Before my summer vacation (a.k.a. the ultimate-phd-writing-frenzy) starts I did three articles for Dutch game magazine GMR, which is in stores as we speak. This edition I did a studio profile, an interview and a background piece.

‘Larry Hryb (alias Major Nelson) – Het gezicht van Xbox Live’. A profile of Xbox Live community manager Larry Hryb.
‘America’s Army – De ultieme oorlogsmachine’. A 2-page background article on the rationale behind the project’s success, how & why it works, some talk of propaganda, and a glimpse into the future.
‘Ontwikkelaarsprofiel: Infinity Ward’. A 2-page profile/interview with the guys from the studio which brought us Call of Duty 4, the best shooter I’ve played the last year(s).

As a ‘gift’ to my regular readers I uploaded last month’s studio profile on DICE:
- ‘Ontwikkelaarsprofiel DICE‘. In: GMR. 3.2, 2008, page 40-41.

As you might have seen, June 19 I will give a talk at the CSN Conference 2008. At this one day conference I will talk together with speakers from Forrester Research, Intelligence Group, Favela Fabric and Inholland about social networks, marketing and recruiting. My talk will be on games & marketing. Check the full program here.

With all the journalism and teaching going on, one might think I forgot how to behave academically. On the contrary. Last month the Indian ICFAI University Press published the book Advergaming and Ingame Advertising – An Introduction. I contributed with a chapter called “Contemporary Game Culture by the US Military” on marketing, games & the (U.S.) military. The non-profit rationale behind the ICFAI University Press is kinda impressive. Their main objective is to supply Indian students with affordable books. Being part of such an effort makes me very proud of course. You can actually order the book online for only 17$ (10 Euros).

As you might have seen in the ‘Upcoming Presentations‘ section, I’m doing a talk tonight at the DeMeter Thema Avond ‘De Toekomst van DM‘ (The future of Direct Marketing). The talk will be on virtual worlds and games and I will share the floor with the nice guys from Codemasters Benelux.

For DM mediapartner Adforesult I did a Q&A on the future of DM. I share my views on privacy, mass media vs. new media and of course the future of direct marketing.

Yesterday we did a story for Dagblad De Pers on gay gamers. ‘Gay gamer vogelvrij in macho gamecultuur’. Good heavens, I knew this was a touchy subject, but I didn’t anticipate that gamers (and non-gamers alike) are that sensitive to gay issues. Call me naïve but frankly, it shocked me a bit. On the other hand it goes to show the relevance of discussing this topic at all. You don’t have to agree with the conclusions of the article, but a (somewhat) civil discussion wouldn’t hurt anybody.

The article itself took weeks to prepare. We did extensive background research and interviews and I am quite happy how the article turned out. Well balanced, not too political. We just described what we see in (certain parts of) game culture today and leave the judging to the real experts. In the end, it’s a newspaper article, so there’s not that much space for the finer nuances and discussion we as academics would like. The premise of our argument is that;

First, gay characters are non-existent in hardcore game culture. You can ‘roleplay gay’ in many games, such as The Sims and maybe some MMORPGs, but such roles are quite implicit. There are many reasons for that, but it would be hard to refute this simple fact. Especially in First Person Shooter culture, what Stephen Kline (et al) in their book Digital Play aptly call ‘military masculinity’, is devoid of any gay reference/characters/themes. Whether or not it should is another question.

Second, services like Playstation Network and Xbox Live allow for semi-anonymous (ok, your gamertag is always visible) communications. And from what we’ve seen, naming yourself ‘xxGayxx’ in a game such as Halo 3 is asking for trouble. Is all of game culture homophobic? Hell no, I would never make such a statement. Yet, significant parts of game culture are. Especially shooter culture. So where does that leave us? I don’t know, there’s no silver bullet here. But what I do know, and what has shocked me quite a bit, is that this subject, more than any other piece I’ve written for the newspaper, leads to quite strong reactions. The general reaction I, in the back of my head, feared the most, was actually voiced: ‘Stay away from ‘my’ games’. Reactions such as ‘There’s nothing gay about Halo 3, you fagg0tttt’. Or, ‘games are very expensive to develop, so why risk putting gay characters in it’. Auch.

Not to pat myself on the back too much here, but in the end I think this article is what I think should be real game journalism. We can talk about games, their mechanics, innovative technology, and aesthetics, all we want, but asking questions few seem to want to discuss is the only way to alleviate game from total trivialness. Solely talking about games & violence is the easy way out. The representation of gays (and women for that matter) should have been part of popular gamer discourse all along. The subject may capture the imagination of loads of game scholars familiar with cultural studies, but I hope it will enter the vocabularies of the silent majority of many adult hardcore gamers as well.

Oddly enough this leads many people who emailed or texted me about this piece to openly question my own sexuality. I wrote about it so maybe I may just be ‘one of them’. Am I gay? Well answering that question defies the whole purpose of the newspaper article. Doesn’t it?

… 404.

The last days have been quite a rollercoaster ride. The week kicked off with Sony’s first ever Playstation Day in London. More on that in the post below, I wrote a background story on it for Dagblad De Pers. The event was, at least for me, very insightful. Apart from taking a look at new key titles (Resistance 2, Killzone 2, Motorstorm 2, Little Big Planet and such), Sony’s CEO Kaz Hirai talked about Sony’s long-term strategy. And that’s something I was hoping to hear about for a long time. With regard to my PhD-research this was the golden nugget I was waiting for.

It seemed that everybody in the Netherlands who has anything to do with some kind of game journalism was invited. Which is of course really nice because with >20 Dutch (and Belgian) guys (and 3 girls to be fair) in their twenties, early thirties, you can have loads of fun. The event was all about boozing & smoozing and I managed to win a 4-player Buzz session (which included game trivia, ha!) against my colleagues from outlets such as FHM, De Telegraaf & Metro. In the end I am the one who works for the quality newspaper right ;). I met some groovy people too. London still is party capital numero uno.

The next day (Wednesday) I took a train to Brussels to visit the 3rd ISFE conference ‘Virtual worlds meet real world: a perspective from the European videogame industry’. Great talks, especially by University of London reader Andrew Burn on video game (anti)hero’s.

Thursday I did two lectures, one called “War & Games” at the the Design Academy in Eindhoven. Later in the afternoon I did a workshop session at the Marketeer Congres 2008 at the TU Eindhoven on “Marketing & Games”. I am all up to date now on the latest on community branding & marketing. It turns out that ‘we’ (in the humanities) are in many ways far more knowledgeable, in a critical sense, about community marketing than most industry insiders are. But the irony is, and this might come as no surprise, that marketing professionals and academics working on this topic seem to be far better at marketing themselves – as experts.

So that wraps it up for this week. The next weeks (and months) are going to be far less spectacular. I do got some small surprises in my big black hat (mainly articles for GMR), but after that I will hide in my email/phone/journalism-proof PhD bunker which lies hidden somewhere in the Netherlands (or maybe even abroad), to work on my PhD manuscript for a while, but more on that later.

In the O2 dome in London, Sony announced their plans for the coming year. Lots of ‘new’ titles (most of them sequels honestly), and Little Big Planet. User generated content is of course one of the 2008 (and 2007) buzzwords, so I wrote a piece on it for Dagblad De Pers: ‘Creëer je eigen game, sla op en deel ’t met andere spelers’, (.pdf page 18) subtitled ‘Sony’s plan voor Playstation 3: de gamer wordt co-producent’. Co-creation is the future of competition. Right?

Een nieuwe reeks Sony games stimuleert gebruikers het heft in eigen handen te nemen en games te personaliseren. Gamers moeten in staat zijn nieuwe levels of puzzels te ontwikkelen door gebruik te maken van simpele tools die onderdeel zijn van een spel.

What a ride it has been. Waiting for GTA4. Was it worth it? Yup. Last Tuesday (launch day) I didn’t write on it for De Pers, instead I did a short interview with DAG, read the story here (.pdf).

My take on GTA4 is that the game is a special something. The single player is compelling and there’s food for over 3 academic books and dozens of papers (and not be me I that is), I look forward to informed analysis of my colleagues. So far, one article I liked in particular is on Slate “It’s Not Just About Killing Hookers Anymore“:

The reputation of the series might be too far gone for nongamers and politicians to appreciate the depth and richness of this amazing game. But Grand Theft Auto IV is not an orgy of death. It’s a living, breathing place—and when you’re forced to kill, it’s nothing to celebrate.

What surprised me the most was the multiplayer part. As it was the only part which was completely new, I was somewhat skeptic. There are 15 multiplayer modes, some are just tagged on (it seems), others are extremely fun. I had a great time playing “Team Mafiya Work” (i.e. 2-8 teams compete to complete contract work for the “mafiya”, such as escorting/killing targets or stealing cars) with friends. I very much look forward to playing the objective based multiplayer modes again. Overall I think the multiplayer part has quite some potential. I really do hope that Rockstar expands on the current model. There’s much to improve, not that multiplayer is bad as it is, but there so much to expand upon in terms of designing a balanced & fun multiplayer experience.

As of yet I’m only at a mere 15% of the single player part. I hope to be able to complete this game before winter sets in again with my agenda filling up and the upcoming PhD crunch time.

Today I’m on BNR newsradio talking about war & games. They are running a special on the subject of War. My part is a short clip (of me) playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and providing some commentary on the game itself, its success and game/clan culture. I didn’t hear it myself (yet). I’ll update this post when I got a link or MP3.