Some Progress and an Award

There is progress with the dissertation. Though most of the time it seems that every answers just leads to new questions just as reading a new books always just underlines how many more books remain unread, it seems that I have most of the articles ready. Before diving into writing the remaining two I am working on the introduction. Luckily the Pirkanmaa regional fund of the Finnish Cultural Foundation awarded me with a six month grant, so I can concentrate solely on the big D until January.

In other news, I was awarded, together with Markus Montola, the Ropecon lifetime achievement award Kultainen lohikäärme (Golden Dragon) for the work we have done in researching role-playing games. Though I find it funny to receive a lifetime achievement award before completing doctoral studies, I am humbled. It is one thing to win praise from the academic community and quite another to be seen as relevant and worthy by the role-playing tribe, who are not only passionate, but often also terribly critical of anything not instantly practical. Thank you.

Photo stolen from mrksaari.

Nordic Larp Is Out!

Nordic Larp is finally published! This book has been my dream for years and for the past 18 months I’ve been working with Markus Montola (and Anna Westerling, Anders Hultman,Tommi Kovala and numerous others) on it. The finished product finally arrived from the press a few days before x-mas.

The book is a hefty. It explains what Nordic live action role-playing games are with insightful essays, descriptions of 30 games and over 200 pictures. If you are interested in role-playing, experimental theatre, interactive performance, audience participation or just generally cool stuff, buy a copy.

Pecha Kucha Virginity Lost!

I held my first Pecha Kucha talk on Saturday with Johanna MacDonald. We talked about Nordic larp and theatre, basically outlining what kind of participation tricks theatre could learn from games.

I love the format where slides change rapidly, you don’t have control over them and the whole thing is over in a few minutes. In the audience you know that even if a presentation is bad, it only lasts for five to six minutes (depending on if you have paid for the lisence for Pecha Kucha or if you are just holding microsessions or lightning talks). Probably my favourite talk in this format was delivered by Eric Zimmerman in GDC09 where he explained a new game, had 400 people play it and then analyzed what had happened in five minutes. A rock star tour de force.

Blast from the Past: Meilahti

Hakkarainen and Stenros presenting the Meilahti Model. The model was developed the year before - this is the first international presentation about it.

One of my earliest pieces on role-playing games “The Meilahti School: Thoughts On Role-Playing” is being translated into Italian.  Andrea Castellani is putting together a book called Larp Graffiti and it will feature translation of many of the early Nordic contribution. He asked me to write a new foreword to the piece, and I, of cource, promised to write one.

I hadn’t re-read the text (it has been online all these years) in years and dredded what it would be like. It is from the time we were just starting to address role-playing games in an analytical fashion — and some years before I would consider my work academic in any sense of the word. But it’s not as embarassing as I would have thought. So I decided to put the new foreword and the original text here in a fit of nostalgia.

One step forward, two steps back

I just got back from Copenhagen. I attended a seminar on Ludic Aspects of Everyday Life. The seminar was great, but now I’m having a crisis regarding the term play. Damn. On Sunday I still knew what it meant (or at least what I meant by it).

Playground: Helsinki

I’m back in Finland now. Visiting Mobile Life Centre in Stockholm for a few months was great, but I have missed home. As an added bonus Helsinki is currently covered by a sheet of white snow. It reminds me of the winters of my childhood. This is what winters should be like.

Oh, and my second book, Playground Worlds, is now available as a free download. I’m really proud of if.

Borderlands

I had an epiphany on Friday regarding my Dissertation. I was looking at what I have been doing for the past three years and suddenly understood what my work had been about for the whole time. I was surprised to find that there is something that ties together my past, current and planned future work in pervasive games, critical larps, social games on Facebook, grief play and even games as services. All of them are about the borders between the ludic and the ordinary.

My plan with the whole big D has been one of avoidance and hiding in the hopes that it would somehow naturally sort itself out. My plan seems to have worked. Though the idea doesn’t seem quite as brilliant as it did on Friday, and I have again remembered that most of the work still lays before me, I’m convinced that this might be the central idea that runs through all of my work. (Then again, this is the second time I have refocused my plan.) Oh well, for the first time making it to the finishing line seems like something that is within the realm of the possible.