Game World Phenomenology

 So I took a break for a while because I had to teach art history full time. But now I'm back on the dissertation track, and I'am currently reading my manuscript (most of it is actually written now) and planning some thorough revisions. Before I started rereading it, I thought it was all awful and useless. Such thoughts are common for anyone who really needs to sriously. But on re-reading, I found that my ideas were good and interesting enough. However, they are somewhat disorganized and need to be reworked to make my arguments clearer and hopefully stronger. There is also a lot of feedback to take into consideration. That's what I need to do this spring, you better work .

Some writing fatigue. After many months of writing and editing, I'm in a bit of a dip. I'm reading a lot and looking at my manuscript, but writing very little at the moment. I'm not panicking, I'm on schedule, so I'm really in no rush. It might even be good to slow down for a few weeks.

 So I had my last seminar for this semester and yesterday I had a check-in with my supervisor Max. There are two conclusions from this: First, that my text is slowly coming together and I have a handle on my work, and second, that there is still a lot of work to be done, including revising the immersion/flow chapter, which needs a better structure than what I presented at the seminar. Looking at my numbers, I still have 16 days until the first draft should be finished, and I've written 75% of the planned text. That's a good standing; there are two short and planned chapters I want to write in those 16 days, but the rest of the unwritten text needs to be finished when I'm a good bit into the revising and rewriting phase. So I maintain that I've almost reached my goals for this semester of writing and that I can finish the manuscript in a couple of months while working full time. Right now I'm reading Martin Jay's 1988 essay "Scoptic Regimes" in Hal Fost

  The seminar went well. I took the first hour to explain the thesis and how the pieces I sent fit into a bigger picture, and I took another five minutes to show videos of the games so that everyone had my material ready. The criticism of my text was then quite extensive, but very well-intentioned. It was not clear and not structured properly. I had already received this in writing from my supervisor, so I was not surprised. At the same time, there were several good suggestions as to how I should structure the material. One participant was particularly knowledgeable about Lefebvre and de Certeau and had a lot of good insights that I can benefit from, and overall there were a lot of good suggestions from everyone present. Restructuring the text and writing it again should take a few days. Tying together all the threads that are in the script takes weeks, but it can be done. One thing I have realized with alarming clarity: It's difficult to accept written criticism. When I received t

 Next Thursday it's time once again for a seminar on a part of my doctoral thesis. This time I have a slightly more theory-heavy text to hand out, so that I can also see my colleagues' reactions to that. I'm not going to publish the text here, mainly because I don't want Google to swallow up an early draft and spit it out again at some point. So I won't publish anything until the book is finished, but then it will be available under a very permissive Creative Commons license (CC BY, if all goes according to plan) and as both a printed book and a downloadable pdf (or maybe ePub, or both). There's not much to say about the content of the seminar text, it's all about immersion, flow, space and game modalities. All the fun stuff. I hope to write a report on the seminar afterwards.

 The seminar with the musicologists went very well, it's good to get perspectives from outside. I was warned about some dichotomies in my text (which I had taken from the literature I had read), which was actually much less binary and more on a scale, so I was able to adjust that. Some of my concerns about the descriptions of music and sounds were brushed aside, they work well here. And some of the discussion ran down rabbit holes beyond what I will be writing about. But even that made me realise one thing: the two games I chose are special; they're examples of exceptional game design with an emphasis on world-building, and not all games are, and not all players play those kinds of games. The types I'm avoiding here, namely FPS and indie games with artistic aspirations, were more popular with some participants. I have to mention that in my introduction. Another outcome of the discussion with Max was that I read Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception with regard to

 I wasn't feeling so well a week ago, maybe it was a cold or just writing fatigue, so I took 4 days off from writing. It was worth it. I finished the location and immersion chapters and had to rearrange them. Immersion went from the first part that is about the materiality of games to the second part that is about phenomenology, the thirds part is about narration and time. The divisions between them is getting clearer and clearer. And I have the feeling that the quality of what I'm writing is increasing. There are more overviews and a back and forth between the different chapters, but there's still a lot to do. Some of the chapters I wrote first need to be thoroughly reworked in connection to what I'm writing now. But that's planned for later. Right now I want to finish a first draft of the entire text, for which I've set December 21 as my deadline and which still seems doable. Today it's time for another seminar, which is about the first draft of the chap

 I just had a meeting with my supervisor, who had read my manuscript to this point, and it went very well. I do not know why, but I always think that meetings like that end in disaster, along the lines of "This is terrible, what the hell are you doing?" but that never happens. I got good feedback and it was great to see how well he understood my text so far. He had a few points that I really need to address. One of them is my tendency to use a lot of empty intensifiers that just need to be edited out. No problem, I know they are there, but they always seem so reasonable when I first write them, and then I see later that they do not do anything or even weaken my text. Another thing is two long paragraphs describing my game examples, which are too long and need to be closer to my arguments. This is more difficult; I wrote them because I know art historians do not play games, so I wanted to do a thorough introduction early on; but he's right and there must be a way to shor

 Things are coming together. I am going to have to stop reading more new books, but I think it's a good time to stop with that kind of input anyway. I now have notes for almost every little part of my text and lots of references to work with. Today I spent much of the day with Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck, a book I have been aware of for a long time. It's strange compared to my own writing. She sees everything from a perspective guided by literature and narrative. So in many ways she's "wrong" to me, and then again she's not. I have to reconcile that perspective with my own and with all the others. Many ways into the material supposedly make for better research, now I will find out if that is true. This Friday I am meeting with my thesis advisor to discuss the shape of my work so far. That should be exciting. 65 more days of uninterrupted writing.

 This week I did a lot of reading and wrote some important parts. I wrote more thorough descriptions of the gameplay in Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey for my introduction, since that was one of the things my reader wanted in the Gothenburg seminar. I started with the chapter on sound and music in games, and it's fascinating. There's so much technology in the texts I've read, and I can fit so little of it into my text, that I had to make a note telling myself to write only what was related to my main themes of experiencing the gaming world and not digress. I got a number of books from the library and use some of them to support arguments in what I have already written. Jesper Juul's "Half-real: video games between real rules and fictional worlds" was a great read, but it seems like everywhere I use it I have to argue against him. Well, I suppose it's good for me to do something different than well-known ludologists (he argues that he's no

 I went to a graduate student meeting in Gothenburg and had my text read by a couple of people outside my department as well as fellow students. One thing was very clear: it's difficult for art historians to write about games, because they do not play. I have to do a lot more explaining. I also have to structure my text much more. More work, but I already know what I have to do!

 Today was a great day for writing, I got so much done and it's still not over. Right now I'm figuring out how to get the part on phenomenology in shape so I can ask my supervisor to read it. I'll probably save the part on atmospheres for later, but the rest should be done shortly. Then it's time to get into sound and music and immersion. And I really need to get started on the part on narration. There's so much to do, but I have the map and I know roughly where I want to go. It's fun. I think I'm still on schedule with my writing, but there's still a lot to do. I hope to have many more days like this one. Being old and having worked as an art history teacher for many years, I have some insight into the work process. When I was accepted as a graduate student, I shared a computer with other students in my department. Books had to be checked out through the university library, and most of the time they had to get them for me from other libraries. Journal a

 This week there's major maintenance on the rail line I usually ride to work, so I've decided to stay home and write instead. It's a bit of a retreat, although I do enjoy going to Lund and meeting people. Now I wake up, have breakfast, go to my desk and start working. It's been a long time since I've talked to anyone about how I write, so I'll share it here. I've a clear outline in Scrivener so I can see where I need to write. Right now it's the middle part of my thesis, which is about phenomenology and how you think about experiences with art and games. Some days I can just sit down and write, other days I've to do a lot of reading. A day of reading is usually followed by a day of writing, frantically backtracking my reading, checking sources to make sure I understand them, and adding proper footnotes. I usually need breaks to eat lunch, take a walk, or go to the gym. A normal day would include both. And in the evenings, when I'm too tired to wr

 Day after day I edit texts that I have already written. It takes so long, mainly because I have to add many perspectives. I am glad that most of the time I can remember where the ideas came from and that I have the books in my library at home. I spent some time today reading parts from these books while editing: Gombrich, EH,  Art and illusion: a study in the psychology of pictorial representation .6. ed, London, Phaidon Press, 2002. Flusser, V,  En filosofi för fotografin .trans. Jan-Erik Lundström, Göteborg, Korpen, 1988. Flusser, V,  Into the universe of technical images .Electronic Mediations, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Bolter, JD, & R Grusin,  Remediation : understanding new media .Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1999. Good thing is that it all gets better, and it comes together. I'm feeling fine about this book.