Small Hairy Animals (MindTrek pt. 2)

As everyone knows, lectures, workshops and panel discussions are not the most important part of a conference. The most important part is everything that happens in between and after these (no I’m not referring to free food and beer).

Like I noted in my previous post, Adam Greenfields’ presentation really made an impact on me. Worrying that he might dissapear as fast as Miguel Sicart did, I hurried down to him to prevent such a situation. I’m glad I did, for it turned out he was leaving in less than an hour. Luckily, he was willing to spare some of that time for me, resulting in me having worthy information, and good hints on what I could and should do in the future. To conclude, I’d say he’s one pretty awesome dude, and I’ll definitely be following his doings from now on. Although, I have to admit I was disappointed with his attitude towards games (ie. dissing them), but I think I’ll just take it as a challenge.

After the chat, I walked around doing nothing until the end of the conference, and as I was just leaving, a guy came up to me, looking like he actually wanted to talk to me of all people. He had heard my conversation with Adam, and after he introduced himself and his ideas, I understood why.  The guy is called Slava Kozlov, and although still working for Philips, he’s starting up his own company, Summ*n, with a guy called Nikolay Yaremko. Their slogan is “We summon the futures for you to play with them now”, and it sounds very very intriguing to say the least. Obviously, their aspirations go well together with my interest in what games could be. Also, it seems that Slava appreciates what young people have to offer, and that is something I definitely admire. Can’t wait to see what happens with Summ*n!

Our chat was cut short by Slava having to go to an evening event. I had luck on my side again, and got to join the party, although I had no idea of what I was getting myself into this time.

The event was held at Demola in the Finlayson complex, and by the people running Demola. In their site, they say “Demola is a multidiciplinary open innovation environment for the creators of the next generation of digital products and services”. In practice, this means that companies (for example Nokia and TeliaSonera) that happen to have ideas they want done into real products can bring them to Demola, and teams of young talents from the three universities in Tampere get to use their skills and learn project working. Obviously, I had no idea of such a place excisting and definitely no idea someone was doing something so great in the middle of Tampere.

Not only was Demola inspiring, but the event itself was quite something too. Pardon my prejudice, but I never imagined that 40-something and older men (and women too of course, but not that many were present) could have such good and innovative ideas and such readiness for change, plus willingness to give young people some power too. On top of that, many of them are working for big, conservative companies. I loved the way the importance of humanities and art were brought up multiple times during discussion when debating innovations and the next Google. Also, an excellent notion was made:

“Everyone knows that dinosaurs used to be the ruling species, but they were wiped out, and their place inherited but small furry animals. Well, I see big companies as the dinosaurs of our time, and small, innovative companies as the small furry animals. No big innovations that changed the world have been made by the dinosaurs, but by the small, innovative and agile furry animals.”

I couldn’t agree more. Big companies are just too careful and too stuck in their ways to come up with the next Big Thing. The notion applies especially well to game companies, and is also the reason for games being pretty but brainless. Almost all of the few good, innovative games have  been made by small indie developers, not by Squeenix, Nintendo or EA. They’re not willing to take any risks, nor to think about designing games that would appeal to smaller audiences.

Enough of ranting for now, next I think I’ll look into Greenfields’ texts and jot down what kind of thoughts they provoke.

MindTrek Post-pondering

Thanks to our great faculty, we (hypermedia master students) were able to participate in MindTrek 2009 -conference. The conference was held in Hotel Rosendahl in Tampere during the past three days.

Since games are my intrest and academic is my way of looking at them, I decided to take part in the games track on wednesdays’ Academic MindTrek. Due to starting a new hobby, yoga, I missed the first part of it, so I might’ve missed something worthwhile. Unfortunately the part I did get to hear didn’t really have anything to offer to me. “Social aspects of gaming” and “”Games with an agenda” did originally sound like they might have some interesting views and theories presented, but turned out to be wasted potential from my perspective. Online-gaming, social networking and using games for serious purposes just don’t interest me, especially not from the point of view they seem to be perceived everywhere right now. MORPGs, online gaming and online socializing seem to be The Thing right now, and no matter where I go, researchers seem ridiculously thrilled about them. Ridiculously because I haven’t managed to grasp any other reason for the excitement except them being fresh, hip and new in the research world. Sigh. Trends and me just don’t go together.  Serious games, on the other hand, are definitely interesting, but there are some buts that I will discuss later on.

After such an uninspiring start, I started to get anxious about the rest of the conference. Will there be any lectures or people with interesting theories, or am I just going to stroll around the hallways, not knowing where to go and feeling very out of place? Well. The thursday lectures before lunch seemed to affirm my concerns, even if Chris Messinas’ lecture on OpenID titled “Identity is the Platform” was a very interesting one. Luckily, thursdays’ academic session started with an excellent keynote by Miguel Sicart, titled “Not to Choose – Designing Ethical Gameplay”. Damned was I thrilled! First of all, it was an excellent presentation, but it also happened to strike right at the core of my research interests. Unfortunately, that’s as far as my luck carried on thursday, because right after the presentation it turned out Sicart was heading back to Denmark in a blink of an eye.

In the end, friday turned out to be the most fruitful one, even though I arrived at the hotel very late, missing all the morning sessions. The first lecture I got to hear completely was Adam Greenfield on “Elements of a Networked Urbanism”, and boy it was definitely something. I have no idea why, but I never even thought about actually doing research on urbanism. One very thought provoking thought was the concept of ownership. According to Greenfield, owning things (ie. a car) is inefficient and unecological. What a brilliant realisation! As an (good) example he used was Spotify.

I also liked Greenfields’ realistic and anti-hype approach to technology and applications. He posed a very good question that reveals, on my opinion, his attitude quite nicely. I didn’t manage to write it down word to word, so I’ll just try to jot down the point: assuming that applications become so easy to use and comprehensive that no-one has to, say, actually find their way to meeting point X. In stead, they can just follow their navigator and find the place without using their own navigation skills. People begin to live in a kind of a fog, dulling their natural skills and senses. Well then, imagine a generation that has grown up with using such applications. What happens when (notice, not “if”) the network collapses?

On top of those, some quotes that I found interesting: 

“Nothing is more interesting than information about the place you are in or are going to be in a moment.”

“The city is for having the biggest possible number of different interfaces.”

“It’s not the advertising that’s the problem per se, the problem is the way it’s done.”

“If we’re not careful, we will end up being treated like objects”

The point of the lecture was that devices and applications should not be taken too far, because that would result in changing the urban life in a huge city completely, by destroying the element of surprise, chance and having to challenge yourself every now and then.

Well, it’s getting late and I’m feeling drained, so I’ll save the post-MindTrek fruitfulness for another time. Coming soon though, so remember to check my blog every now and then.