The Obama 08 campaign was/is the dream of any new media scholar. It’s all there; the social networking, co-creation, collective intelligence, the networked public sphere, crowdsourcing. Theories and concepts coined during the rise of Web 2.0, all are in one way or another relevant to the US elections. The coming weeks I will do some lecturing on this subject and to prepare for this I wrote an analysis for this weeks Vrij Nederland (see page: 18-19). Luckily, the editors chose my piece to be published (fully) online:

“Obama 2.0 – De eerste Amerikaanse tech-president“.

To be honest, I am proud and humbled to have a piece in Vrij Nederland, one of my favourite columnists writes for it as well. The story was wrapped up Monday, but just after sending it off, there was news I knew about (but couldn’t report as it was off-the-record material, and I didn’t know all the exact details). As it turns out, the Obama team (on Change.gov) started one of their first dialogues with voters/citizens on health care (something I describe at the end of the article). The webpage reads “Open Government” & “Join the Discussion”. While I am naturally sceptical about these kinds of efforts, I am deeply impressed by this important first step in e-democracy. Nobody knows if it will work and where this will go. But boy, this makes my line of work so much more interesting. Using IntenseDebate (special debate software), there are already some interesting and insightful comments popping up. Great material for a next article ;).

Another GMR is out (and I just finished writing the pieces for the next one…). One of my contributions is a preview/review (the game is out in the Netherlands as well if I remember correctly) on Rock Band 2. Guitar Hero: World Tour’s hardware is better, is has an editor etc. etc., BUT Rock Band 2 is the game to buy if you love (Rock and/or Roll) music. What helped as well, I really enjoyed playing the game in my MIT office on that badass projector.

The second piece – a 4-page feature article – is sort of an introduction into my PhD thesis and deals with business models (in the game industry) and discusses subscription models, ads in games, DLC (downloadable content), and all that stuff. The title is “Nieuwe Businessmodellen – Hoe vaak wil je betalen voor games die je al hebt?”. Get your copy of GMR today!

I uploaded one story of the last GMR, a 4 page feature on Xbox Achievements “De zin en onzin van Microsoft’s Gamerscore“.

Yeah, all rumors you heard today are true. It is actually my birthday today. And yes, I’m also back in Amsterdam. Am I happy about that? What do you think? Honestly…?

For today’s paper I did an interview with University of Amsterdam PhD-student René Glas on the latest World of Warcraft expansion pack. It was an insightful conversation we had on hardcore versus casual WoW-players and on the merits of expansion packs. I also spoke with HKU lecturer Zuraida Buter who played WoW since the beta (respect!) and was happy to carry on with adventuring. The piece is here: “’World of Warcraft’ blijft groeien – Een knieval voor de massa”.

In addition I wrote a small review on the new Xbox 360 dashboard, XNE, and those dreadful avatars; “Geen interface, maar een ervaring” (the title was actually a remark made by my, sort of former now, GAMBIT colleague Jesper made about the new dashboard experience.

On related news, last week I posted a semi-academic review of Fable 2 (as blogged here). The article was picked up by various game blogs, such as Kotaku, resulting in quite some (insightful) comments and feedback. All I can say is: W00000t!

Another email discussion between Niels ‘t Hooft and me at Bashers.nl.

See: November 17-21, 2008. ‘David en Niels in gesprek over reviews’.
Part 1 (Niels ‘t Hooft);
Part 2 (me);
Part 3 (Niels ‘t Hooft);
Part 4 (me);
Part 5 (Harry Hol).

The discussion started with Niels reviewing the Xbox 360 exclusive Too Human in his newspaper (nrc.next) and fellow game journalist Harry Hol calling him out for not playing the entire game (but only the demo). That discussion started our email discussion and generated a massive amount of comments at Bashers.nl (almost all of them are of extremely hight quality). I learned a lot from this discussion and I will definitely rethink my own reviewing practices and writing style. Thanks for all those who commented!

For the Valuable Games Blog, moderated by Berkman Center’s Gene Koo, I wrote a review of Fable 2 and its moral dimension introducing the notion of “gamer guilt” and talking about the game’s “social physics engine”. It builds a bit on my previous newspaper article on the game. The Valuable Games group is a MIT-Harvard cooperation having monthly meetings in order to discuss games for change.

Click: Morality and “Gamer Guilt” in Fable 2.

Hey, there’s a first for everything. The people from Brunel – an international consultancy/employment firm – asked me to do an interview about my career for Brunel Magazine. Part of the interview was a professional photo shoot, which was great fun. I obviously never did such a thing. The result is a frontpage picture of yours truly in Second Life and a spread where I do this weird thing with my hair.

Click on the pics for a bigger version.

For the CSN (Coporate Social Networking) Blog, powered by KREM, I’m doing a series of blogposts on trends in soclal networking. The first post in the series was a book review of Kol’s book on Hyves and Au’s book on Second Life: “Een vooruitblik op gisteren – Twee boeken over Hyves en Second Life“, the second post was an article discussing gaming trends at the Games Convention in Leipzig, but more recent posts deal with a very topical subject, the Obama campaign in its new media use:

- “De rol van Facebook in de Amerikaanse verkiezingen“. October 29, 2008.
- “Mijn Barack – een analyse van MyBO.com“. October 8, 2008.

In the coming weeks I will make at least one additional post on the CSN Blog, probably also on the US elections. As of now it is uncertain if I will continue blogging when I’m back in Amsterdam (late November).

Last Friday I spend an afternoon in Westwood, here in the great state of Massachusetts. Westwood is the home town of Turbine Inc, a developer you might know from such MMORPGs as Asheron’s Call and Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO). Next Tuesday the first LOTRO expansion pack, Mines of Moria, will be launched and I had some insightful discussions with Adam Mersky (PR), Jeffrey Steefel (LOTRO’s exec. producer) and Mike who’s the lead on the expansion pack. I learned a lot about what it takes to keep a MMORPG up and running.

The interview material has been used for an article in Dagblad De Pers: “Nog jaren spelen in Middelaarde” (.pdf, see page 23). The upcoming edition of GMR Magazine will feauture a studio profile of Turbine.

Amidst all the election preparations, nail biting, partying, after-partying, recovering and generally being very happy and excited, I wrote an article and a review for last Monday’s Dagblad De Pers on the Xbox 360 RPG Fable 2. I interviewed Berkman Center Fellow Gene Koo on games & morality and he helped me framing and understand the underlying goals and morality system as it is implemented in the game. For those who are interested in this particular topic, there is an interesting interview with Peter Molyneux (Fable 2 main developer) on Bashers.nl (by Niels ’t Hooft).

Check out the main story and (small) review here (.pdf link, see page 21).

I never felt it, or saw it happening, live, like this. History.

Like Bostonians tend to say: Wicked awesome!