In case you’re wondering what keeps me so busy, it’s that I’m fully emerged in preparing quite a load of lectures and talks. I updated the “Upcoming Presentations” section accordingly. Most of them are lectures at my university, but on April 23 there’s a more open event which looks promissing, a discussion on the future of games with practitioners, academics and the public. There are even more talks in the future, but some of that has to be confirmed. Anyway, here’s the rundown:

- 2009. (March 27). “Burgerjournalistiek. Het begin van het einde of een nieuw begin?”. Hoorcollege in de reeks “Oriëntatie Nieuwe media: Nieuwe media en digitale cultuur“. Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam.
- 2009. (April 2). “”Productie versus consumptie”. Hoorcollege in de reeks “Web 2.0“. Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam.
- 2009. (April 6). “Werken (of niet) in de Creatieve Industrie”. Hoorcollege in de reeks “Oriëntatie Nieuwe media: Nieuwe media en digitale cultuur“. Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam.
- 2009. (April 16). “Making money online”. Hoorcollege in de reeks “Web 2.0“. Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam.
- 2009. (April 23). “De toekomst van games”. Deelname discussie: The Future of Games. Cultuurhuis Diamantslijperij, Amsterdam.

For all the academic gamers out there: PhD researcher wanted (1.0 fte for 3 years) at Utrecht University.

Pretty awesome project if you ask me:

Job description PhD project: Persuasive rhetoric in game design – 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 rhetorical 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.

The deadline for applications is 19 April 2009. The interviews will take place in Utrecht on 7 May 2009. More information to be found here. If you need help or input or whatever (I’m not affiliated with this project in any way but my MA-thesis very much mirrors the PhD topic), drop me an email.

Wrote a short op-ed article on Twitter for the University of Amsterdam magazine Folia. Title: “Kroeggesprek in 140 tekens” (.pdf) on pages 8 & 9. My conclusion:

“Uiteindelijk is Twitter zo waardevol als je zelf wilt dat het is. Het blijft een online kroeggesprek dus het blijft altijd wat rumoerig en soms hoor of zie je dingen die totaal overbodig zijn – of zelfs een beetje gênant. Het is dus vooral zaak de juiste mensen te kiezen om de kroeg mee in te gaan. Andersom geldt hetzelfde. Hoe relevanter, grappiger of interessanter jouw tweets zijn, hoe meer mensen bij jou in de kroeg komen zitten.”

The title of this blogpost surely will lead to a) a significant increase in my readership and b) moreee spam! The title refers to two newspaper articles I did today for Dagblad De Pers. The first one is a feature article on MadWorld (the “ultra violent” Wii game) and the second a short review of Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad (Xbox 360).

“Sega verandert de rol van de Wii als familieconsole – Geweld in de overdrive of: een Japanse Tom & Jerry”
&
“Onfunctioneel bloot in Onechanbara”

I tried my best to provide a fair & balanced point of view on MadWorld. Personally Im somewhat ambivalent about MadWorld. As I a game I enjoy(ed) it, it’s very well designed, engaging and fun. On the other hand, you are (at least I am) very aware of what you’re doing (mutilating and torturing bodies that is). The style of the game is very Tom & Jerry (i.e. cartoonish) yet also very gratuitous. The biggest question for me is not so much is MadWorld a good game (it is), but whether it will get away being the way it is, considering the current climate of policy crafters trying to ban violent games. For politicians MadWorld just seems to be another stick to slap people like me (who enjoy this kind of “adult” entertainment) with: “Look what kind of perverse stuff there’s out there”. Again, Im very ambivalent about myself being ambivalent (you’re still there?), I wish I could just enjoy myself with gratuitous interactive violence without that constant voice in the back of my head whispering: what kind of moral panic will emerge because of this game?. We’ll see.

And about the sex thing? Well games & sex don’t mix. Period. Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad sucks (No pun intended. At. All. You perv.)

Last week I visited Brands & Games in Utrecht. David Edery, author of Changing the Game: How Video Games Are Transforming the Future of Business, did an inspiring keynote. I did sort of a preview of his keynote for Dagblad De Pers (March 9): “Obama’s campagne was een omslagpunt’ – Op de Xbox voor een Whoppermenu.” In the article Edery talks about the Burger King advergames and about research on advergames. I loved reading Edery’s book and recommend it to all those interested in advegames, but also in games for training.

Yesterday I wrote a short review on Popcap’s casual game Peggle (for Xbox Live): “Peggle: een zwart gat voor de vrije tijd“. I liked it, recommend it, but the multiplayer did had some more potential.

On a personal note, did some talks the last couple of days, two on games and one on Obama (new media & politics that is). The coming weeks there are some more, one on citizen journalism and two on creative industries (media work issues and such).

I have been a bit slow updating the presentations sections. There are some upcoming lectures, mostly University of Amsterdam lectures for the courses Orientation on New Media and the course Web 2.0. I didn’t add those as they are for students only, if you want to be there, drop me an email. There are some invited talks in the near future. And I have done some the presentations the last months. This is what I added:

Upcoming presentations:
- 2009. (March 9). “In Obama we trust, online De marketingcampagne van Barack Obama“. Talk at Marketingdag voor de podiumkunsten at De Reehorst, Ede.
- 2009. (March 15). “De armchair traveller“. Impakt Festival. De Zondagsschool #7: Travel. Impakt Headquarters, Utrecht.

Past presentations:
- 2008. (February 13). “The Cultural Logic of Convergence and American Presidential Politics”. Lecture at the University of Amsterdam for the course Media Worlds/World Media.
- 2008. (February 12). “Yes we can! Wat kunnen we leren van de Obama campagne?”. Talk at IKT (IKT-Werkgroep Productie, Logistiek & Techniek) in Hengelo.
- 2008. (December 2). “Obama08 – Nieuwe media gebruik in 
‘the age of Obama’”. Lecture at Stifo@Sandberg (Stimuleringsfonds Nederlandse Culturele Omroepproducties), Amsterdam.
- 2008. (December 1). “Yes We Can?! Nieuwe media gebruik in
 ‘the age of Obama’”. Lecture at the University of Amsterdam for the course Inleiding geschiedenis en audiovisuele cultuur.
- 2008. (November 13). “Fable 2 and morality”. Talk for MIT/Harvard’s Valuable Games Group at MIT.
- 2008. (October 27). “War & Games”. Lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a course on games.
- 2008. (September 24). “Looking back into the future – Some notes on virtual worlds and “those things that youngs kids do”. Keynote at Picnic 08, Amsterdam.

Sometimes a story pops up which captures your attention the moment someone explains the concept. Quake Live is such a story. The game is based on Quake III Arena, which is pure nostalgia, it’s free (and me being Dutch likes that), and it’s browser based. But the most interesting feature is the social networking portion of the project. The developers of Quake Live, id Software, are trying to mix the best of a social network (e.g. Facebook) with game-like aspects (e.g. statistics, friend lists, etc, similar to Xbox Live). All of this is neatly packaged and it simply works. My only gripe, it doesn’t work on a Mac (yet).

For Dagblad De Pers I wrote a story about Quake Live discussing five reasons why Quake Live is such an interesting concept: “Zes uur na de lancering waren 113.000 mensen geregistreerd – Nooit meer betalen om lekker te kunnen schieten“. What I find noteworthy as well, but didn’t cover in the article, is the developers’ use of Twitter. During the launch, Quake Live is officially in beta, the devs continually updated the status of the game, the server load, the queues, etc. For gamers and journalists this use of Twitter proved to be very valuable and I hope other developers will follow suit.

Wrote two articles on the Grand Theft Auto franchise the last weeks.

The first one on the new downloadable content (i.e. Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned): “Nieuw hoofdstuk voor downloads“. The article deals with the change in perspective in the new material. You meet old and new characters and see Liberty City, which is very familiar by now, from a very different viewpoint. +1 kudos for Rockstar games, I truly appreciate this new approach to downloadable material and enjoy the set of new character(s) — MC (Motorclub) The Lost.

A week later I previewed the DS game GTA: Chinatown Wars. Again I was impressed by the technological skills of the Rockstar team and can’t wait to get my hands on the final version. I played some missions and within minutes I felt like I was playing the game for days (which is good). Check out the preview: “Rockstar lanceert oorlog in Chinatown“.