This is too funny (imho) to go to waist in the big bin that is the internets (a.k.a. a series of tubes). Yesterday the Dutch RTL 4 19:30 evening news blundered. Media scholars rejoice!

Ignorant news lady: “Within a few months the U.S. elections will commence. It seems that it will be a struggle between Hillary Clinton, a democrat, and Rudy Giuliani, a republican.

Ok, didn’t know that they already decided on that. Commonnn, it’s not that simple. I say Barack, you say Mitt, I say John, you say John. About that Rudy “911911911” Giuliani, didn’t he say:

“Hillary and Obama are kind of debating whether to invite them [i.e. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden] to the inauguration or the inaugural ball”.

Wew, that would be an interesting sight to behold. Ignorant news lady goes on:

“Even so, Clinton at least gets the most attention in the media, according to a Harvard University study. But for a candidate media attention alone is not enough. Voters are also bombarded with text messages and emails”.

Right. Well that’s if for my Media Studies department then. Thanks news lady, maybe it’s time to become a film or television scholar. You know, those are real media (Check out the footage @ 17:00 .wmv).

If you want a game related PhD position, lecturing job or full professorship related to games (or new media in general) in the Netherlands, the time is now. There are a lot of open PhD positions, so come on over to Amsterdam!
As I said on this blog before, there are quite some positions lately for PhDs (both at Utrecht University and in Amsterdam) as well as lecturers (in Amsterdam). And not to be outdone we are LFP (looking for professor):

Professor of New Media and Digital Culture: The duties associated with this chair comprise teaching and research in the field of the new media and digital culture. The chair will be part of an academic and cultural network within the city of Amsterdam. This includes the Waag Society for Old and New Media, De Balie (Centre for Culture and Politics), the Mediagilde and the Netherlands Institute for Media Arts (NIM), as well as the other parts of the UvA concerned with information studies, the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and the institutions of higher education in the arts, such as the Rietveld Academie, the Rijksacademie and the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten. (Check out the full text).

Last summer I went to a two-day conference on digital culture and Dutch cultural institutions (aptly named Culture 2.0). Among the speakers were Andrew Keen, who’s book ‘The Cult of the Amateur‘ I very much enjoyed, and Charles Leadbeater. Leadbeater spoke about his book ‘We Think: Why mass creativity is the next big thing‘ (.pdf) which will be published according to his website somewhere this year.

I wrote an essay discussing Leadbeater’s claim of mass creativity asking who are actually participating and whose benefiting from all these hours and hours of unpaid labour. I have some critical remarks about the general argument he’s making. The essay ‘In Search of a Disclaimer – Mass Creativity as a Business Model‘ is online (.pdf) here.

While you’re reading take a look at the other essays. There’s a pamphlet on the meaning of the web 2.0 methaphor by former Utrecht University colleague Marianne van den Boomen, ‘What is Web 2.0?‘ and an essay by Reinder Rustema, a colleague from the UvA. Reinder wrote ‘Dead or Alive? Culture and Web 2.0‘. The entire collection of essay, articles and reports on the conference are to be found here.

If you are Dutch, please buy this month’s GMR (monthly game magazine) or even better subscribe online. You can buy it for €4.95 at your local bookstore. Why? I wrote three articles for the magazine, listed below. I wrote my first ever preview of Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 for the Wii. Interesting format, those previews. I based my preview on my visit to Leipzig. My Tokyo trip resulted in a short 12 game preview/review piece on the Tokyo Game Show (wrote it together with my UvA colleague René Glas). And I am most proud of my third article on Valve Software which I wrote with partner-in-crime Shenja van der Graaf as part of our ongoing research on games, mods and participatory culture.

As a thank you to my most beloved blogreaders and being a creative commons proponent, I put my previous piece for GMR 2.3 (2007) – on the preservation of games – online (in .pdf).

- ‘Ontwikkelaarsprofiel: Valve Software’. In: GMR. 2.5, 2007, page 40-41. Co-author: Shenja van der Graaf.

- ‘Tokyo Game Show 2007: Sluipen, schieten en sporten’. In: GMR. 2.5, 2007, page 38-39. Co-author: René Glas.

- ‘Rayman Raving Rabbids 2: Bij de konijnen af’. In: GMR. 2.5, 2007, page 23.

There are two open PhD positions involving games at my alma mater Utrecht University. One of the positions is “Game design as narrative architecture”, the second “Persuasive rhetoric in game design”. I hope some foreign PhD’s will apply, ‘we’ could use some fresh perspective. Most of all I look forward to more game PhD’s, the more the merrier. Although I’m not affiliated with this particular project, if you want to apply and need help/my take on it/whatever, please let me know. The full vacancy and project descriptions are online here.

I would say, there are three very good reasons to apply for this.

1. Utrecht is a grate place and the university and their game group is very good (both in staff and the way games are part of the teaching curriculum). I should know, I taught game courses there and graduated in Utrecht and miss them very much (disclaimer: I am very happy in Amsterdam).

2. You got to work with prof. Uricchio (my PhD supervisor) and he’s very inspiring and you got to work with associate prof. Joost Raessens and his team.

3. Check out the project outline of project #2: “This project investigates how the medium-specificity of computer games make them suitable for persuasive purposes and to what extent and in what ways persuasive strategies can be designed to convince serious-game players of the veracity of a certain point of view – as in games for change – or the necessity of a behavioral change – as in health games.” That’s is a very groovy project if I may say so.

As an introduction to the workshop on November 22 (see part1 below) I gave my view on social network in relation to game culture:

Valve heeft het spel van social networking door
Naar mening van Nieborg is de Amerikaanse spelontwikkelaar Valve – maker van o.a. het populaire schietspel Half-Life en tevens uitgever van Counter-Strike – één van de beste corporate social networkers. ‘Zij hebben het goed begrepen. Door een eigen digitaal distributiedienst op te zetten, door voor iedereen haar geavanceerde game technologie toegankelijk te maken, door gamers in dienst te nemen en door altijd de wensen van de klant – gamers – mee te nemen, is dit bedrijf onderdeel van een enorm social network om haar games heen’, aldus Nieborg.

Read the rest of the blogpost here.

November 22 I’ll do a lecture at the ‘CSNConference – Where social networks meet business’. I’ll talk about game culture, participatory culture and social networks. About the conference:

De wereld verandert ingrijpend door social networks. Het mediagedrag van de groeiende webgeneratie en de opkomst van social software maken dat social networks niet meer weg te denken zijn uit het dagelijks leven. Bedrijven krijgen hiermee te maken omdat een snel groeiend aantal consumenten, werknemers en sollicitanten social networks gebruiken.

Read the brochure here (.pdf), the conference website is here. There will be a lecture outline and such up here soon (that’s the part 2 part).

This week I’ve been interviewed about my visit to Tokyo, doing research on games and the general view of games in ‘the media’. It was a very nice conversation I had with Wendy Degens from the Universiteit van Maastricht’s weekly magazine Observant. A large part of the interview is with fellow UvA researcher Jeroen Jansz, he has some great quotes and parallels I should “borrow”. A snippet from the interview:

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I wrote a piece on the Tokyo Game Show, it appeared today in Dagblad De Pers. It’s on page 16 with a nice homemade picture taken at the show. And it’s online here. I truly enjoyed Tokyo. I like the atmosphere, the gadgets in Ikihabara, the food, the people, the numerous arcades (I have yet to meet someone who beats me at Mario Kart 2 Mario Kart DS), and even the weather.