First of all, best wishes for 2011! My new year’s resolution is pretty straightforward; finish my PhD in Q1 and then defend it in Q2. I do actually have post-PhD plans but many of them are anything but set in stone and are subject to change. If I change affiliation, finish my PhD and/or start any big new projects, I’ll let you know via this blog.

Last year I did an extensive interview for the Xmas special of Elsevier magazine on military games. I’m happy with the result, the article is rather balanced and includes the viewpoint of the industry as well. Unsurprisingly, their stance towards military themed shooters is somewhat less critical. You can read the four paged article article “Het virtuele slagveld”, including nice pics here: page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4.

For the newspaper Spits I did a short interview last week on the success of the Call of Duty franchise. Again, I added a critical perspective on why Activision is so incredibly successful and what role gamers have in this respect. You can read the unformatted article “Call of Duty schiet met scherp” here.

The next months will probably be eerily quiet around here. Apart from maybe some interviews and Bashers editorials. Next up, I am going into full crunch mode to finish the last chapter and do a massive redraft.