Together with Niels ‘t Hooft and Samuel Casado (Bashers.nl) and Spits‘ Dennis Mons, I gave some input on a story on “mimetic interfaces” (quoting Jesper Juul here: ““the physical activity that the player performs mimics the game activity on the screen.”). The article is online here: “Jij bent de controller, toegankelijker kan het niet”. I argue:

‘Nagenoeg iedere analist, journalist en industrie-expert zag het overdonderende succes van de Wii niet aankomen. Het zou dus van historisch kortetermijndenken getuigen om nu al deze nieuwe controllers af te schrijven. De kans van slagen valt en staat met de software.’ Nieborg doelt hier op de sterke implementatie van de techniek en de bekende gamepersonages, of in ieder geval games die laagdrempelig zijn.

For Bashers.nl I now have two regular, monthly contributions. There’s the monthly podcast; the latest version discusses issues as piracy, Nintendo’s and Microsoft’s line-up, Bioshock 2, and the question whether or not games should be “fun” (and if that is even a good question).

Additionally, I will write a monthly book review on a game related book. This month was on “Fun, Inc. Why Play is the 21st Century’s Most Serious Business” by Tom Chatfield. From the review:

Voor die gamers (en niet-gamers!) die zich niet, zoals veel Bashers-redacteuren, dagelijks met games bezig houden als studenten, journalisten, ontwikkelaars of onderzoekers is Fun, Inc. dan ook een soort van opfriscursus. Een gedegen boek dat nergens echt spannend wordt en dat je in alle rust kan naslaan om te weten wat er gezegd wordt over de discussies die nu spelen over games.

Thursday March 11 I will give a talk, “De visuele taal van virtuele oorlogsvoering”, at Nest for the Texture Maps exhibit. In my presentation I will dig deeper into the blurring boundaries between physical violence (war) and virtual warfare (games), the never-ending rise of the military-entertainment complex and, of course, wargames (particularly America’s Army and other First Person Shooters). Recently read this book “War 2.0 – Irregular Warfare in the Information Age“, which offered an insightful perspective on these themes, so I’ll try to incorporate their argument into mine. See you there!

Time: 8pm
Location: The Hague
Entrance: Free

Sixty-five years ago the Second World War ended, but it is still with us today. Especially in the Netherlands, grandchildren (like me) listen to their grandparents telling stories about “The War”. For me, and many others for that matter, World War Two has a special meaning as well. For decades now, war (and WW2) has been a pervasive theme in game culture. And when the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport approached me to contribute to a magazine marking the end of WW2, I combined the memories of my grandmother with my own view on virtual war. The result is an article titled “De strijd gaat virtueel verder”. The 34-paged book/magazine, titled “Voorbij maar niet verdwenen”, is freely downloadable here as a .pdf (7MB). The project has its own special website, keep an eye on it because mid-March there will an interactive version of the book (including videos, music etc.). For anybody even remotely interested in WW2, I recommend you to pick up, or download, a copy. There are high quality contributions by renowned Dutch journalists, historians and academics. On top of that, the magazine just looks great.

It will be one of the last events I will undertake before I go into ‘crunch-mode’ the coming (six) months to finish my PhD. Tuesday March 2 I will moderate an evening of Pecha Kucha style presentations titled “FAQ Masteravond Media- en Cultuurwetenschappen”. Utrecht University scholars, students and alumni will talk (fast and to the point) about their research and it will be my duty to host the event. I will open the evening with a short keynote on the ins and outs (or the good, bad and ugly side) of media studies related scholarship, titled “de zin en onzin van Media- en Cultuurwetenschappen”.

The evening will start at 7pm and will officially last till 10:30 (drinks afterwards of course). The venue is Studio T (downtown Utrecht) and the programme looks promising (very diverse!). Entrance is free, but Studio T is small so if you’re coming, send an email to blik.tijdschrift[at]gmail.com (NB Im not part of the organization). The event is in Dutch. More information about the event (and the programme) are to be found here. Hope to see you there!

Read the rest of this entry »

One of my gamejournalism colleagues, Nick Kivits, wrote an insightful article on the Dutch military’s perspective on military games. The article is titled “‘Ik heb je, motherfucker!’” and appeared in last week’s Revu magazine. I contributed with my view on military games in general. The entire 5-paged article, which has an unusual and fancy lay-out, is downloadable as a .pdf here.

Utrecht University (my alma mater) has a vibrant (new media) student community and a very good student magazine called BLIK. I sat down with the magazine’s editor and had a long conversation about my views on social politics, the Obama campaign and new media in general (of course, in Dutch). The result is a 6-page interview, you can download the .pdf here. I had a decent amount of interviews on this subject but I think this interview captures my recent thinking on this subject really well! Also, the magazine looks great.

Summary from BLIK’s website:

Alhoewel het voorheen een onderbelicht thema bleek in BLIK komt in beide interviews van deze uitgave de wisselwerking tussen politiek en nieuwe media uitgebreid aan bod. Toepasselijk, want precies een jaar geleden behaalde de Amerikaanse presidentskandidaat Barack Obama een historische overwinning die ten minste ten dele te danken was aan een innovatieve inzet van nieuwe media tijdens diens verkiezingscampagne. UU alumnus en nu docent Nieuwe Media aan de UvA David Nieborg ervoer als vrijwilliger in het campagneteam van Obama van dichtbij de politieke bevlogenheid van de Amerikaanse burger. In ons openingsinterview vertelt hij hoe hij in Nederland die bezieling voor politiek en nieuwe media vooralsnog mist.

It’s not that big a secret that I am a big fan of BNR Nieuwsradio. Last Thursday (January 28), I had a great conversation/interview with BNR’s Paul Van Liempt. We talked about Obama’s State of the Union address, the current US political landscape, his dwindling support, social media, political organizing, social politics, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Jon Stewart, Whitehouse.gov, MSNBC, and tea parties.

You can download the interview here (.mp3, 28.8 MB). The interview starts at 3:30 and ends at 17:30.

Last Tuesday (January 26), I participated in a debate on “Individu 2.0”. The debate was hosted by Christian student organizations to prepare for their Easter gathering where they will tackle religious and societal issues. As an outsider/expert I was asked to share my thoughts on the mediatization of everyday life, together with Jan van der Stoep (affiliated with the Christelijke Hogeschool Ede). It was an insightful debate. Jan and I agreed on many counts which made the debate a little bit less spectacular, but for me it was good to have some outsider conformation on some deep felt thoughts and opinions on new media.

What I did not expect was that the debate would spark the interest of two attending journalists of the two leading Dutch Christian newspapers. At the end of the debate the students asked about my views on (Dutch) politics and new media, as well as the rise of the Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders. In a nutshell, I think social networks (Youtube, Facebook, Hyves, Twitter etc), could be a valuable (additional!) avenue to discuss politics and to voice one’s concerns about the deep seated fear (and sometimes hatred) towards “others” (i.e. non-native Dutch citizens). I might be hopelessly naive here, but I think engaging in a debate in this particular case (through movies, pictures, blogs, etc), and taking the concerns of those-who-fear very seriously (instead of trivializing the Wilders supports’ genuinely felt fear-of-others) could be one way out of a xenophobic, divided political future. There’s way more to this issue, and my argument is much more nuanced, but this is one of the points I made during the debate.

The debate’s media fallout was illustrative and focused on my views on social networks and politics and used my quotes in their headlines. The best article ended up in the newspaper (first link). The two other articles surfaced immediately after the debates on the newspapers’s websites.

- ‘Gebruikers netwerksites zijn machthebbers’. Nederlands Dagblad. January 28, 2010, page 6.
- „Twitter en Facebook zijn machtige wapens”. Reformatorisch Dagblad. January 27, 2010.
- ‘Netwerksites gaan Wilders stemmen kosten’. Nederlands Dagblad. January 27, 2010.

Rather than the somewhat traditional list of what made 2009 remarkable (for me), I wrote a book review of 2009’s three best game books: “De 3 beste boeken over videogames“. To be sure, there are way more (and arguably better) books published last year, but these three books are best suited for the Bashers.nl audience (many of which are not scholars or students) and I have read them cover-to-cover.

The list consists of:

1. Montfort, N., & Bogost, I. (2009) · Racing the beam: The Atari Video computer system · Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
2. Gilsdorf, E. (2009) · Fantasy freaks and gaming geeks: An epic quest for reality among role players, online gamers, and other dwellers of imaginary realms · Guilford, Conn: Lyons Press.
3. Juul, J. (2009) · A casual revolution: Reinventing video games and their players · Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

I promised on Bashers.nl to make the book review a monthly feature, so expect the next book review (somewhere) in February. Tips on good game related books (the newer, the better) are always welcome of course (contact me at David @ gamespace . nl)!

Also on Bashers.nl, an email discussion between me and Niels ‘t Hooft on 2009’s mega-hit Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in which we reflect on realism in games, mediated warfare and the potential and expectations of big games such as these. See: “David en Niels over Modern Warfare 2″: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.