In the week of June 22, when I defended my PhD, I did an interview with Dutch game journalist Erik Coenen. We talked for over an hour about games, game research, my PhD, and developments in the Dutch game industry. Erik allowed me to post the entire interview here, a 9 page/5600 word article with my latest thoughts. Read the interview after the break, or you can download the .pdf here.

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Such a long time of not updating a blog either means really good news or really bad news. I am happy to report I have exciting news and new projects. In short, I started a new game company with a small group of talented people. More on that later this month. In this blogpost there is an overview of the activities of the last couple of months. I mostly worked on adjusting to post-PhD life, starting our company and doing interviews, writing columns and such.

My PhD was “reviewed” by dr. Linda Duits, a respected colleague from the Uni of Amsterdam. Read here review on De Jaap.nl or on her personal blog. More PhD-related coverage can be found at Eurogamer.nl where Erik Coenen wrote up an interview on game studies and my recent research.

Along the way I did several radio interviews:
- June 20, I talked to Eva Jinek at one of the longest running radio shows in the Netherlands: Oog op Morgen. This has always been bit of a dream to be there so do have a listen!
- June 22, I did a brief interview for Radio Wakker Nederland on my PhD, which can be heard here.
- June 30, an interview with NOS Radio 1 on the rise of Zynga and its possible IPO: “Gamewetenschapper over mogelijke beursgang maker Farmville“.
- July 11, a 60 minute discussion at BNR Business Radio on game journalism.
- July 20, an interview with Alexander Klöpping and Ernst-Jan Pfauth for their onetime nightly radio show. We talked about game journalism! You can download the .mp3 here (and remember, I was on at 2:40 at night!).

There is more I did on game journalism the last couple of months. Niels ‘t Hooft and I hosted a debate June 30 at De Waag. There is a review of the debate here, a brief video of the event, and there are photos over at Flickr. Over at Villamedia, journalist and author Nick Kivits wrote an extended piece on game journalism as well, worth a read!

In the meantime I wrote my bi-weekly column for nrc.next:
- “De gamer in mij wil punten, geen geld”. In: nrc.next. 2 september, p28.
- “Haat voor Bobby“. In: nrc.next. 15 augustus, p28.
- “Het kopieerprobleem“. In: nrc.next. 27 juli, p24.
- “Crunchtijd“. In: nrc.next. 15 juli, p29.
- “Games voor alle vrienden; Nieuwste hit: ‘Empires & Allies’“. In: nrc.next. 5 juli, p10. Met: Stijn Bronzwaer.
- “Dertig dagen maïs planten, naar olie boren en af en toe vechten“. In: nrc.next. 5 juli, p10.
- “Game-onderzoek is vers“. In: nrc.next. 29 juni, p12.
- “Geef een 8.5, krijg jij een reisje; Gamejournalisten worden aan alle kanten gepaaid door grote gamebedrijven“. In: NRC & nrc.next. 28 juni, p12.
- “Het is nog even afwachten met de nieuwe Wii U”. In: nrc.next. 16 juni 2011, p24.

In the world of academia there is news as well. I presented a paper in March on seriality in games. A rave review of the conference and my paper can be read here: »To be continued…«: Seriality and Serialization in Interdisciplinary Perspective.

Early July, for the Dutch blog Flabber I did a video interview on my (game) research, check out the video (or download the podcast) here.

And last but not least, mid-July I did a talk on gamification for Netwerk 023 (in Haarlem). There is a blog post and review on the talk, my presentation can be downloaded here, and a lot of pictures.

Next month I’ll do three talks. One on October 4 social media for Studium Generale (Universiteit Utecht), a talk on games and criminality at the VU (Free University of Amsterdam), and a talk October 5 on the ‘dark side’ of IT and games.