Game World Phenomenology

 You can now download my dissertation through the Lund University research portal:  https://portal.research.lu.se/sv/publications/experiencing-gameworlds-understanding-zelda-and-mario-through-the I will defend it on May 16, 13.15 at LUX (Allhelgonavägen 3, Lund, Sweden) room C121.

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.

Editing and revising my manuscript has been both challenging and incredibly rewarding. This stage of writing is by far my favorite, it's where the text really comes to life, the ideas are refined, and the argument becomes clearer. With less than two weeks to go, I’m happy to be on schedule! Once I’ve completed this stage, the manuscript is sent to a professional proofreader to make sure the language, English is not my first language, is polished and accurate. Along the way, I’ve made some difficult decisions. I cut three short chapters based on critical feedback, but was able to integrate some of the key points elsewhere in the text.  I also picked up a few technical skills and mastered Word’s cross-referencing function! I also added more pictures and incorporated them into the text. The goal of 180 pages has now grown to over 200 pages. I think that’s the right length: substantial, but not unwieldy. It’s exciting to see it all come together, and I can’t wait for the next steps: mo...

 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.

 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 .

 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.

 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...

 So I'm doing a lot of teaching this time of the year, and there is Christmas t enjoy. And I need to produce a few new lectures. But I have also set myself a deadline for a seminar at the beginning of February and I need to write a good part of my chapters on experiencing gameworlds. On small problem here is that I need a lot of writing on the materiality/production of games tjat leads up to this - but for reasons I have decided to have a seminar on that part of my text in May.  I really need to test ut my most important ideas about phenomenology and games from the start. If that part is understandable and good then I can work out the rest from there. Christmas is (almost) over, or at least it's Monday, and i was going to start writing and I had nothing to say. So I sat down to read Sokolowskis Introduction to phenomenology some more and I was back in the flow of thinking about games. There are som many ways of disseminating the experience of being in another world ta get from...

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...