Game World Phenomenology

I defended my dissertation on Friday, and it went great. I was incredibly nervous leading up to it, but once the discussion started, I relaxed and actually had a really good time. I got a lot of kind words, especially for bringing together art history and video games in the way I did. Of course, there was also some critique, and rightly so. While I naturally have my own views on these points, I’ll share a few reflections here. Just a heads-up: these are based on my own memory, and I didn’t take notes during the defense, so others might remember things a bit differently. That said: I passed, and the examining committee was unanimous in their approval. That’s what matters most! 1. The theory chapter is weak Yes, fair enough. A lot of the theory I work with shows up later in the book, rather than being neatly presented in the introductory chapter, as the traditional dissertation format dictates. Typically, you’re expected to lay out the theory first and then “apply” it in the analysis. I ...

This is not the actual book, but a dummy for a final check before the printers start production. There were no errors that needed to be corrected. So there will be typos (a heading slipped down a line, for example), and while that's annoying, it's not relevant enough to stop the process and delay everything. I'm sending out the invitations for the defense and the party and hope everyone gets them. I can't do anything more with the book, it will be frozen in time with ink on paper. My opponent and the committee have already received an advance PDF copy, a public one will be available in Lucris shortly and I'll post a link to it here. 3-4 years of work is now behind me, it's hard to say when it actually started, two years of actual writing. Not bad.

 I have now completed the writing and editing of my dissertation; it was time to draw the line. In principle, one could continue working endlessly, but at some point, you must conclude. Now, the focus shifts to the administrative aspects of the defense process: organizing the language review, a final proofread, ensuring the dissertation is printed, and arranging the event itself. I have an opponent confirmed and two out of three members for the examination committee, so things are coming together!

 The final seminar is an opportunity for an external reader to review as much of the dissertation text as possible. I had a more or less complete manuscript, although a few of the later sections are still unfinished but at least there’s a clear direction for where they’re headed. It turned out to be a very productive seminar. Robert Willim, who reviewed my text, was a highly insightful reader and gave me plenty of constructive feedback on how to improve it. Several other colleagues also contributed valuable comments. Overall, this final seminar was extremely helpful in guiding me toward the finishing touches of my dissertation. I’m hoping for a defense in the spring, but for that to happen, I need to revise and write quite a bit over the next two months. I’ll have to carve out the time amidst my other responsibilities. Although having a final seminar can be stressful, this one was very rewarding. I’m grateful to all my colleagues who attended, and to those who couldn’t make it but ...

I am approaching an important milestone on the way to my defense and completing my dissertation. In six days, I will hold my final seminar, where a competent reviewer will go through my text and provide a public critique. This serves as a kind of dress rehearsal for the actual defense. I have a reliable reader, so I feel relatively confident. However, the goal of the seminar is to identify issues that can be addressed before everything is finalized. In addition to my main reader, I also have a professional philosopher reviewing the sections of my dissertation that deal with phenomenology, ensuring I receive solid criticism from that perspective as well. These past few days, I’ve been reading through my manuscript from beginning to end. I’m finding numerous errors—typos, changes that weren’t made correctly, missing images and illustrations—small things that can be fixed. But larger concerns about the overall structure and my reasoning trouble me more. For instance, I discuss a specific ...

 Today it was time to report to my doctoral supervisor Max. He asked me to summarize the three main parts of my text, and we talked about them and some more specific problems in some chapters, as well as writing techniques. All in all, it was a very good conversation. I wish I'd had more time to revise now, especially since I'd taken the whole Easter week off to do it, but unfortunately I was tired for a few days so I didn't really rewrite much. But I did have time to read my text and think about its structure and how to get a better flow in the argument. And this check-in was a continuation of that, so I'm hoping to get back on track with rewriting. We're also planning the date and opponent for my final seminar in the fall, so the goal is getting a little closer. I'm pretty sure I'll have to spend a lot of the summer rewriting, but that's to be expected.

 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.

 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...

 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.

Summer vacation is over and now the really intense writing semester begins. In 129 days I should have a manuscript ready for a final seminar. If the seminar goes well, it will be on to the final adjustment and production of the book and for the dissertation. I am very much looking forward to this and have started the work by doing a lot of reading. Mostly Martin Kemp's The Science of Art , but also some phenomenology and Jason Schreier's Blood, Sweat and Pixels on game development processes. I plan to spend this week reading (there's a two-day kick-off event at work that I also have to attend) and next week going over what I have written so far. Then there will be new material again. Almost everything I read, or at least everything I notice about what I read, makes a connection that makes these game worlds more understandable, it's like I am seeing little pieces of a bigger picture but can not yet grasp it all. About a week ago I came up with a good title for the book,...

 So I had my seminar, with a short text (9 pages) on the technical side of images; from renaissance perspective to film editing to interactivity in games; my three main stations. It was about creating three-dimensional worlds where the viewer wants to be present in one way or another, and trying to sort out all the different technical aspects that have been taken from whence into the visual machine that is games. It's a bit complicated to write a text that should be understandable to both gamers and art historians without being too basic for either of them. Hopefully I will be able to write something that makes the field a little more understandable for both. The seminar went very well, with lots of good feedback, from details to inconsistencies that found their way into the text. For some reason, I do not always manage to maintain a stable terminology, so now I need to revise the manuscript to use player, gamer, and viewer in a coherent way. Anyway, I am ready to keep writing beca...

I did the most simple thing yesterday, I entered "Game World Phenomenology" first into Google and then into LUBsearch (the search engine of my university library in Lund). Google had one interesting hit; there is a book about game design with the title Phenomenology of the Gameworld: A Philosophical Toolbox for Video Game Developers by Matthew E. Gladden. Not available at any libraries I have access to, so I have ordered it from a bookstore. Not really sure it will be all that useful, since I already am reading and using Salen & Zimmermans Rules of play : game design fundamentals which seems to be one of the most quoted books on game design fundamentals. Google also had a few other hits I will look into, mostly on methodology of game studies. LUBsearch on the other hand provided more interesting results, but many of them have a heavy sociological focus and that is far outside the scope of my reading/writing. But I have a few articles at hand in Zotero for reading later...