Category: research
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Sweden is real
Sweden is suddenly very real and I’ve been invited to give a seminar at the HUMlab at Umeå University on the 28th of September, following the two day Social Media Cultures Workshop. ‘Indie’ and Independent Games and Culture in the Australian Video Game Industry The global financial crisis has brought the Australian video games industry…
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Marking machinima
The article Graham Barwell, Ruth Walker and I wrote for the Australian Journal of Australasian Journal of Educational Technology on our machinima experiment. I always enjoy writing with Graham and Ruth and using Google Docs and Skype to collaboratively generate the peice, although we probably spent the most time trying to decide what to cut…
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#Freeplay11
Freeplay, the independent games festival at the State Library of Victoria over the weekend was excellent. The conference presentations and panels were lively and informative, the workshops were varied and interesting and the Twitter coverage was on fire and on the giant twitter wall in the Experimedia section of the festival which also housed the…
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GAME conference
October 27-29 2011 at Macquarie University, Sydney* A collaboration between Macquarie University’s Interactive Media Institute and the Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre, *GAME* is a public debate, mini-conference and gaming festival celebrating this exciting new area of research and collaboration at Macquarie University. The event will be hosted at Macquarie University, Sydney, from October 27-29th, 2011.…
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Independent game design in the Australian industry
Freeplay is an Independent Games Festival this weekend in Melbourne. The festival includes a free arcade and expo in the Experimedia room of the State Library of Victoria. The conference program over the weekend at the Library’s conference centre has two stream of speakers, from whom I am hoping to find out more about the…
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Gamification – Round Two
The two results from my interviews with Australian games developers that have surprised me the most, are the negatives responses to the suggestion that there is a need for more women to be working in the local industry (but more on that in a later post) and gamificiation. Long before I’d heard the term and…
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What is Gamification
Gamification is the application of secondary game mechanics to non-game experiences. Gamification, despite the name, does not involve play or primary game structures, but those devices associated with measuring progress and encouraging players to maintain their involvement, such as points, scores, leaderboards, levels and progression meters, achievements, badges, virtual currency, and other rewards that acknowledge…
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How the App Store works
I’m currently engaged in some background research on Australian app developers, and I figured I need to look into how the Apple app store App Store actually works (Apple has previously attempted to claim ownership over the term ‘App Store’). As a digital distribution platform, the App Store is entirely closed (as opposed to the Android App Store…
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Destroying the myths of original creation one episode at a time
One old cliche I should have paid more attention to is ‘never meet your heroes’. I discovered this the hard way back when I was writing my PhD and I attended a law symposium on the Creative Commons in Brisbane. The keynote speaker Lawrence Lessig, whose books and blog had inspired the political direction of my…
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Made in Australia: a brief exploration of Australian iPad apps (June, 2011)
The Apple Store (accessed via the iPad) ‘Featured’ tab now includes a ‘Made in Australia’ section subtitled ‘Great Apps for Australians’. What counts as made in Australia, or an Australian app, let alone Apps for Australians isn’t clearly defined, and something I plan to unpack further in the future. Similarly, there is no information as…
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