Game World Phenomenology

 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...