Motivation Boost + 1

My paper has just been accepted to the ACE 2009 conference in the full paper category. The conference is in Athens on October 29th to 31st. This is  bit of a surprise as I hadn’t noted the acceptance notification deadline at all. It’s nice to have my research work be still considered relevant although I don’t work as a full-time academic at the moment.

My Article Plans for 2009

Although I’m writing my dissertation in a monographic form, I’m still planning to submit two articles in the following months. I’ve noticed that writing an article on the results of my upcoming dissertation is the best way to formulate my thoughts into a coherent whole and to get some feedback on my work. Writing the developers and teams article for DiGRA 2007 Conference was such a positive experience. So why change a winning formula?

For 2009, I have targeted two events: DiGRA 2009 in London and MindTrek 2009 in Tampere, Finland. DiGRA Conference is at the beginning of September and MindTrek starts September 30th.

The article for DiGRA Conference will discuss process control models in learning game development, especially whether to use a traditional process control model or an empirical one like Scrum. This corresponds to the third result chapter in my dissertation.

The MindTrek article will focus on defining the overall process of learning games development as well as identifying key tasks (most risky, most impactful) and defining processes models for carrying them out based on our case projects at Agora Game Lab. This is the subject I have set for my second result chapter in my dissertation.

The DiGRA abstract deadline being on April 17th, the full paper deadline at the end of June and the MindTrek paper deadline being on May 31st, my schedule for the Spring and early Summer is nicely laid out. I’m pretty excited about writing these papers; I’m sure I have a lot to offer the community with them.

Last Two Weeks: Travelling

I’ve been to Malmö for the Nordic Game Event last week (very useful, lots of fun stuff also) and to Guimarães, Portugal for the European Network of Living Labs Event this week (some useful info, lots of what I fear to be empty talk about the European Innovation System). I hope I have time to post some more about those.

We also had the first project workshop of the Nordic Serious Games project. Things are moving on pretty fast right now: We’ll have the community site up in a while and the Conference Call for Papers will be announced next week.

The downside of travel is that it takes a lot of time and energy. The upside? Probably different perspectives. NGE had some great speakers that really inspired me in the ways of thinking about game design (more about this too) and provided me with more examples of games that do not fit with the mainstream AAA next-gen console stuff that (excluding some stuff that Nintendo is doing, and maybe PlayStation Home, if it has a clear vision, we’ll see) is really the same stuff over and over again. The ENoLL event? I’ll have to think up the “the stuff I took home” list for that one…

CfP: Game in’ Action

The Game in Action conference that will take place in Göteborg on13-15 June this summer seems like a good fit for learning game researchers. The abstract deadline is March 15th. Here are the details on the call.

Orientation on Game Research

Lenny from the Acagamic has compiled a list of journal, events in 2007 and a small list of useful papers for those interested in Game research (already in November). As always there’s something that has escaped my attention. This time it’s the Game in’ Action conference in Göteborg, Sweden. The CfP seems to be on-going so that might be a good target for my second paper of the year.

Has anyone come up with additions to this list or similar well-updated lists?

FuturePlay 2007 CfP

FuturePlay 2007 conference will be on November 15th-17th in Toronto, Canada. From the website:

The FuturePlay conference focuses on three main themes. The first theme, future game development, addresses academic research and emerging industry trends in the area of game technology and game design. The second theme, future game impacts and applications, includes academic research and emerging industry trends focused on designing games for learning, for gender, for serious purposes, and to impact society. Finally, the third theme, future game talent, is designed to provide a number of industry and academic perspectives on the knowledge, skills, and attitude it takes to excel in the games industry.

The conference call for papers is out and the paper submission deadline is June 30th. I plan to apply with my third (or second, if the NSG network project goes through) paper this year. Let’s see how it works ou, it would seem like the game design/deevlopment process theme is one of the key elements of this conference so I hope I can attend.

GD Event Recap

There was a game design event at our university last weekend as I mentioned before the holidays. For me, the event was a huge success. The main function of the event was give a forum to game designers to present their games, get feedback and be able to playtest the games. This function was fulfilled very well. Many thanks to the main organizers, Arto and Antti and also to everyone who participated.

My experiences of the event was as follows:

• the size of the crowd (about 20) was pretty optimal for a first-time event where there were no routines or set ways
• the mix of role-playing game, board game and computer game people was very good and people were in the most part able to benefit from the mix of genres
• the attendees really made the event the success it was: they provided quality feedback, discussion etc.
• the games that were presented were very interesting: I can envision myself playing most of them again with pleasure

Game Design Event @ JYU

Arto Koistinen and Antti Luukkonen, in co-operation with our Agora Game Lab and majatalo.org will organize a game design event in Jyväskylä on January 12nd and 13th. You can sign up to the organizers to present your own game concept or prototype. Wonderful opportunity to get that much needed feedback on your designs. Or you can come to see what others have come up with and test the games. The event is for board games, digital games, roleplaying games etc., so pretty much anything goes. Here’s the official announcement (In Finnish only).

CFP: DigRA 2007 Conference

The Digital Games Research Association’s third international conference takes place from September 24th to 28th in Tokyo. The theme of the conference is situated play. The call for full papers is out; the deadline is February 14th, 2007. See the call text for more information.

I was just starting to make plans for before the holidays and the next year. Seems like I still have enough time to write a paper. It woud be very cool to be able to participate and the preceeding Tokyo Game Show 2007, which is currently scheduled from September 21st to 23rd as well. But we’ll see

Nordic Game Conference 2007

Just an early heads up: the next year’s Nordic Game Conference will be held in May. In the previous years it has been during autumn, so note the new schedule. The conference will be May 15-16 in Malmö as in previous years. Let’s see if we can smuggle in some serious games stuff, too . Not much data (at all) yet on the web site, but I’ve heard that next year the attendance fee structure will be more unified and any kind of pass will grant access to all the tracks. Seems very sensible to me.