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.

Allow me to be just a little bit melodramatic, but I’m happy to report that the biggest intellectual challenge I ever faced is now behind me. My PhD is done & delivered. I took (and still take) my research very seriously, maybe a bit too much, so it took me some time to get it right. But Im incredibly excited about the result. I won’t put my PhD online soon. It has to be defended first and then my aim is to publish it as a book, but more on that later.

The Dutch system is set up in a way that the committee has to green light the defense, which is tentatively dated late June. When formalized I will post more information about my PhD and the date of my defense here.

The coming months I will update this website and tell you more about future plans and projects. For now, check out my latest newspaper column here. In the near future I’ll visit some conferences, do some lecturing at Utrecht University and start some other projects I cannot wait to tell you more about! To be continued…

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.

Last Tuesday I had my live TV debut and sat at the table of De Wereld Draait Door. If the number of reactions (via sms, email, twitter, Facebook.com etc) are any indication, me being on TV, and especially on “DWDD”, is nothing to sneeze at. So, yes, this is pretty awesome.

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As part of a special summer project, we did an extra Bashers podcast with (Dutch) Microsoft country manager Paul Naber. It turned out to be a very worthwhile conversation with the five of us talking about all things Xbox. Paul was very generous with his time and comments and I really enjoyed our discussion. Go check it out: “In gesprek met Xbox-baas Paul Naber over Microsoft, Xbox 360, Kinect en meer“.

As part of a pilot project, I wrote a review of Apple’s iPad (from the perspective of an academic/PhD student). I am very happy with the device and it is particularly useful to read books/PhD theses/articles. The review (with some pro’s and con’s and a couple of apps I like) is downloadable as a .pdf here (3 pages in Dutch).

*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.

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.

Just a quick note: Best wishes for 2010! For me it’s back to work (on my PhD). Lecturing will start in February and until that time it’s PhD-crunch-time.

Even though book reading season might be over for many of us, Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games seems essential reading for those scholars interested in war & games. As blogged below, the book is available at Amazon or at the publisher’s homepage. For Dutch/Europeans, Bookdepository.co.uk, as always, has the best deal, 21.50 euro for the paperback (free shipping), I have good experiences with them.

There’s more official info at the publisher’s webpage. I contributed the third chapter. The table of contents is after the break.

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