Game World Phenomenology

  In the last few days I have turned 59 and have spent some time slowly reading my dissertation in the printed version, sitting in my armchair with the book in my hand and a cup of coffee and some cookies nearby. It has been a very rewarding and enjoyable experience; I am very happy with my book and its contents, but I have yet to see how my defense goes and what others have understood from it. Today is Wednesday and I have just finished reading it, tomorrow I have a lot of work to do and on Friday I will see if I pass and become a Doctor of Art History.   There are a few passages I wish I had written more clearly, but not many. There are a few mistakes, especially ones that I should have noticed while proofreading. I have made a list of errors, which follows. Only one item in that list is a real error in my opinion, which is the lack of a proper page reference in a footnote. Most of the other errors I probably would have noticed if I had hired a proofreader. So I’m a little p...

 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 ...

 I just sent off a complete 1:st version of my thesis for my final seminar on October 2. I have written at least a first draft of each chapter and I have all the screenshots of the games I need. That's actually only 4 days after my intended deadline (and I did send out a version without the discussion , conclusion and usability parts in time!). To get the images, I played for 8 hours straight yesterday. It was not as easy to play for that long as it used to be, but I had fun. I am not going to post this draft here, it's just for the seminar.

 The vacations have begun, and that means I have to get back into full swing with my dissertation. It's not easy, because I'm still hesitating to produce a final version. I think this has to do with two things: firstly, the need to stop expanding and instead link all the pieces together, and secondly, self-doubt, which leads to procrastination. I am consciously working against both. So my main goal this week is to reread some parts of the key texts I've been using and start revising and rewriting by Friday. I've also made a final backup copy of my text so that I have a copy to look through for things I may have deleted too quickly. These strategies are aimed at med confidence and a good restart on full-time writing.

Now there is a date for my final seminar, October 2, and a reader. So I just set a day to send him my manuscript and it gives me 100 days to finish writing and editing my book. I think that's doable.

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.

  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...

 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've been writing, mostly technical stuff about how games work. I have an interesting problem, which is how to explain games to art historians and the art historical theory of visuality to gamers without boring them. Anyway, it feels like I'm writing and writing and doing nothing. I'm still mostly concerned with phenomenology and haven't yet connected it to everything else, except for some thoughts on perception and perspective. I've read a lot of books and thought a lot about play worlds, visual storytelling, and image experiences, but it's hard to connect them. I did a very rough revision of parts of my text, including some hastily compiled texts that I sent to a national seminar for doctoral students in art history to read aloud in early October. I didn't put much effort into making the revision a coherent text, because that would be a big waste of time. I have 101 days left to write, and I still think it will work. But sometimes I feel the stress of ...