During the weekend a story ran on e-sports for the NRC newspaper. I was interviewed and contributed the story’s title “Chess in 3D” (meaning to say, that playing fast paced first person shooters in an e-sports setting is much like playing chess on three boards at the same time in terms of complexity). The story can be read on Bashers.nl.

Monday morning started with an interview on Radio 1 for the NOS morning news. We talked about the to be published military themed first person shooter Medal of Honor. In this game you can, at least in the multiplayer part, play as a member of the Taliban. The British minister of Defense Fox found the theme of the game to be ‘tasteless’. You can read a bit on NOS headlines. There has been some more writing about it at Bright.nl. For your convience, you can also download the Radio 1 interview (.mp3, 4.3mb). Or listen to it here:

At Bashers.nl I did a short interview about the whole case. In the interview I talk a bit more about the ambivalence of playing shooters, realism, and the criticism on (war) games in general “‘Medal of Honor gaat niet ver genoeg’

And for the free daily newspaper Metro I contributed a short quote on the use of social media in higher education (Metro of Monday August 23). I think universities should lead, not follow (when it comes to using ICT), and “we” (in academia) should experiment with services like Twitter, Facebook, and all kinds of (preferably open source) applications to connect with students, facilitate discussion, share our findings and thoughts and be active in public debates. A scan of the article is here.

Yesterday I did a live interview for Radio 1′s NCRV afternoon show Lunch. I have been a guest before last March to talk about Second Life. This time we had a vivid conversation about the recent hoaxes on Twitter (particularly the “free money” incident which turned out to be a mere technological glitch, the rumor that Queen Beatrix would step down, and the fake Carglass Twitter account). Given that it is “cucumber time” (i.e. slow news in the summertime), these hoaxes get extra attention on TV & on the radio. Some go as far as to ask if this would make Twitter a useless tool. Although I did not mention it on air, I’ve been confirmed in my conviction that Twitter can be very useful after Clay Shirky’s wonderful “Here comes everybody”, so for those interested in the topic, I would recommend reading that.

Or, you can listen to the interview, download it here (.mp3, 8 minutes, 7.4Mb).

Wednesday marked an important ruling by a Dutch judge who decided that selling ‘mod-chips‘ and flash cards, especially those for the Nintendo DS (so called R4 cards) and the Wii, is now illegal (and the web shops who sold the mod-chips have to pay the court costs). [N]Gamer’s Nik Wouters has more on the story and interviewed Nintendo.

For Wednesday’s evening news (NOS Achtuurjournaal) I was interviewed as part of a segment on the ruling. The entire clip is below.

Read the rest of this entry »

*update* (July 10) Democracy in action! Dutch member of parliament Tofik Dibi (of Groen Links) asked the minister of justice a series of (very spot on) questions. Our combined efforts (of gamers, academics and journalists) to argue for better media literacy among parents (and against censorship), seem to have made a difference! Read the questions here. */update*

Our Dutch minister of justice Hirsch Ballin send a letter to the “Tweede Kamer” (the House of Representatives) regarding the banning of violent video games. His letter is emblematic of a (political) culture in which key politicians are utterly media illiterate and build their arguments on selectively quoting solid research. On top of that, a ban on violent film would be less desirable because that would lead to civil unrest (as opposed to games?). Well, I/we obviously disagree.

At Bashers, there’s more information. I wrote an op-ed to ask gamers to have their voices heard. “Neem contact op met Hirsch Ballin en bewijs dat een verbod op gewelddadige games weerstand oproept“.

At game industry magazine Control there is a crucial piece of information (of prof. Jansz) slamming the minister’s letter.

And at Petities.nl there’s a petition to sign.

Has been a while, so here’s a round-up of what I did last month (of May). For starters, I have been busy working on my PhD (and will continue to do so for the coming months). Next to that there were some cool projects I participated in. For example, May 3 I did the opening talk for Upload Cinema. The 18th edition focused on games (titled “All play and no work”) and I was a guest-curator to select the most hilarious and fascinating web clips (to be shown in Theater De Uitkijk). We had a record of 270+ submissions and 32 clips made it to the final selection. Here’s the entire list which represent (a selection of) the best web clips on games and game culture.

This month I also participated in the Bashers.nl podcast. We talked about the iPad (yes, I haz one), Little Big Planet and User Created Content, and about the book “Nintendo Magic”.

And, to top it all off, I did two talks this week:
- 2010 (May 20). “Journalistiek & Social Media”. Talk at Kringcongres 2010 at Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen (HAN), Nijmegen.
- 2010 (May 21). “Blurring Boundaries: War & Games”. Talk at ‘(new) Media and the United States’ event organized by the Netherlands American Studies Association (NASA), Utrecht.

For the coming months I will be less busy with talks and the like. There are some interviews I did last week which will be published the coming weeks, but other than that, expect more sporadic updates on this site as I am slowly getting into crunch mode with my PhD.

Critical Gamer did an exstensive interview about idealism in the game industry, and game journalism in particular. In the interview I talk about the ‘problem’ of games journalism, the ‘games journalism lifestyle’ and what games journalism should be. The interview was done by Utrecht University student Snezana Nedeski and can be found here.

For Bashers I wrote a book review on “The race for a new game machine: creating the chips inside the Xbox 360 & the Playstation 3″. Concluding:

Heb je het geduld om door de halfbakken managementtips en de verhalen over slapeloze nachten van Shippy en Phipps heen te lezen, dan biedt The race for a new game machine de broodnodige verdieping om eerdere en toekomstige hardwareontwikkelingen binnen de gamesindustrie net weer iets beter te kunnen duiden. En met Natal en Move voor de deur is dat alles behalve een overbodige luxe.

Over at Mindnote there’s a short interview on games and learning: “Dossier: Over Spelend Leren – David Nieborg“. Do check out the dossier on games and learning featuring interviews with other experts on games and/or learning.

Yes that is games with a Z :).

The first interview I did was on sex in games, an article authored by Anna Sonnemans called “De seksuele revolutie van games” in which I argue that we should make more love (in games) and a little less war (because there’s plenty of the latter already). The article is published in the paper version, so no online text to link to.

The second interview is on games & narrative by Floor Coert: “Er was eens… een game – over verhalen in games“. In this article I argue that although there are some interesting examples regarding interactive narratives (e.g. Grand Theft Auto and Heavy Rain), we have a long way to go.

Last week (March 29) I did another interview for Radio 1 (NOS this time) on the current state of Dutch political campaigning. For the report the Dutch Liberal Party’s (VVD) Internet advisors were interviewed and I added some context. My main beef with the average Dutch political party’s digital strategy is that it is non-existent, and that there are two missed opportunities (the European and recent local elections) to test some new tools and gain online support.

There’s an article accompanying the report and and you can listen to the report on the NOS website (it’s 4:20).

Purely coincidental, but last week I did two live radio interviews on new media subjects. The first interview was March 15 for Radio 1′s NRCV Lunch on the ‘return’ of Second Life, mainly because Linden Lab (Second Life’s developer) opened an office in Amsterdam. We talked about the media hype (at the time; 2006/2007) surrounding Second Life, it’s usage and about future hypes (Chatroulette ftw!). The segment is downloadable here (11Mb, mp3, interview is 13 minutes).

The second interview was Saturday March 20 and part of Radio 1′s TROS Online, a weekly magazine on new media with Francisco van Jole en Peter de Bie. I was a guest in the studio and there were other interesting discussions on robots and health care, Google TV and new gadgets. My segment was on participatory culture and politics, and the online enthusiasm surrounding Job Cohen’s candidacy (the “Yes We Cohen” movement). That segment is downloadable here (11Mb, mp3, discussion is 12 minutes).