) journalists and researchers, they’re definitely worth a read. Here’s the list (all articles are in Dutch):

GO! Politics: Violence and games
GO! Politics: Piracy
GO! Politics: Game addiction

Via Twitter I heard about two essays of University of Amsterdam colleague dr. Linda Duits. Both accounts are very (very!) familiar from my perspective as a lecturer at the UvA. Please do read them as they provide a painful insight in the day-to-day and long term institutional problems “we” (lecturers at Dutch universities) encounter. Some of these problems have a deeper political and cultural background, and it is not that all problems can be traced back to either the university, students, or “The Hague” (politics), but that should be no excuse in finding a way to fix them. I am thinking what I can do about this, but the only thing I feel I can do now is to draw attention to these somewhat profound issues:

Please read: “De Onderwijsfabriek” & “Excellent onderzoek leidt tot benedenmaats onderwijs”