Hmmm gaming is good! The NVPI (Dutch industry lobbyists) started a campaign yesterday to balance to never ending discourse on games being evil. They came up with a list of 9 points why games are good (think of James Paul Gee’s en Steven Johnson’s work) – they point to the aging demographics, social skills et cetera.

As a journalist and gamer I welcome the campaign. There are too many journalitst, policy makers and parents who are completely misinformed about games and game culture. As an academic the list of the NVPI is, well, too positive and misses the many complex practices surrouding game play and game culture. What is good/bad about gaming cannot be put into lists of course. In the end the NVPI campaign is a worthwhile effort. Let’s first have an open balanced and informed debate before making the inevitable next step (that is digging deeper into game culture).

The article for de Pers is available here (page 17).

A short article in de Pers about the DS version of the excellent puzzle game Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. It’s a really simple game but hard to put down. The article ‘Hollandse glorie in gameland’ is downloadble (.pdf) see page 14.

What happens when the ‘the YouTube Generation Goes to War’? Interesting post by Washington Post‘s military expert-blogger William Arkin.

At military bases throughout the world, the .mil domain filters out and restricts access to blogs and other “personal” Web sites such as Yahoo! Mail. The theory is that blogs and Webmail applications are not “official,” and thus users of “official” networks don’t need access to them. It’s one of those military rules that remind us that if the military didn’t have annoying and nonsensical rules, it wouldn’t be the military. The Pentagon cites the need to preserve bandwidth and protect against viruses as the justification for its new ruling restricting soldier access to social networking sites such as YouTube and MySpace. (…) Currently 13 sites will be blocked from government computers: YouTube, myspace, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, BlackPlanet, Hi5, Pandora, MTV, 1.fm, live365 and Photobucket.

So it’s back to playing games then I suppose…?

How’s that for a blog entry title? I contributed to a play by Sanja Mitrovic. She produced the play “Books once read make a good bullet proofing” which will be in theatre May 24 to 26 (9 pm) at the Gasthuis Theatre in Amsterdam-West. My contribution (which is not that big to be really honest) consists of reading a speech which is displayed in the background during the play. She asked me to do this in my role as an academic. The poster is here (.jpg).
About the play:

De voorstelling Books once read make a good bullet proofing gaat over terrorisme en de culturele performativiteit daarvan. Iemand kan in extreme omstandigheden totaal veranderen qua gedrag en overtuigingen: hij kan extremistisch worden en heel anders gaan denken en doen dan in een ‘normale’ situatie.

Another interview on Second Life? Of course! Without Second Life I would be out of work ;). This time the interview is to be found both online on the HCC Magazine website (HCC = Hobby Computer Club) and in a very well designed magazine called HCC!Link. There’s direct .pdf download. The interview(s) are on pages 12-16. More about the interview and some reflections on the opinions of the other interviewees after the break.
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After reading some books and articles on Second Life I came to the conclusion that what Second Life needs are guides. One such guide is “ThatSLife: Een praktische gids voor Second Life” by Bob Timroff. It’s really well designed book of over 200 pages. If you’re interested in (re)visiting Second Life or are interested in what actually happens there and not the stupid stuff you read in the newspapers and on blogs, buy this book. There’s a website on the book from the author.
I made a short contribution to the book (together with other virtual world, legal and financial experts) entitled “Nog veel vragen over de virtuele economie” (pp 174-175). It’s a short bit on why the IP question is important and why we all should look at the true heroes of the digital revolution, dedicated residents who build incredibly creative stuff.

The book can be bought online via this link. The book is only 15 euro’s, reasonable priced if you ask me!

It took a bit (too) long, but I did a piece on the brilliant guitar game Guitar Hero 2. I interviewed the Dutch air guitarist champion Guyri Vergouw and I played Guitar Hero 2 quite a lot (damnnnn you Freebird…). I hope to find a second guitar somewhere to play the bass, because playing guitar is for… well bass players are true hero’s.

Check out the article here (.pdf), page 15 (and a lead-in on page 1).