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.

The Unbearable Heaviness of Defining a Research Question

Incredible but true, I’m still not feeling sleepy one bit, although it’s already 4:30am (GT +3 due to DST). This obviously a perfect time for some Intellectual Scientific Theorizing (from now on simply IST). On the other hand, I already had issues when trying to figure out the spelling for ‘theorizing’, so this might turn out to be either interesting, embarrassing, or both. Personally, I’m trying to keep up the flickering hope of something useful turning up, so here goes, for your entertainment if nothing else.

The heading is unusually long and heavy of me (I tend to do the long and heavy -part in the actual text), but I could not imagine affiliating anything lighter with this topic. Judging from what I’ve done and learned this far, defining the research question is the Ultimate Trial. Once one has overcome the Challenge of Challenges, coming up with a new, well-defined, shiny and bright Research Question, everything else falls into place by itself. Yes, yes, of course I’m exaggerating. Nevertheless, once figuring out a good research question, the rest of the work gets a heck of a lot easier, starting from source-hunting and ending up all the way in the actual thesis writing.

Although the almost-mythical Research Question seems elusive as ever (not only judged on the hearsay of graduate students, but also on my personal experiences), certain general ideas, topics and words keep catching my eye and ear time and time again. First and foremost, game studies. Mostly from a humanistic or a sociological point of view, although I’m also trying to understand the technological side of it. Narrowing down, I used to end up with game cultures, but recently the words have changed places or even form, and I’m sitting there with topics like “Games as Culture”, “Games and Culture”, “Games as Art” and “Games as High Culture”. Why? Let me open it up for you a bit.

Art as a whole is a phenomenon that has always intrigued me. Especially visual arts, like painting, sculpting and architecture never seem to lose their grip on me, and once I realized digital games is the area I want to specialize in, this art-fixation of mine started to hunt me more than ever. After my realization, some other topics have of course come up, some of them forgotten immediately, some still lurking in the back of my mind. Take Japan, for example. Some heavy lurking going on with this topic, since it even made me travel all the way to the other side of the globe for a year. While spending most of my time studying the language, I did also manage to wade some room in my schedule for getting to know the thing I went to Japan for: games. Especially people who play games, or even better, make them. Getting to know a number of people who work in the business was the final factor convincing me on the essentialness of including their views in my thesis, maybe even making it the focus of the research.

This brought up another thing that had been circling in my mind: finding out what people think about games. Game developers’, indie or commercial, but also gamers’ opinions. Very soon after coming up with this, I realized I also want and need the views of Average Joe and those of people who don’t work in development, but could otherwise be considered experts in the fields of digital games, art, Japanese gaming culture, and all these combined. The last group of people is quite a mixed bag of course. So, I’ve got both the question and the people to pose the question to, why am I still saying it’s heavy business?

First of all, I’m doing a master thesis, not a doctoral one. There is no way on earth I could even dream of including all that in a hundred-or-so -pages and ending up with a good thesis. An easy problem, granted, and solved, for example, by simply narrowing down and focusing on one group of people. That’s what I did, and ended up with this: “Are games art?”. This is the oldest version, and very, very intimidating. Defining the research question like that, I’d be forced to define not only what digital games are, but also take part in the dreaded What Is True Art -conversation.

Most of my antipathy for this debate actually results from something quite different from fear: it seems to me a very pointless and endless fight, sometimes inducing eerie similarities with that of different religious groups, and at others sinking to the level that makes a fight over which are tastier, strawberries or blueberries, seem sound. Come on people, face it: there is no absolute definition for art! I know it’s hard for a human mind to accept some things can’t be defined the same way as the tectonic structure of our planet, but that’s just how it is, so live with it. Art is something that has a different meaning and manifestation to each and every individual on this planet, and that’s the closest we’ll ever get of having an absolute definition for art. Take it or leave it, get all emotional or don’t give a shit, it doesn’t change the fact one bit.

Not wanting to take part in this Holy War of Art and Non-Art, I tried my best to find a more eloquent research question, and maybe did. Unfortunately that has to wait for another time (maybe tomorrow?), since I’ve stayed up ridiculously long and should go to bed. Stay put for another episode of some hard ISTing and exemplary Holy War -avoidance, it might be coming up sooner than you expect!

As a side-note: Damn I wish this thing had a footnoting-system. Another side-note: No laughing at typos and aberrations, it’s frigging 6:43 am here.