Together with Niels ‘t Hooft and Samuel Casado (Bashers.nl) and Spits‘ Dennis Mons, I gave some input on a story on “mimetic interfaces” (quoting Jesper Juul here: ““the physical activity that the player performs mimics the game activity on the screen.”). The article is online here: “Jij bent de controller, toegankelijker kan het niet”. I argue:

‘Nagenoeg iedere analist, journalist en industrie-expert zag het overdonderende succes van de Wii niet aankomen. Het zou dus van historisch kortetermijndenken getuigen om nu al deze nieuwe controllers af te schrijven. De kans van slagen valt en staat met de software.’ Nieborg doelt hier op de sterke implementatie van de techniek en de bekende gamepersonages, of in ieder geval games die laagdrempelig zijn.

One of my gamejournalism colleagues, Nick Kivits, wrote an insightful article on the Dutch military’s perspective on military games. The article is titled “‘Ik heb je, motherfucker!’” and appeared in last week’s Revu magazine. I contributed with my view on military games in general. The entire 5-paged article, which has an unusual and fancy lay-out, is downloadable as a .pdf here.

Utrecht University (my alma mater) has a vibrant (new media) student community and a very good student magazine called BLIK. I sat down with the magazine’s editor and had a long conversation about my views on social politics, the Obama campaign and new media in general (of course, in Dutch). The result is a 6-page interview, you can download the .pdf here. I had a decent amount of interviews on this subject but I think this interview captures my recent thinking on this subject really well! Also, the magazine looks great.

Summary from BLIK’s website:

Alhoewel het voorheen een onderbelicht thema bleek in BLIK komt in beide interviews van deze uitgave de wisselwerking tussen politiek en nieuwe media uitgebreid aan bod. Toepasselijk, want precies een jaar geleden behaalde de Amerikaanse presidentskandidaat Barack Obama een historische overwinning die ten minste ten dele te danken was aan een innovatieve inzet van nieuwe media tijdens diens verkiezingscampagne. UU alumnus en nu docent Nieuwe Media aan de UvA David Nieborg ervoer als vrijwilliger in het campagneteam van Obama van dichtbij de politieke bevlogenheid van de Amerikaanse burger. In ons openingsinterview vertelt hij hoe hij in Nederland die bezieling voor politiek en nieuwe media vooralsnog mist.

It’s not that big a secret that I am a big fan of BNR Nieuwsradio. Last Thursday (January 28), I had a great conversation/interview with BNR’s Paul Van Liempt. We talked about Obama’s State of the Union address, the current US political landscape, his dwindling support, social media, political organizing, social politics, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Jon Stewart, Whitehouse.gov, MSNBC, and tea parties.

You can download the interview here (.mp3, 28.8 MB). The interview starts at 3:30 and ends at 17:30.

Last Tuesday (January 26), I participated in a debate on “Individu 2.0”. The debate was hosted by Christian student organizations to prepare for their Easter gathering where they will tackle religious and societal issues. As an outsider/expert I was asked to share my thoughts on the mediatization of everyday life, together with Jan van der Stoep (affiliated with the Christelijke Hogeschool Ede). It was an insightful debate. Jan and I agreed on many counts which made the debate a little bit less spectacular, but for me it was good to have some outsider conformation on some deep felt thoughts and opinions on new media.

What I did not expect was that the debate would spark the interest of two attending journalists of the two leading Dutch Christian newspapers. At the end of the debate the students asked about my views on (Dutch) politics and new media, as well as the rise of the Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders. In a nutshell, I think social networks (Youtube, Facebook, Hyves, Twitter etc), could be a valuable (additional!) avenue to discuss politics and to voice one’s concerns about the deep seated fear (and sometimes hatred) towards “others” (i.e. non-native Dutch citizens). I might be hopelessly naive here, but I think engaging in a debate in this particular case (through movies, pictures, blogs, etc), and taking the concerns of those-who-fear very seriously (instead of trivializing the Wilders supports’ genuinely felt fear-of-others) could be one way out of a xenophobic, divided political future. There’s way more to this issue, and my argument is much more nuanced, but this is one of the points I made during the debate.

The debate’s media fallout was illustrative and focused on my views on social networks and politics and used my quotes in their headlines. The best article ended up in the newspaper (first link). The two other articles surfaced immediately after the debates on the newspapers’s websites.

- ‘Gebruikers netwerksites zijn machthebbers’. Nederlands Dagblad. January 28, 2010, page 6.
- „Twitter en Facebook zijn machtige wapens”. Reformatorisch Dagblad. January 27, 2010.
- ‘Netwerksites gaan Wilders stemmen kosten’. Nederlands Dagblad. January 27, 2010.

Today I did a talk on social politics at the Landelijk Psychologie Symposium in Utrecht. Because of that I was invited to do a short radio interview for Radio 1’s BNN Today. If you’re interested, there’s a download link at their website.

It has been a bit quiet here the last month. I spend most of my days in Minneapolis (MN) to work on the second chapter of my PhD. I will continue to work on chapter 3 the coming weeks/months. So you know, my PhD is slated for six chapters and is due September 2010.

I also finished a chapter for a Dutch book on the game industry, tentatively titled “Game journalistiek in Nederland”. The book – titled “Professionals’ Playground” – will probably be published Q1 2010. But, more on that later.

Last weeks has been all about the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Partly because of my work on games & the military-entertainment complex I did some interviews in national media; did a Radio 1 interview and my 90 seconds of fame by appearing in Het Journaal op 3. There was an ongoing debate on the coverage of the Modern Warfare 2 launch on Bashers (here and here).

Did some unannounced talks as well, one talk October 31 on Social Media & Politics for the Amsterdam branch of the Dutch Socialists, and one talk November 4 on the same topic for a student project called “Het Mes in de Democratie”. The last days of November I will do three previously announced lectures. See the post below.

That’s all the news for now. If you want to know what Im doing on a day-to-day basis, just follow my twitter stream (@gamespacenl). Yes, I should integrate it here somewhere, maybe I’ll do that in the downtime around Christmas.

And for those of you in the US, happy Thanksgiving this Thursday!

Last months I dug into the world of podcasts. While I have had an iPod for ages and podcasts have existed for years, the concept never appealed to me. Such a shame, because there’s so much valuable stuff out there. From lectures to book launches, and from game podcasts to political discussions, it’s all there. So when Niels from Bashers.nl asked me to do a Bashers-podcasts I gladly took him up on the offer.

In the 80 minute talk (which is indeed a bit long) we discussed GDC topics, America’s Army 3.0, Modern Warfare 2, the new Nintendo DSi and a range of other topics. I had a great time and I love the format. I hope there will be more opportunities to do this.

The podcast can be downloaded as a MP3 here, M4A here, or launch iTunes. There’s more information and discussion (on the podcast) at bashers.nl.

On a related note, last Monday I helped on a story for Dagblad De Pers on OnLive and wrote a small review of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 – Ultimate Edition (PS3), the .pdf is downloadable here.

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.

It’s not that big of a secret that I am quite interested in the US elections and that I am scared to death by Gov. Palin, her anti-intellectualism and ignorant folksyness. So rather than watching TV and doing nothing but complaining, I decided to help the Obama campaign a bit and drive to New Hampshire to canvass. It was quite an experience in the depths of McCain country and I had unexpected discussions about issues that are not (never will they be) on my mind.

Folia (University of Amsterdam magazine) did a short interview with me about why I’m here, why I am active in the campaign and why I support Obama. See page 7 (4 MB .pdf)