Thursday March 11 I will give a talk, “De visuele taal van virtuele oorlogsvoering”, at Nest for the Texture Maps exhibit. In my presentation I will dig deeper into the blurring boundaries between physical violence (war) and virtual warfare (games), the never-ending rise of the military-entertainment complex and, of course, wargames (particularly America’s Army and other First Person Shooters). Recently read this book “War 2.0 – Irregular Warfare in the Information Age“, which offered an insightful perspective on these themes, so I’ll try to incorporate their argument into mine. See you there!

Time: 8pm
Location: The Hague
Entrance: Free

It will be one of the last events I will undertake before I go into ‘crunch-mode’ the coming (six) months to finish my PhD. Tuesday March 2 I will moderate an evening of Pecha Kucha style presentations titled “FAQ Masteravond Media- en Cultuurwetenschappen”. Utrecht University scholars, students and alumni will talk (fast and to the point) about their research and it will be my duty to host the event. I will open the evening with a short keynote on the ins and outs (or the good, bad and ugly side) of media studies related scholarship, titled “de zin en onzin van Media- en Cultuurwetenschappen”.

The evening will start at 7pm and will officially last till 10:30 (drinks afterwards of course). The venue is Studio T (downtown Utrecht) and the programme looks promising (very diverse!). Entrance is free, but Studio T is small so if you’re coming, send an email to blik.tijdschrift[at]gmail.com (NB Im not part of the organization). The event is in Dutch. More information about the event (and the programme) are to be found here. Hope to see you there!

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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.

Last week’s Media van Morgen symposium, organized by two Utrecht University MA students, turned out to be a huge success. There was even a waiting list, but, luckily the event has been recorded by LectureNet.

You can access all talks here, video and slides are included. And here’s the direct link to my talk “Mediawetenschappers en de Media van Morgen“.

In my talk I argue that journalists, politicians, consultants, entrepreneurs, and fans dominate the debate (and discourse) on (new) media (i.e. its meaning, effects, future etc). Instead, students and scholars should have a much bigger stake in many such discussions (for example on media literacy, Second Life, social politics, games, etc, etc). Given the radical decentralization of the means of cultural production and the decline in professional journalism, there is a huge opportunity for media scholars to get their hands dirty by engaging in debates in traditional media (newspapers, TV, radio), as well as setting up their own platforms for discussion and dissemination of thoughtful analysis. I think that today’s (new) media students can (and should) be tomorrow’s experts.

*Update* (30/01) – Here’s a good summary of my talk (and the others) at MindNote.nl: “Symposium Media van Morgen (deel 1)“.

Yesterday I went to Doetinchem to give a talk at Reed Business on social politics (the ins & outs of the Obama 08 campaign). Had a great time there and got lots of positive feedback.

This month I will take part in the following events:

- January 21. “Mediawetenschappers en de Media van Morgen“. I will do a TED-like talk sharing my thoughts on the media scholar of the future for an event organized by Universiteit Utrecht’s MA (media) students. The symposium is called “Media van Morgen” and has a couple of interesting speakers (many of my fellow UU alumni).

- January 26. “Debat Individu 2.0“. For a debate on the mediatization of everyday life I will participate in a roundtable discussion in the Tituskapel (Amsterdam).

- January 28. “Yes we can? Nieuwe media gebruik in “the age of Obama”. After two successful masterclasses (hosted by KREM), we will do a third masterclass on social politics in The Hague. There are still seats available! There’s more information at KREM’s website.

Does game journalism exist? (My answer: Yes!). And if so, what should it look and feel like? Last Wednesday Dutch game journalists gathered to discuss the ins and outs of contemporary game criticism. I opened the evening with a presentation (titled: “Mijn naam is David en ik ben gamejournalist”), followed by a roundtable discussion. For those who did not attend, there is/was a liveblog (which is still accesible) and there is still a lively discussion going on at Bashers.

Update (14/12): another review of the debate (with pics) at G4M3.nl.
Update (18/12): Gezocht: ondernemende gamejournalisten, m/v. Further reflections on Bashers.nl
Update (18/12): Special Podcast: opname van het gamejournalistiekdebat. Audiofeed.
Update (18/12): Xi/Bashers-debat – 9 december 2009 @ CREA. Some notes on Mindnote.nl.

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!

Good day to you from beautiful Minneapolis! The coming months (October and November) will be busy in terms of presentations, lectures and talk. All of them will be in The Netherlands. This is an additional set of talks I will be doing, the complete list is here. There might be one or two more but they are not confirmed yet. I’ll update the list with links and titles the coming weeks. Most of these talks are public, so if you want more information, drop me an email!

- 2009. (Oktober 23, 24). “Workshop Game Journalistiek”. (Working title). GameXperience 2009. Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid, Hilversum.

- 2009. (November 4). “Follow the money: New Media and Politics”. (Working title). Talk at: Het mes in de democratie, Studium Generale, Hogeschool van Utrecht.

- 2009. (November 27). “The Cultural Games Industry” (Working title). Paper to be presented at: Participating in a mediated world. Platform for Communication, Media, and Information (CMI) within the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Amsterdam.

- 2009. (November 30). “Nieuwe Media: An Introduction” (Working title). Lecture for the course Mediageschiedenis.

My talk on New Media & Politics – “Obama’s campagne. Tussen hoop en hype” – for Studium Generale Universiteit Utrecht (SGUU) was a big success! The room (or lecture hall) was packed with about 100 people attending and 140 people tuned into the live stream. As I said, I was very honored to open such a promising lineup. The questions from the audience were very good and provided me with a lot of food for thought.

But even better, you can watch the entire talk online (with slides!), including the Q&A session, here. You have to have Silverlight installed (with is a OS independent plug-in). If you look on Twitter (using the #sguu tag) you can see some commentary there as well.

Something completely different; I wrote a short bit on America’s Army for the STT newsletter. Download the article’s pdf here. STT (De Stichting Toekomstbeeld der Techniek) is a non-profit think tank where Jacco van Uden is working on a white paper on serious gaming, hence my article on America’s Army. If you have not met him and you are working in the field of serious gaming you might want to contact him, he is working on some great stuff!