Wrote another one for Dagblad de Pers, the free daily newspaper. It’s a background article on homebrew software for the Playstation Portable (PSP). The whole paper is available as a pdf download (2mb) here (see page 16). I interviewed the webmaster of a Dutch homebrew community, psp-hacks.nl. He had some insightful comments and observations about the homebrew scene and about his (and the scene’s) ambivalence towards piracy. There’s also an interview in there with new media PhD-student Mirko Shäfer. Check out his website and his research, he got some reallllly groovy academic stuff going on!

And to add another article worthwhile checking out is a BBC News story also on PSP homebrew software (dated monday Feb, 26). I wrote my piece (long) before this article surfaced but it’s nice to see that my story looks (a little) bit like that of the BBC. There’s a short inteview with two of the ‘top’ PSP hackers in the BBC article. The BBC angle is good, the piece is informative (I whish I had contacted these guys) and not some sensationalist “aaahh pircay is bad”-piece. +1 for the BBC. A qoute:

Fanjita – real name David Court – is very different from the popular hacker stereotype of the socially inept teenaged geek working all night in his bedroom. A married man of 34, he is an accomplished professional programmer who writes server software for large telecommunications companies for a living. He spends an hour or two a night hacking PSP software in his Edinburgh home, and is also a martial arts enthusiast.

The reason of the lack of updates last week(s) is that I’m having an annoying cold :(. I’m feeling a little bit better now, but I’m not yet up to full speed. In the meanwhile…

About a month ago I’ve been asked to write an opinion piece on Second Life for Planet Multimedia, as I wrote on here on gamespace.nl. It kept me thinking and I had some discussions during drinks at the presentation of De Nieuwe Reporter Jaarboek in a bar in Amsterdam. I spoke to some marketing guys who were very opinionated about Second Life. All this resulted in an opinion piece on Second Life and whether the hype surround Second Life is justified.

The piece is here at Denieuwereporter.nl and is called: “Second Life-hype terecht maar om verkeerde reden”. I embedded the plain text (without formatting and links) after the break.
Read the rest of this entry »

Another game related background article in the free daily Dagblad de Pers. It’s a story about the unstoppable World of Warcraft. The numbers game is fascinating, 2.4 million copies in 24 hours and >8 million subscribers and no end in sight. I retell the story of Leeroy Jenkins and I spoke with a very friendly 64-old gamer. She told me about her adventures in Azeroth. She plays very very different from the hardcore (male) group I know. It would be a brilliant research paper talking to elderly people playing World of Wacraft (*hint*).

Yesterday I traveled by train where most people read de Pers. And for the first time ever I saw somebody read my article (just next to me). It felt really weird (in a good way) and something most academics (except for some professors maybe) probably will never experience (I won’t…). I didn’t ask him about his opinion; he left the train halfway. And to put everything back into perspective, he threw the paper away on his way out…

The whole paper is found here in .pdf (3.8MB), check out page 16

Researchers and PhD Students wanted for the project ‘Serious gaming & virtual worlds’ at the Delft University of Technology: “PhD students – aside from Researchers, the centre also needs several PhD students to conduct research into the above-mentioned fields of virtual worlds/serious games/game simulations. This research will involve close collaboration between the Policy, Organisation and Management and Systems Engineering research groups. Dependent on the nature of the PhD research in question, there is plenty of scope for external collaboration. The PhD research can focus on game design, application concepts, or areas of application. The range of absorbing research themes includes ‘virtual worlds in education (and higher education)’, and ‘virtual worlds for policy support’.” Application info is attached.

Do you know the term ‘vaporware’? I didn’t. Duke Nukem Forever, the sequel to Duke Nukem 3D is still (after 10!! years) in development. Recently a screenshot has been released. Well read all about it here at Folia Nostra.

Take a look at this great site. ‘The following things have happened since Duke Nukem Forever was announced…’ From the site: ‘Over 4500 games were released for the above video game systems in the United States. Over 350,000,000 consoles and handhelds were sold worldwide.’ etc etc :)