I have to come up with better titles for these updates… Anyway, another sort of bi-monthly update. Still working on my PhD, progressing well, end date is set at Q4 of this year. In the meantime I did some miscellaneous writing/talking, listed below.

For Bashers.nl I wrote another “Uitgelezen”, a book review on a game related book. This installment is Osamu Inoue’s “Nintendo Magic, Winning The Videogame Wars” (2010). In addition, I did participated in this season’s last podcast “Bashers Podcast seizoen 2, aflevering 34: seizoensoverzicht”. We talk about game journalism, E3 and new game platforms. For your information, you can subscribe to the podcasts via iTunes (they are in Dutch though).

For MM Nieuws (Dutch magazine on management and marketing for the creative industries), I wrote a piece on social media and gamers, arguing that the game industry in many ways is quite adapt at facilitating user created content, or at least in many instances not regulating it as much as the movie or music industries. The piece is for subscribers only, but I put up a .pdf here of the unedited version. If you’re a subscriber, there’s more on the MM website.

In plaats van consumenten te zien als veredelde pinautomaten, als een eindpunt in de keten van productie, distributie en tenslotte consumptie, worden gamers massaal aangemoedigd vooral met games aan de slag te gaan. Parodieer maar, maak maar flmpjes, plaatjes en verhalen over de game die je zo tof vindt. En deel ze, met behulp van social media, vooral online met je vrienden en vriendinnen!

For the University of Amsterdam weekly magazine (Folia) I wrote a column on innovative ICT use at the university. I found that, to put it mildly, it is very hard to, for example, gain access to the wireless network and to be able to use ICT productively at my office. Got some reactions from university staff (agreeing with me), so I hope the ICT policies change for the better, if only for future generations of students. The piece is here: “Vooroplopen heeft een hoge prijs” (.pdf, see page 8).

Voor een iPad-gebruiker is het digitale leven aan de UvA een kafkaëske nachtmerrie. Waarom faciliteert ICT eigenlijk alleen de Windowsgebruiker?

Been a bit quiet here, it was election season here in the Netherlands so I’ve been (just a little bit) busy with doing interviews on social politics (the convergence of social media and politics).

Wednesday June 2 I gave a short comment on the ‘RTL Twitter debate’ on the RTL evening news. You can see the clip here. The segment talks about the purpose of the debate (i.e. Dutch politicians doing an election debate via Twitter), one of the party’s communication directors gave a short statement on the usefulness of Twitter. My view is that while Twitter is a tremendously useful tool (if used well) for journalists, researchers, students and politicians, I think using it as a debate tool does not add (enough) value to a (political) debate (compared to, let’s say, good ol’ TV).

For the weekly opinion magazine Vrij Nederland I gave some comments on the question whether or not social media are of any use during political campaigns. Arguing: “partijen hebben zich hebben overvallen door de vervroegde verkiezingen. Toen twee maanden geleden het kabinet viel, moesten de meeste partijen online nog bij nul beginnen.‘Er lagen geen plannen klaar. De partijen zijn webmensen gaan inhuren, terwijl die er al een jaar hadden moeten werken. En dat terwijl ze zoveel tijd hebben gehad. Een strategische blunder.” See the entire article here: “Heeft online campagnevoeren zin?”.

And last but not least, the game website Gamingonly.nl did an series of articles on games and politics (i.e. issues such as piracy, and games and violence). The articles feature Dutch politicians, (game) journalists and researchers, they’re definitely worth a read. Here’s the list (all articles are in Dutch):

GO! Politics: Violence and games
GO! Politics: Piracy
GO! Politics: Game addiction