[game_edu] GamesCultures.org: an open invitation

[Frans Mäyrä]

Hi; crossposted from DiGRA -- hope this is of interest to game educators 
in this list. -Best; Frans

*GamesCultures.org: an open invitation*

Dear colleagues,

This is an open invitation to a collaborative effort into mapping
digital play around the world. Currently only scattered information on
the popularity and forms of engagement with digital games in global
context exist. Often particularly in media statements are nevertheless
made that concern “all gamers”, even if researchers emphasise how both
games and playing takes multiple forms and claims about some particular
game or group of players do not necessarily apply to another. In the
spirit of the recent “Situated Play” conference (DiGRA 2007), we propose
a collaborative effort of collecting together research, observation and
data about forms of play around the world. See: www.gamescultures.org,
an open beta of wiki resource about global games cultures.

How could a researcher make use of a resource like this? - In many ways.
The basic philosophy behind GamesCultures.org is to share information
between researchers, and to situate it within some, particularly
geographical, social and cultural contexts. It is possible to use the
site to summarise findings from one’s existing research, link into
published work, or to compare it with similar work done in other
countries. What is currently valuable but scattered work, could over
time grow into a valuable haven of data particularly for comparative
studies into various social and cultural aspects of gaming, peppered
with useful links to other, established sources of games research
information. However, a word of caution also: the usual reliability
issues surrounding self-published media (wikis and blogs) apply also to
this initiative -- the possible errors and misconceptions will only be
cleared if there are enough critical and knowledgeable users around to
fix them.

I am a student, can I contribute? - Sure. Much of the “silent knowledge”
about gaming is carried around by the younger generations. What if
hundreds of students around the world would start doing small research
projects about the gamers and forms of play popular in their country,
and then share the information with each other? Even personal
observations about playing behaviours can be valuable - it is just
important to write in a manner where one clearly points out what is
based on research (and on what kind of research), and which on anecdotal
evidence. Consulting one’s professors is the recommended way to go: it
is perfectly possible to study and write about games and players from
multiple points of view that fit within a range of different academic
disciplines.

Can I use this for my teaching? - Gladly. Currently the site is pretty
empty, but how about providing your class with an assignment that would
involve them setting up a small-scale games related survey, ethnographic
observation project or document based inquiry (e.g. study of utilizing
gaming magazines or other media, a study into the history of gaming,
etc.), while teachers in other countries do the same. Hopefully this
would lead into a win-win situation: students would get practice in
doing research, the gathering and sharing of knowledge would raise
awareness about the scale and reach of digital games, and the academic
community would gain a fascinating melange of materials for inspiration
and use in further studies.

Have photos or personal observations of interesting forms of digital
play from other countries? - That is also worth contributing: can you
take some time to write a short note where you explain the context of
your photo, what is going on, where it was taken, and share it on site
(use this link: http://www.gamescultures.org/Special:Upload). Then you
can go to the entry for the country where your observation relates to,
and use the wiki editor to link to an embedded image. Remember to write
a short note to accompany the photo into the entry.

All contents submitted into GamesCultures.org are provided freely, under
GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL; the same one that Wikipedia uses).

The current version of GamesCultures.org is basically just a quick
experiment, implemented using MediaWiki (Wikipedia technology). A list
of all countries of the world are provided in the main page, but more
evolved structures, topic categories, tags, templates and other ways of
organising the information will be necessary as the initiative
(hopefully) will start growing. A specific page is set up with this
letter, and Talk/discussion page for dialogue into the future
development of this service in:

http://www.gamescultures.org/Discussion_page_about_site_development

The server, plus the initial design and maintenance of this service will
be provided by International Study of Games Cultures (InGa), a project
funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation and carried out by the
University of Tampere with international collaborators. Together with
researchers from the University of Turku we have designed the small
snapshot entry currently filed under “Finland” as a test of what a
country specific page could look like:

http://www.gamescultures.org/Finland

Hopefully this experiment will grow and can be of service to the
community. -- With Season’s Greetings from Finland;

-- Frans Mäyrä & the InGa Team


**  Frans Mäyrä * Professor, PhD * Hypermedia Laboratory **
**  University of Tampere * Games Research Lab * Finland **
* www.uta.fi/hyper * http://gamelab.uta.fi * www.digra.org *
** frans.mayra at uta.fi *gsm +358503367650 *tel +358335517933 **
  *** www.unet.fi/fransblog **** www.uta.fi/~frans.mayra ***