"Remember what the dormouse said"

I'm moving to wordpress

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 01:20:00 +0000

It will take a while before it feels like home - it's a bit messy (as myself) - but will be more understandable after a while!

See ya at:

http://dekcuf.wordpress.com

Machinima Night III program part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:27:00 +0000

MTV GENERATION

I cannot touch on the topic of Machinima without mentioning the music videos. It's a storytelling format which the MTV-generation understands so well and they're able to use their literacy of music videos to create their own. It's a wonderful way to be a fan of both the games and the music. I have a soft spot for the music Machinima that doesn't have a glossy feel - but rather amateur love.

I showed two very old music Machinima films. The first one is from a very well known machinima artist, who I'm sure wishes that I showed some of his newer stuff. B. Kiddo has been creating machinima for years and his artful skills in The Sims and Second Life are just awesome. But this Machinima film is one of the first I ever saw. I was so touhed by it. Although it isn't smoothly made - it's very emotional. I showed this to a girl friend of mine who thinks I'm totally weird for being interested in this stuff and would rather I focus my attention on finding a man and go shopping - and she welled up. Which of course gave me immense satisfaction!

B. Kiddo - Bitter Sweet (I'm looking into fitting it properly - meanwhile you can watch it here)

The other music Machinima I played is actually Chinese and made Everquest. I stumbled upon it by chance. It is very simple - but the song is just so catchy I can't help but love it! I'm told the song was a number one hit in China about 10 years ago (thanks KML) and I can understand why. I find myself humming the song several times a day and I enjoy simplisity of the Machinima film.

Peter Tan - Look Over Here!

If you ask me it's a beautiful way of being a fan. A true testament to the participatory culture that is evolving on the net. It's therefore such a shame that the music industry is constantly hassling these artists and taking their films, their fan worshipping of sites like YouTube.

Here's another - which just combines the ticklish fun that Little Big Planet's gameplay produces and Daft Punk.

Danteneverdies - Little Daft Punk

And lastly I want to mention the overly dramatic nature of Music Machinima made in The Sims. I have a theory that it's because of the dramatic gestures of the avatars that just makes them so perfect for drama that involves crying and pain. These gestures and The Sims Goth I'm sure are responsible for the massive amounts of The Sims Music Machinima with the music of Evanescence. I cannot tell you how many Machinima films I've seen with this soundtrack! So far, I've spared the audience - but I had decided that this year that I would expose them to some of the torture I go through by finding Machinima films for these evenings. Luckily for them, the video was broken so I couldn't show it - but you can now!

Storytelling

As Machinima advances so do the stories. There's some brilliant storytelling coming out of these games and they're just so beautifully told.

My all time favourite is Among Fables and Men by Dopefish. Someday I will write a paper on this film. The way he's made a three dimensional space take on the the form of paper and 2 dimensions is just gobsmackingly beautiful.

Tobias "Dopefish" Lundmark - Among Fables and Men (best seen in full HD here)

I think this film is the first to take the artform a step further. This is far beyond fan fiction or even participatory art - this is a well told story.

And there's plenty of good stuff coming out from several games. At this point I realised that I was running out of time. So I skipped Shelf Life - although I absolutely adore it. It's just too long for a showing on a night like this event. But it's definitely a sign of how evolved the medium of Machinima is becoming. It's hard to look at Shelf Life and think that it's made in a game. It therefore becomes rather difficult in appreciating the puppet mastery or the communication between artist and artificial intelligence. The focus becomes the story.

PixelEyesProductions - Shelf Life

MACHINIMA MASHUP STORYTELLING?

I'm not sure I can all it this. Mash-up storytelling? Hmm. Anyways - the last segment of the first part of the evening is about combining different games and game - dare I say - narratives.

Clear Skies is one of the best Machinima films I have ever seen. I'm noticing the same thing with this film as with Shelf Life - I forget to appreciate the gameplay mastery. It's hardly there - I get too wrapped up in the story to even think about the work involved behind it. And yet the creator, Ian Chisolm spent about a year just collecting footage of gameplay to this wonderful Machinima film. It's a combination of Half Life and EVE Online. I'm only going to embedd the trailer here - links for downloading the whole thing can be found at Rock Paper Shotgun.

Ian Chisholm - Clear Skies Trailer

And lastly - we have this absolutely brilliant Machinima film which comments on today's tv programs, media culture, game narratives and is just pure fun. Again - I'm forgetting the mastery of game mechanics and just really enjoying the story. Thanks for the "heads-up" Neils!

Lagspike - Top FPS

Conclusion

This is a very rough introduction to what machinima is or what I perceive machinima to be. I tried having "the machine" as a theme throughout - but as you can see, I strayed off topic some. This is just me being a fan. I would love to look more into researching, writing and talking about Machinima. I need to read up on narratology as well. I'm constantly learning new things about this medium and I love learning about it.

Thanks so much to Morten Kvamme, the curator at Landmark who lets me use their space and time to geek out about Machinima. Thank you sooo much!

Machinima Night III program part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:49:00 +0000

Phew - took some time, ey?

So the whole point with organising these Machinima evenings is to create a space for people to relax, share a beer and be introduced to what's going on in the world of Machinima. There's people who know what we're on about and there's people who are just fascinated by the medium and of course, those who are interested in New Media. I try to give an overview of what machinima is, but the more I learn about it - the more I realise that I'm just barely scratching the surface. So this year I decided to toss out objectivity and completely focus on what I wanted to focus on. I completely choked up, though. Suddenly I realised I had a microphone in my hand and people were listening to what I had to say - I haven't talked publicly in a long long time! Definitely needed the practice. Luckily I've been giving a few lectures and presentations with work lately - so I'm starting to get it down again. So anyways - I'm going to squeeze in what I meant to say inbetween talking about the program of the evening. If you don't recognise some of it - this is why.

So nuff said!

Machinima stands for machine + cinema + animation. If you think it doesn't add up with the spelling, blame Hugh Hancock who created www.machinima.com. There's also a story about a pub, a few beers and a cocktail napkin. But in essence it's machinima stands for machine + cinema + animation. It was the intention to focus the evening on the "machine"-part. What fascinates me with machinima is how the artists are communicating with a machine or an artificial intelligence to create their own narrative or story. The machine I'm talking about is the computer game where the film is made. If a machinima film is made in World of Warcraft, the artist will have to communicate with the game and understand the game mechanics in order to tell their story.

Defining Machinima

I'm usually very casual with my definition of machinima: "Films made in computer games or virtual worlds." - I feel it works. It's simple and it's so that anyone can understand it. It's a very general definition however so to show the complexities of this - I started off showing the audience the infamous Leeroy Jenkins episode.

At my first ever Machinima event I also started with this little film. I thought it was an entertaining way to show what World of Warcraft actually looks like during gameplay and back then I used it as an example of what wasn't machinima. My intention was to prove that machinima isn't replay films. There's usually a narrative or storyline involved within machinima it's not all about playing the game, it's more about playing the game to tell a story.

But a great thing happened - my audience disagreed with me. They started to question whether this Leeroy Jenkins episode was REALLY just a documentation of an incident that happened in World of Warcraft. The authenticity was questioned and if the film is a reenactment are they not telling us a story, and is it not machinima then?

Perhaps I'm confusing my definition with aesthetics. The next film looks completely different from the first. It can maybe be categorised as a celebration of WoW game aesthetics or as I prefer to think of it - a celebration of the art of machinima. The filming, the modding, the acting and the playing. Let me introduce you to one of my favourite machinima artists:

Baron Soosdon - I'm So Sick

Now the theme of the evening is to look at the way machinima artists are interacting with the game or "machine" in order to create their own stories and narrative. I feel this is an important component to defining what machinima is. Gameplay or communicating with artificial intelligence has a narratological significance in machinima films. Henry Lowood has defined it as puppet mastery. An artist must master the game and the avatars in order to create their own storyline. I feel that one of my favourite machinima films (I'll be writing that a lot in this piece) illustrates this rather eloquently. It's created in The Sims. Keep in mind that there are no magic buttons in The Sims which makes the Sims avatar angry or sad or have nightmares. The emotions are consequences of how you play with them. The Sims have a complex artificial intelligence embedded within them. While watching this film try to think of what the machinima artist has done to the avatar to make her have nightmares. In addition - I just find this film such a great omage of what you can do with avatar creation in The Sims. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

One Jovial Sim - Alice

Now - saying that machinima has to have the element of the artist communicating with an artificial intelligence or gameplay reduces the scope of machinima. Or questions it. For example, there's some beautiful films coming out of Second Life but this is a virtual world, there's little gameplaying involved. Do these films then deserve to be a part of the same genre?

My favourite film from Second Life is an illustration of a short story by Sherwood Anderson. I haven't read up on his work and I haven't researched any analysis of this story. But from seeing this cinematic interpretation of the story - I feel it's the best story ever told about writer's block.

Lainy Voom - The Dumb Man

Incidently - One Jovial Sim (Alice) and Lainy Voom often collaborate in each other's creations. Which makes you wonder - if the artists are collaborating, it must fall under the same media, right? Wouldn't that be interesting if it's the community of machinima artists that define what constitutes machinima or not?

Either way - I've concluded that there's more than enough artificial intelligence in virtual worlds like Second Life for us to appreciate the puppet mastery involved in creating films in this space.

Now - there's a new machinima "world" that I still don't understand completely and will have to look deeper into, but I feel I can't question the definition of machinima without mentioning it. The machinima "world" I'm refering to is, Moviestorm. From what I understand, this is a community that uploads environments, avatars, clothes etc. from games and virtual worlds and shares them with other machinima artists. So it seems like a machinima "world", to me. But again, I must stress that I have not fully understood the concept and tool. Most of the contributions to machinima festivals are filmed with Moviestorm and it's definitely a very strong force.

We've been a bit dark and serious in our film selection so far - so I thought I'd pick a film made with Moviestorm that made me laugh.

Phil Rice - Blast Supper

This is actually made for the Mefunk Akira competition. There was a list of things that had to be said in the film, like "That's not a chicken, that's my wife". Excellent idea! And the film is just hillarious. But is it machinima?

I don't know. Hugh Hancock, who created the whole term "machinima" says: "Of course it is!" - and for now, I'm willing to trust his expertise.

For more on the "definition"-discussion read Tracy Harwood's contribution to The Fallopian.

Machinima Night III

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:10:00 +0000

I've promised to do a write-up of MachinimaNight III to all who attended - share the links to the films and artists. I'm going to do this back to front and start off at the last part. Mostly this is for Scott and Jill who had to leave early. I appreciate your interest and support! Thanks!

So in the course of the night I had introduced the audience to different genres and types of machinima, mostly concentrating on form and not about the creative communities within machinima making communities.

This is the ingredient of machinima that fascinates me the most and there's one group that I've been paying attention to and just downright adore. So first - let me introduce you to Olibith.

Olibith is what we might call a machinima superstar. He was initially created on a WoW role-playing server, but has become so famous that he cannot roleplay anymore - he has become a machinima superstar and his sole purpose in his little avatar life is to create machinima. It is far from a lonely life.

Olibith is a member of a machinima artist gang. I usually call them the Never Stay Tuned gang - or NST gang. But upon reflection I find the word "gang" stupid and will have to come up with a cooler name. They're a network of machinima artists who help each other out with skills and inspiration. Let me introduce you to some of them (I did not have time to show all these on Machinima Night III - but taking the freeedom to do so now):

Baron Soosdon

The avatar, Little Nikita was made in collaboration with Pink Hair. I've only seen here in a few of Baron Soosdon's machinima - he tends to vary with the use of avatars - or shall we say modelled avatars. He's much more focused on giving the audience an aestheticly impressive atmosphere than telling a story from beginning to end. I still think there's a lot of narrative in his machinima films - but my definition of narrative is rather wide at the moment.

Olibith and Baron Soosdon meet in Warcraft Movies after having created machinima by themselves.

PinkHair

Maybe you recognise someone in this machinima film? It was made in collaboration with Baron Soosdon with a little help from some others, like Olibith - see where I'm going with this?

Dopefish

Dopefish has made one of the best machinima pieces I've ever seen. He's an excellent storyteller. I'm asking for permission to upload Among Fables and Men onto YouTube so I can share it with you here. I've often wanted to do a longer review of it, but felt that my gaming skills were inadequate to give it a proper analysis. I've always thought it expressed the way that World of Warcraft is "just" a game. That underneath all the beautiful 3Dishness - there's a story and there's gamescript - but I'll get back to that another time.

Dopefish created a machinima IRC channel at Quakenet, which has been a resource for the collaborative nature of the machinima that these artists are creating.

Here's an absolute favourite of mine:

(YouTube's very frequent in taking stopping machinima on YouTube (music copyright) - so you can download it here if the embedded video doesn't work.)

This is a collection of seperate shorts by several machinima artists and I feel that it clearly exemplifies the way that each artist has their own style and expression. The style of Never Stay Tuned is also a mockery (and appreciation) of other media entertainment, which works so well in machinima. The way that avatars in a gaming world are imitating the 'real world' media - just works so well! And this group of machinima artists are smart in their creative storytelling.

It's also evident that they keep helping each other and you see that by their uniqueness in style and technique. The most obvious is Olibith, who keeps making guest appearances. He's easy to spot. Have a look at the film again and see if you can spot him in pictures on the wall, in the background a.s.o. The technique and aesthetic footprint of Baron Soosdon is very evident in his music video or does his musical taste give him away? Would I be able to recognise it as his work and not Pinkhair's if it weren't for the darkness, editing and futuristic aesthetics? And then inbetween all the hillariousness comes Dopefish's beautiful recreation of the Sony colour balls commercial, which just takes my breathe away.

Together, this group of machinima artists are creating a collective narrative. And we'll get more into that another time when I figure it out myself - hehe! I really should be reading, writing and researching this full time, huh?! I promise to get back to it soon but real life is knocking on my door.

While I work on that enjoy the latest Never Stay Tuned which also has contributions from AFK pl@yers, Ian Beckman (he was also in nr. 3) and Goldskin.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Machinima Night III

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:07:00 +0000

Ehm...let's ignore the misspelling of my name, ey?!

Happy Birthday, sis!

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:48:00 +0000

It's my sister's birthday today and I just wanted to give her a little public shout and hug!

Christin blogs about her WoWing and a whole lot of other great stuff - at Misc.

In fact -my sister has managed to create one of those healthy gaming family settings that you always wish you heard more about.

Christin is also involved somehow with The Slash 2 Podcast.

I adore my sister. Smart as hell and lustful for life!

Happy 29th birthday, sis!

MachinimUP or MachiniMIX

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:08:00 +0000

I'm trying to figure out a really catchy great name for the upcoming Machinima Night at Landmark 22. October. This is what I've come up with - MachinimUP or MachiniMIX - but to be perfectly honest - I feel that's just a foolish way of hyping it all up. Why not continue to be perfectly honest, frank and to the point with Machinima Night III?

I'm officially on vacation and I'm unofficially trying to get my head focused on upcoming projects and dreams this fall so I can dive straight into them when I come home. My day job will be requiring quite a lot of attention - so I must have a few things straight soon.

This blog has helped me gain perspective so many times before - I think it's only reasonable that I should continue brainstorming here. So to whomever is interested - this is where my mind is at when it comes to this years Machinima Night.

Earlier vs now
Previous Machinima Nights have been about describing what machinima is and trying to categorise the art into genres.

I'm not sure I want to do that this year.

I think I want to start off by describing machinima by using a series of clips from machinima. I've recently bought Adobe Premiere (better be worth the frakkin money!)- which I'm hoping to get my head around as soon as possible - so editing will be a sinch.

I want to talk about these sequences and what is actually going on. I want to describe the machine part in machinima - as this is the part that often gets misunderstood in my presentations.

So first half hour will be focusing on "what's the "machine" about in machinima?"

The industry of Machinima
Then I'd really like to get into where Machinima is today. It would be perfect if I could get an overview of how many competitions there are in a year - how many movies get published - how many fans create machinima - how many submit machinima to the competitions.

I have to admit that I'm not too optimistic of managing to gather all this information in time - but it would be lovely. So any help will be greatly appreciated.

I'll write a few e-mails and do a little snooping. Of course the subject will have to start with a little history of what Machinima really is - why it's here - and why it's so popular.

I think half an hour - unless I get some really interesting information that is worth a good run through.

Copyright issues
I don't know if I want to touch on this subject. I still want this to be a topic that desserves a full night's discussion - not a little byline in an evening that's mostly about the amusing qualities of machinima.

An interesting case study could maybe be - "Why Rooster Teeth can sell Red vs. Blue DVDs". At the moment I don't know - may be a short answer - may be an interesting "Lessig got involved"- answer. Will of course be researching that as soon as possible - remember - I'm just brainstorming here.

What I enjoy most about this case study is that it gives me an opportunity to show a Red vs. Blue - clip - which is always a source of laughter and happiness in the crowd. I don't often use Rooster Teeth in my presentations because most people associate machinima with them - and I want to share with the audience that machinima is so much more. So they quite often get left out - which I'm starting to feel is rather unfair - since it is Rooster Teeth that first introduced me to machinima. So two flies in one smack, as we say in Norwegian.

But I'm not certain the subject belongs here. If I'm really good - I can do a short and understandable and thought provoking insightful little 20 min speech on the subject and then maybe a break so people can discuss it among themselves for a bit? But I'm not sure that my presentation techniques have the confidence to do that. I'm afraid that I'll more than likely just barf out the complexities of the legality issues and leave the audience confused an uninterested in what I'm saying.

I don't know. I think if I'm to bring up Copyright issues - I need to feel confident that I can express the issues clearly, to the point and with question. As American as I can get - I think.

Collaborative art
I think this will be the heart and soul of the show reel. I think I've decided to focus on the Never Stay Tuned series.

Never Stay Tuned 4 (international) from Olibith Kirin Tor on Vimeo.

How many people are involved - why did they start - who is what a.s.o. I find their machinima films so unique because of the characters they've created and the way they represent mash-up culture at it's best. Only if they're willing to collaborate with me of course. But I do love the way that they constantly contribute in each other's films and seem my like a unit at times. The true art of collaborative art can be found in this group of WoW'ers - and I would like to tell the Bergensers about it.

And as a special treat - I know a guy - a nice guy - who's made machinima. And I want him to tell us about the experience. But I don't think I've convinced him completely yet - so I'll leave him alone (till he says "yes" of course) for now.

Media
As for media - I thought I'd go all out on this one. Create posters a few weeks in advance - send press invitations and everything. If there's one thing I've learned in the last couple of years is that media attention is a good currency to have. And since I'm in the process of writing a PhD proposal with an average grade behind me - I need all the currency I can get! The more gravitas I can get behind my proposal - the closer I will be to living the life of my dreams. And it needs to be worth trying, at least. I can't let this go into my "regrets" box in life.

So what do you think?

Do you think this would be an enjoyable night? What are you missing and why?

If you don't want to leave a comment - let me know by e-mail: linnsovig gmail.com

I would love some feedback and advice! ;)

Play with your food

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:02:00 +0000

So - things have been dead here lately ey?

Well...I'm still busy being a communications consultant, which I've started blogging about a zillion times but never seem to dare to publish. A lot of that has to do about establishing several online identities that have nothing to do with one another and a lot about being scared about practicing what I've been preaching for the last few months. Also - to be quite honest - I've been trying to train my brain to think better in Norwegian. Only reading Norwegian and only writing in Norwegian. This blog throws me off the flow of Norwegian thoughts - and I need to be good in both languages. That said!

I'm a proud member of Spillpikene (the Norwegian name for game girls - yes we like to melt several words into one in Norway). I shared my affection for the gaming chiXors on the International Women's Day. Well...since then. We've been playing Dungeons and Dragons with Game Master Hedvig (she's frekkin brilliant!) and started a blog of our own. Being four people is brilliant! The blog gets updated more often and we've all got other different points of view.

Anyway - my point is! We've started a competition - our second one. And it's so lovely that I have to translate it for English readers!

Maren says:
Play with your food, and win a Spillpike t-shirte (homemade and lovely!)

It's far past midsummer and I've decided that it's about time to give away one of our rare Spillpike-t-shirts. One has already been given away, so we have two left. This time you can win the black version.

What you have to do to enter the competition? Well..: You have to make a representation of a game you like ... with food! We're talkin ketchup, pastries, candy, spaghetti - whatever your preference. Take a picture and send it to us at post [a] spillpikene dot no.

People have already started contributing and we're sooooo enjoying it! The picture needs to be in by 15 August. And it would be lovely if you participated as well.

Will all social media have avatars in the future?

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Tue, 26 May 2009 04:49:00 +0000

I'm not sold - but Vincent Sider certainly got my attention with this slideshow (which has, btw, been resting in my browser for so long I can't remember where I found it! Sorry!).

IM, Avatars and virtual worlds.

View more OpenOffice presentations from vsider.

Tracy Harwood

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:43:00 +0000

I've been hassling IT-journalists about getting involved with Ada Lovelace Day and now I'm sitting here on the day - completely rushed on my own contribution! Just goes to show - hassling people is a tricky thing to pull off respectfully
---
So, in the spirit of Ada Lovelace Day, I would like to focus on Tracy Harwood.

We were so lucky this fall to have her visit Landmark in our humble city of Bergen, Norway for a lecture on Machinima. It was a pleasure to have her here and she inspired me (and dare I say, my mom) to keep living my life as colourful as possible.

Tracy Harwood is today a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University. She's a professional marketer and has a PhD in negotion of buyer-seller relationships.

E-learning
In 2000 Tracy was made a lecturer of a large module, 1800 students and a teaching team of over 24 staff, delivered in 10 locations including India. Tracy, herself, says:

"A key issue I faced was ensuring students had a standard and good quality experience, and that my teaching team was adequately supported in their delivery of the module. This was not easy given the complexities of delivery and assessment, and attitude to e-learning generally at that time was pretty poor - fear of the unknown. On the ground, delivery worked out to be about 15 lecture groups and 30+ tutorial groups; staff were a mix of experienced and new teachers. Anyway, using elearning was a way to ensure all students and staff had access to a common set of resources and that I could monitor groups of students and their attendance, participation and performance in assessments with a view to improving delivery and student pass rates. After introducing it, I decided to use computer-aided assessment too. The module became an exemplar for elearning across the institution and the work I did was picked up for its student engagement and also staff development. I was fortunate to work with some fantastic colleagues who were at the forefront of elearning, including book publishers, and together we were able to implement a robust and high quality elearning experience. Colleagues and I undertook various dissemination activities which helped to spread the word about the possibilities of elearning which eventually led to the development of a university-wide policy on elearning support for students. Of course, things have changed now because there are so many different approaches to elearning, using things like virtual worlds, CAA, etc but at the time getting through to technophobic staff was probably the biggest barrier we faced -students seemed to take to it from the very start. I think now people realise that using technology is fundamental to the delivery of higher education, which seems an incredibly dated thing to say but its only 10 years ago that I can recall having to change the light bulb on the projector!"

Tracy Harwood was awarded a £50,000 National Teaching Fellowship in 2004 by the Higher Eductaion Academy for her work on e-learning and has now gone on to working with creative technologies. I think it's a natural transition! Tracy's curiosity and willingness to look to new technologies and her bravery for being technologically innovate awards her a mention on Ada Lovelace Day!

And of course - the fact that she organised the first ever European Machinima Festival makes her a heroine in my book!

---

I'll be updating this as soon as I learn more. Unfortunately this became rather rushed - but the content will be worthy soon!

My women's day thank you

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 11:14:00 +0000

It's International Women's Day again and time to do my annual thank you! Ada Lovelace Day is taking care of my greatfulness for women and technology - so this year I'm going to keep it on a very personal level.

In November 2006, Maren Agdestein organised a lunch where she gathered three women she had met that were writing or considering to write about computer games for their master's thesis. Seen here on the right from the left: Marianne, Me, Maren and Hedvig. At that time we called ourselves The cHixOrs, not really thinking that we'd do anything more than just meet up every now and then for a chat about games and our academic interests. But I think all of us really enjoyed geekspeaking with other women. There was just something really uplifting, fun and liberating about it.

So let me introduce you to (pictures stolen from Facebook, by the way):

Maren Agdestein - who is just such a delightful writer. She's written about games for years as a freelance journalist. She's a game critic and game journalist. Her anecdotes always tickle me so. Her mind is so colourful, imaginitive, playful and she articulates it so well. She's such an inspiration to read and listen to. Maren also has this amazing capacity to take things in her stride, which I'm completely in awe of. She's nearing the end of her Master's thesis which is an analysis of female gamers, and I can't wait to read it!

Marianne Westerlund - is also a fabulous writer. She's got so much enthusiasm and energy and such a colourful outlook on everything - it's absolutely intoxicating. She too has a sharp mind - analytical and incredibly creative. A true gamer spirit. She's also an excellent investigater. The information she manages to retrieve quickly is just dazzling. Marianne stepped into the horrific challenge of writing her thesis about Narrative and Games. You just have to admire her for diving into the sharky waters of that debate and handled it very nicely. She's finished and is now working as a copywriter/journalist for the University of Bergen's information department. She's experimenting a lot with new media techniques and she does it without fear. The woman has the courage of a lion and I admire her strength to face challenges with vigor and optimism. She's just pure delight.

Hedvig Myklebust - is also a pure delight. Filled up with enthusiasm and positive energy that just sets the room on fire. Hedvig is the ultimate girl geek, really. She's worked at Outland for years and has worked up a reputation as one of the most knowledgeable girls on - well anything geeky, really (RPG, comics, board games, anime and of course, computer games). Hedvig's quite the little information adventurer. She's smart, daring and colourful. Hedvig is writing about roleplayers, and I'm suddenly quite unsure - but I think she's specifically writing about role-players in World of Warcraft. Which is going to be a MUST READ for a lot of people, I imagine. Looking forward to seeing her brilliance on paper!

The cHixOrs evolve
Since that November day a lot has happened. Children have been born, thesis' have been handed in and some of us have moved and back again. We met rather sporadically between 2006 and 2008 but we're now trying to meed every couple of weeks.

Since fall of 2008 we've become more - what's the word? - serious?

We've visited a game design company together, Turbo Tape Games. As you can imagine, we've discussed a lot about narrative, play and games - so it was really interesting speaking with the boys at Turbo Tape about creating storyboards a.s.o. (although I'm still not sure I understood everything that was told). We're considering visiting MediaCircus later on because we've played Veum's Fall together. Veum's Fall is an ARG which we were very sceptical about. Firstly, I can't stand the Varg Veum's books, secondly, we'd heard a lot of bad stuff about it and thirdly, I guess we were all rather sceptical to ARGs in general. But we loved it! We had a few disappointments along the way, but we saw lots of places in the city we live in that we didn't know about before, was impressed by the multimedia talent behind it and the storyline made us giggle.

We're currently playing Dungeons and Dragons, with Hedvig as the fabulous Game Master. I wasn't expecting it - but I love it!! I honestly had no idea D&D was so...well...playful. We're also actively involved in attending differen games events, like the Game Seminar on the 16th.

Our "name" has been discussed a little. We've got a thread on Facebook that just makes me laugh each time I open it. In the attempt to give ourselves a cool acronym like AC/GC it's called "The Almighty Coalition of the Genderbending Chixxors Who Also Call Themselves the Game Research Group". From that, I guess you can imagine what fun we have.

I'm sure we'll evolve even more. A large part of my work is about communicating very complicated information and lately I've been playing around with the idea that this information would be at it's best if it was giftwrapped as a game. I've been talking to the girls about this and quite honestly - I feel there's potential for some good creative gaming scripts coming out of us in the future. Time will tell...

So - to the point!

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank my fellow chixxors for their inspiration, wisdom, humour, enthusiasm, creativity and pure joy of geekyness. You're all such an amazing force that I'm so thankful to be a part of! Although I'm just 'studying' games as a...well...I guess a kind of hobby at the moment...I still get so much enjoyment from our discussions.

All of these women represent everything I feel that the modern woman is today. Smart, playful, feminine, independent yet also domestic, nurturing and generally very happy about who they are, what their interests are and hungry to experience more.

ANYWAY!!
I feel so blessed to have such a great group of strong women to play with! Thanks!

Games seminar

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 17:20:00 +0000

Or symposium (do I need a phd-degree to understand the differences between them?).

Floating Points 6. Games of Culture | Art of Games

Is a symposium, film screening and workshop in Boston, Massachusetts on the 20th and 21st of March.

They're livestreaming the event and I hope that will include the workshop because Friedrich Kirschner is having a workshop entitle "Introduction to Machinima" - which I would love to witness.

Impressive list of speakers - so I'll definitely be tuning in.

Concept:

Video games extend beyond the gaming console into nearly every aspect of contemporary life. They are fun. They drive innovation, consumer engagement and employee productivity. Is our culture turning everything into a game?

...AND IN BERGEN

There's also a computer games seminar here in Bergen on the 16th of March. I haven't found any online information yet and I forgot to grab a flyer from another event on Thursday. What I do know is that some of my favorite people will be there. Fredrik Sundt Breien (always such an inspiration) - Rune Klevjer (the professor guilty of introducing me to game theory and academia) and Jill Walker Rettberg. Someone else which it's embarrassing I don't remember right now. Apparently there's talk of some computer game education program here in Bergen which has made me and the chixxors very wide-eyed and curious! And I'm wondering... do I need to have a PhD to teach a class on machinima? And can I keep my glorious new job and teach about machinima on the side?

I should write some more. I've been a very bad writer for about a year - time to get back into it!

Also - it's so bizarre. I've been a fan of Jill Walker Rettberg for years, but I haven't ever been to any of her lectures or presentations. I don't know - timing has always been off somehow. So definitely looking forward to experiencing that, as well.

Machinima - fan art?

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:45:00 +0000

I've often thought about machinima as fan art - but I've never felt completely comfortable with it. I've always felt like machinima in itself - was an artform in it's own right. But then there are such lucious films like this. Which clearly is fan based, but a voyeuristic delight none the less!

Speaking of fan art - I've started a little theory about why we're not talking enough about this in Norway. We have no word for "fan" - seriously - if you can think of something do tell me - but I don't think we have a word for 'fan'. We have supporter - which is generally considered to be football fans. But it's not even that - a football fan is a supporter, although I'm not sure that a WoW machinimator is a supporter of Blizzard. It's baffled me for a while now and there's definitely a cultural significance in being wordless on the subject. It's interesting - and just a thought to share.

Breed with me!

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 13:01:00 +0000

I'm really loving Channel 4's Routes Game! Perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon if you ask me!

My thesis

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 09:02:00 +0000

So I finally registrered my masters thesis in the University of Bergen's archives. I've spent the last two years meaning to dig it up and edit and tripple check references, but the will-power just was not there.

As for this blog? It's not dead just yet - I've got several posts just waiting for a read-through to be posted - so I'm not ready to cut it off just yet. But no new posts since november? That's tragic!

My enthusiasm is very focused on my glorious new job at the moment - but I'm noticing that there's a lot of what I'm doing which can be combined with what this blog is about, I'm just not on certain enough ground to write about it yet. I will, though! ;)

Thanksgiving according to Rooster Teeth

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:25:00 +0000

Red vs. Blue is back for Thanksgiving!

Roo Reynolds - a must!

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:21:00 +0000

I've just watched Roo Reynold's closing keynote at the ReLIVE08 (Researching Learning in Virtual Environments) conference and I'm just so smitten!

Firstly - you just have to be impressed that he came with nothing and worked through the entire conference by taking notes so he could sum up the whole conference as a closing keynote. That's ballsy! What a gift for a conference!

Roo Reynolds is in charge of social media at the BBC (I think that's a good way to sum it up), but he himself says: "I look after social media for BBC Vision, which is the TV bit (e.g. there are people with similar roles to mine in news, radio and the central 'future media & technology' teams, and I work closely with them)". If you're working with social media in any shape or form you have to follow Roo Reynold's blog. He's smart, reflective and a whole lot of fun!

I definitely recomend watching this closing keynote - the conference sounds interesting and he's got so many reflective comments. And the dude has got some major presentation skills! Very impressive, indeed.

I, of course, enjoyed the way he focused on Castronova's lecture which mention the importance of play. He has a bit about alt txt - alternate - should we focus on the alternate - why not equivalence - lovely!!!

I have to dash to Sunday night dinner - so I'm sorry for the hastiness and nonreflective writing. But go to Roo Reynolds blog and you'll find what you're looking for.

Picture taken from Roo Reynold's flickr photostream.

Life is beautiful

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 11:56:00 +0000

I'm just running through my feeds before I start cracking on some more "serious" blogsposts and I've caught myself muttering "How adorable - beautiful - incredible!" on several of the articles I'm reading - so thought I'd just share some of them here. I don't know - perhaps its the beautiful weather that's put me in the lovey dovey mood - either way - I'm having an incredibly lucious Sunday!

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For those without hans, there's Air Guitar Hero
DARPA project repurposes Guitar Hero to train amputees to use artificial arms
- by Sally Adee

Rehabilitation specialists have taken to Nintendo’s Wii game console as a way to help motivate patients during physical therapy and rehabilitation. The latest addition to the Wii-hab phenomenon is perhaps its coolest—Air Guitar Hero. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have made the popular Guitar Hero game into a tool for amputees who are being fitted with the next generation of artificial arms. With a few electrodes and some very powerful algorithms, amputees can hit all the notes of Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” using only the electrical signals from their residual muscles.

- what beautiful beautiful news!
via Raph Koster
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Which reminds me of the great Bike Hero film! Guitar Hero to the streets!

via Wonderland.

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Victory or death! Yes we can!
- waltermonkey

Waltermonkey analyses newly appointed Obama FCC transition team leader, Kevin Werbach's World of Warcraft profile and what it means in the 'real world' and what we can expect from him as a FCC leader. I'm soooo charmed by this!

Now: What does this tell us about him, as a person, as a gamer, as a government official? I will attempt to translate all the dorkese.

1. - CULTURAL RELATIVISM

Every player in WoW belongs to one of two warring factions, Alliance or Horde. Werbach is Horde. Children often choose to be Alliance because they perceive them as "the good guys", but students of history (both ours and Azeroth's) recognize that Alliance culture is based on medieval European culture and Horde culture is based on the indigenous cultures that were supplanted by the West.

Werbach is a Tauren (a minotaur), which basically makes him a Native Kalimdorian. The Tauren revere nature, living in wigwams near giant totem poles. As a Shaman (see below), he could also have chosen a troll (blue-skinned Jamaican-like monster) or an orc (green-skinned Klingon-like monster), so there must be something about the cow-man that appeals to his liberal guilt.

via Boing Boing.

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Then there's this adorable xkcd that just made my heart melt!!!

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Suddenly it may be cool to be an American again
- American McGee

American McGee writes a heartwarming blogpost about how people's reaction towards his name, American, has changed through his life and how the Bush year's made it especially difficult for him.

I had more than a few “I spit on your name” events, some people who simply asked, “Why would your mother do that to you?”, and plenty of discomfort and uncertainty about what to say. What do you say to a guy whose name is born from that place where everything is going so wrong? One girl commented, “That’s stupid.”

And I had to agree. I was one of those who had said, “If Bush is elected again I’ll leave the country” - and I did it. Ironically, it didn’t save me from the fact that things were going so wrong back home, it made it even more obvious. America’s image and the concept of Americans in general suffered severe damage in the minds of people in “the rest of the world” (which, btw happens to be most of the world).

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New Study Shows Time Spent Online Important

- MacArthur foundation

OoooOOOooo - I feel like this study has been talked about for ages! So incredibly great to see the results. The fabulous Mizuko Ito has led the study.

Over three years, they interviewed over 800 young people and their parents, both one-on-one and in focus groups; spent over 5000 hours observing teens on sites such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and other networked communities; and conducted diary studies to document how, and to what end, young people engage with digital media.

That's heavy!

Their findings:

There is a generation gap in how youth and adults view the value of online activity
Youth are navigating complex social and technical worlds by participating online
Young people are motivated to learn from their peers online
Most youth are not taking full advantage of the learning opportunities of the Internet

None of this is particularly suprising - but it's just sooooooooo good that they have hard data which now proves what several people have been pointing out for years! This is an important study!

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That's it for now - I'm still only halfway through my feeds - so I may update later.

3D thoughts on Machinima

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:20:00 +0000

For this years Bergen Machinima Night we were honoured by a visit from Dr. Tracy Harwood who had a fascinating presentation about what machinima is, where it is going and why.

Morten Kvamme (curator at Landmark) and I had dinner with Tracy before the event and I think we were both charmed , inspired and bedazzled. Midway through the dinner Morten observed that the three of us had different angles of interest with Machinima, hence our collective intelligence makes up a 3D perspective.

I'm focused on gameplay functioning as narrative, Tracy on the tribe culture and Morten's interested in Game Art.

Needless to say, I was elevated to some cloud up up up - way beyond consciousness.

Dr. Tracy Harwood's talk
I'm so gutted that I didn't take notes during the talk, because I'm not certain I can do it justice now. But I think I'll ask Tracy for her PP slides and see if I can sum it up from there. I had the honour of spending time with Dr. Harwood the day after and I'm having a hard time differentiating between the presentation and what we talked about after. My thoughts are filled with fun stuff to write about.

I really need to start learning from past mistakes and take pictures and take more notes! Thank you to all who came! We were just over 30 people in the audience - which we're pleased with because I didn't have a lot of time on my hands to do much advertising this year. There were some keen expressions in the audience, which was lovely to see. And of course a lot of friends who I love and adore. So thanks for coming!

International Machinima Festival in Bergen?
Having Tracy Harwood here was both an honour and such an inspirational force. She's pretty much convinced me that I should go straight ahead and start planning an International Machinima Festival here in Bergen. So I guess that will be my life for a while, now - and also my next blogpost.

But for now Thank You Tracy Harwood for coming and giving us insight into the machinima world and of course inspiration to continue to build something bigger. And Bergen Kunsthall/Landmark who've been so generous, it's just so cool that they're interested in this!

I do enjoy a good YouTube drama

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 10:41:00 +0000

I can't help myself, I just can't. There's a new YouTube-series called "Hooking Up". It seems to be a gathering of the who's who of YouTube-stars, at least Lonelygirl and What the Buck guy - I'm not sure if the others are well known from something else. I love the way Facebook is such an important feature og the script. I can't help wonder if they're maybe sponsored by Facebook. But I enjoyed it anyway - I'm such a sucker for simple high-school drama.

YouTube game

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:08:00 +0000

Seriously! I thought it was fun! A bit messy because it's hard to come back to start - but definitely worth your while.

Found at Shattered Keyboard.

New Machinima Night at Landmark

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:35:00 +0000

Yup! We'll be going at it again. I was so pleased with the turn-out last year and I hope it will be just as succesful this year!

On the 13th of November, Tracy Harwood, the manager of the European Machinima Festival 2007 will be visiting us here in Bergen to talk about machinima. There's still some organising left. But she definitely is coming and we're really pleased about that! It will be great to have an expert to listen to!

There will of course be viewings of films. If anyone has anything new they want to show - please let me know!

Anyways...November 13th! We look forward to seeing you there!

I've been so back and forth about how to organise this event that I've completely lost track! Time to bunker down, I think. I was fiddling with the idea of creating a work shop type event - but I think I've let that idea go into the "when I have the energy to be overly ambitious" file.

I leave you now with some documentary footage of the machinamite! Enjoy!

Poster Game

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:07:00 +0000

Molleindustria has come out with a new game called The Free Culture Game. It's interesting. I couldn't win it, but I'm sure that's the whole point behind it.

The Free Culture Game is a game about the struggle between free culture and copyright. Create and defend the common knowledge from the vectorial class. Liberate the passive consumers from the domain of the market.

Ian Bogost notes Paolo Pedercini as describing this as a 'poster game' for Exgae. It's a great new genre or concept. Lots of the flash games we see can be described as poster games. I'm quite amused by the concept.

Replay Art

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:21:00 +0000

I've been looking for this film for AGES - but I thought it was made in Drive not Trackmania Sunrise - color me stupid, huh?! Anyhoo - it's just stunning to look at!

From what I gather, they record several gaming sessions and then play them all at the same time in replay. And there seems to be quite a lot of them, just check this one out:

Still beautiful.

I actually caught both these videos from a conversation between Jerry and Mark (WelloHorld) on Twitter.

A seven minute tour of virtual worlds

noreply@blogger.com (Linn Søvig) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:25:00 +0000

Personalize Media has a video out with a summary of the virtual worlds out there. Far from all are included! Most of these are non-game social worlds and there's loads that I haven't even heard of! I was suprised to see A Tale in the Desert there, though. For one, I thought they definitely qualified as a game and second because I thought their numbers were so low that they wouldn't survive. A Tale in the Desert is a great idea - and I'm so incredibly happy that they're still alive! That really is good news.

Stolen from Raph Koster's blog.