Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Jiituomas' LiveJournal:

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Monday, July 6th, 2009
3:40 pm	Pervasive Games: Theory and Design - A Short Review. Having received a review copy of the book by Markus, Jaakko and Annika, on the condition that I post a review of it (including a note of my having been a pre-reader of it, as I'm included in the list of thanks) on at least Amazon, I now present the review here, too. The word limit prevented me from going into details, but here is a copy of the text anyway. While I am normally extra critical of my friends' works, as a part of our sparring culture (and, some would say, my mean nature), I cannot but praise this book. It's bloody fantastic, and incredibly useful also for larp researchers and designers who are not into pervasive games themselves. So much you can learn from it. Anyway, here's the Amazon review: I had the pleasure of pre-reading this book in draft before it came out. Seeing its final version, I was nevertheless amazed. The primary authors, along with the 15 other contributors, have created by far the best published work on pervasive games so far. It draws the material from around the world, ranging from global ARGs to reality TV and small Nordic larps, as well as studies conducted on those and more. Furthermore, it creates a seamless merger of it all, being able to confidently discuss pervasive games as a phenomenon, not a bunch of events organized by isolated cliques. It is holistic, yet attentive to minute detail. The topics range from history to the ethics of involving unaware people in play. Nearly half of the book is nevertheless dedicated to design concerns, making it an invaluable tool to anyone developing or researching pervasive games (or ARGs, or larps, for that matter). As this is done in the context of examples - some of them successes, others clear failures - it is easy to pick useful ideas from those presented. I would have liked a few more case examples on some topics, such as the problem of people entering and leaving such games mid-way, but I presume this was simply not feasible due to a page limit. And I can but applaud the authors’ decision not to do everything by themselves, meaning that some case examples and sections on things like marketing and art-games are written by experts in those particular subjects. This book is something one may agree or disagree with, but never ignore, if one works in the field of pervasive games in any fashion. Both the designer and the game studies professional in me find it immensely valuable. It is also a damn enjoyable read." Now next in line for reading is Burger's new book, Elämäpeli: pelintekijän maailmat (roughly "Life-game: the Worlds of a Game Designer"), which I eagerly await. The descriptions I've seen hint at it containing all that for the lack of which I bashed his earlier book on game design, i.e. the creative-process parts. It's a bit expensive, but I hope to buy it anyway at Finncon. Current Music: Winterkälte - Drum 'n' Noise (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 29th, 2009
5:56 pm	Discourses on research. I have very recently seen several really promising posts that talk about rpg theory and research. That makes me happy, as I do love both the recognition of work that has been done (mine or others') and open critique of underlying presumptions (something you can rarely question amongst designer-theorists, especially the Forge and post-Forge communities). The first one is a post by Guy, on the subject of designers and theory. The other one is a divergent bunch of thoughts on the classical question of flow experiences in role-playing, on Story Games. I want more of those sorts of approaches. Open on both perspective and bias, yet highly inclusive. Current Music: N.Strahl.N - Koordinatenpunkte (Comment on this)
Monday, June 15th, 2009
4:51 pm	Book Review - Balzer: Live Action Role Playing I recently got a tip from Karsten about the existence of a German master's thesis on larp, in sociology, written in German. When I contacted the author, I found out that it had been published as an academic book. So I bought myself a copy, though I must admit paying 25 euros for a 116 page paperback felt a bit annoying (paying for the pdf version, given the price, would have been worse). The full title of the book is Live Action Role Playing: Die Entwicklung realer Kompetenzen in virtuellen Welten, i.e. "the development of real competencies in virtual worlds". The author's name is Myriel Balzer. As the text has been published as a book, I will treat it as one in the review (which I have been asked by several people, the author included, to provide.) My main reaction is highly similar to reading a certain thesis last year: the base material looks fine (damn fine, actually), but where the fuck are the necessary references? There's stuff missing, stuff that could have been found with a simple look at larp's English wikipedia entry or a simple google scholar search (more on what's missing below). The impression given was very, very strongly that of the stereotypical German larper ignoring almost everything from abroad (read: not written in German) as insignificant or non-existing. So had I not been versed enough in the main fields of the book, and looked at it from just a larp studies perspective, I might have dumped it as worthless. And that would have been a pity, as what we have here is a work that has, yes, re-invented quite a lot of wheels, but I haven't seen someone get this far on their own since the initial jumps of people like Markus Montola in the early days of the Nordic larp scene. Balzer approaches her subject using two major points of references, the sociological theory of social competence (social learning) and the communicative rationality theory of Jürgen Habermas (making the text of particular interest to people like Ari-Pekka and Jonne). Its larp references are very limited, and the game theory framework is drawn mostly from a few older German master's theses and the likes of adapted Jacob Moreno and organizational theory. There's very little actual data on German larp - which is, very stereotypically of German larpers again, treated as the template on the totality of larp as a phenomenon - but the general facts do look very credible to a trained eye. A couple of errors in the historical section, but that happens - larp history is a hard beast to track, as the Czechs and the pervasive game scholars have shown us this year... The author has, apparently mostly on her own, woven a network of describing the activity from a communication perspective, as a social activity taking place in a temporary reality which is communally re-signified. It's cleverly done, really, but the mix would have been a lot stronger if she had referenced other texts, or used them as a comparison. Balzer uses the concept of "surplus reality", drawn from sociology, to describe the imposed space. That's just fine, and a nifty addition. However, ignoring the likes of Huizinga, Aarseth, Winnicott and/or Hakim Bey, all of whom are quoted extensively in game research (or "liminality", for that matter), as comparisons feels a bit superficial. There isn't much frame theory, but since she does speak of frames, the theses of both Brenne (2005) and Stenros (2008), as well as Fine 1983, should have been at least mentioned. Furthermore on references: ( Read more... ) And I was surprised that given the extent of her pondering on the definition of "Spiel" (i.e. game/play), there's neither the Bible (i. e. Salen & Zimmerman), nor any of the classics it refers to, mentioned. So much is just conjecture. That statement, in essence, is to a great extent what I think of the book: The author has arrived via conjecture to some very credible conclusions. Had it the necessary grounding (data and foreign references) and the same conclusions, it would be one of the defining works of future larp research - at least for people who can read German. The combinations are smart, and it all shows a lot of insight into the underlying processes of role-playing. (Plus the use of charts to illustrate key points is exemplary.) Under the current situation, however, it's only a nice little addition to what is known of larp, and especially a useful reference for general research, since it's an academic book on German larp, a subject not yet covered that well. I know that I for one will have to quote it numerous times in the future. I'd normally say that I hope the author will read the missing stuff, but I already know that she aims to study the stuff further and shows a strong interest in real expertise in the field, including mastering the works of others. So I think that just like Jori did with his Ropecon lecture, she'll very much impress me with her follow-up after the initial knee-jerk annoyance on ignored predecessors. I do hope, however, that the follow-up will be in English, as if Balzer continues to be this insightful, she'll deserve a lot more readers than the language barrier would permit. Current Music: KMFDM - Blitz (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
12:36 pm	Prayers examined. Jaakko wrote a highly positive review of Prayers in the latest issue of Roolipelaaja magazine. The only real negative part in it was a note on how the text looks unimpressive, as it is just a plain text document. This is intentional, however, as I want to offer the text in a format that is easy to edit and set for printing. A trade-off, really. Furthermore, Eirik sent me a play report from the latest Norwegian run of Prayers yesterday. As it happened, only three of the 12 interested Kp organizers actually showed up. Yet they played it anyway! Intriguingly, the game's central concept seemed to survive even such a huge lack of players. The meanness stayed the same, and there wasn't much mobility. The plot bits became matters of small talk, as they could not be directed towards the right people, and remained more abstract because of it. I would never have ran the game with such a small number of participants, but I am enamored with the fact that someone did, and sent me a report of it. It appears that with the right setting and mood, a mini-game can survive even an almost complete lack of plot. I must examine this further. Current Music: Sielun Veljet - Myytävänä! (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 24th, 2009
5:47 pm	Orchard, Session Seventeen. I have been terribly delayed on everything that isn't work, family or article-related for the last couple of week. But here's the report for our Stalker campaign, session eighteen.( Read more... ) Current Music: Alder - Alder (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 10th, 2009
10:07 pm	Communing, the Third Time One of the two scheduled runs of Nick's (kshandr) Communing in Darkness at Conklaavi took place. All seven characters in play, and many really good players a bit passive on some counts, and I'd placed the ouija board in a not exactly optimal place (tables drifted apart under it...), but it went well enough. Very, very much like the Ropecon 2008 run. It's a lovely scenario, and had some great moments. Sent Nick a report, a couple of pictures, and the players' suggestions for further improving it. I intend to keep running other people's good mini-larps in the coming years here in Finland. Others have done the same for my work, so it' only proper for me to promote scenarios I find good. My plan is to run Mike Young's awarded The Road Not Taken at Ropecon 2009, and at least one highly recommended Italian mini-larp later during the Fall. Several other pieces have also caught my interest, but we'll have to see how much time I actually have, before I commit to anything. Both Salem and Against the Night would be quite interesting to do, if I have a chance to do them well enough. Current Music: Zrostop - live @ Galleria Titanik (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
8:43 pm	Prayers now Finally Online Thanks to Boris, Prayers on a Porcelain Altar is now freely available online, at the German larp site Pommesgabel.com. A link to it here. EDIT: Also, Martina's and Karsten's "As Finnish as a German larp can get" art larp "Irgendwie Kunst" is also available there now Pommesgabel! Current Music: Bird from the Abyss - I (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
10:10 pm	Orchard: Session sixteen. Before the actual play report, I must say that I have enormously enjoyed Ville's blog posts of new material on the Japanese Zone for Stalker in the last few weeks. And those of you who do not understand Finnish are in luck - the new material is in English, and looks like a brilliant hybrid of Lost and classic Yakuza movie stuff, without losing any of the Stalker / Roadside Picnic feel. *applause* Anyway,( Read more... ) Current Music: Grunt / Cloama - Valkoinen Kuolema - Belyi Smertz (Comment on this)
Friday, April 24th, 2009
3:46 pm	Subjective Book Review: Larp, the Universe and Everything. It is time to say a few words about this year's Knutepunkt book, which is already online. It was supposed to be intentionally light, good-looking, and relatively non-academic. In most parts, it succeeds in all of these goals. Whether that is a good thing, I will discuss below.( Read more... ) Holter, Matthijs, Fatland, Eirik & Tomte, Even (eds.): Larp, the Universe, and Everything. The book for Knutepunkt 2009. Current Music: Keith Howden & Matt Howden - The Matter of Britain (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
5:42 pm	Thesis review: Ikonen, 2008. I know, I promised not to do these, because I am supposedly too brutal (and probably really am). However, I got a kind request from the author to do a review, and therefore I will. So, Kaisa-Liisa Ikonen wrote last fall, with a good grade, her master's thesis on roughly "larp as a tool for teaching the verbal arts" (The last concept, "sanataide" does not translate well. It's sort of "children's creative writing" in English, according to the author.) The work also dips into drama education. Ikonen, along with a creative writing teacher, designed and run a larp together with 6th grade school children. The thesis contains both her research (83 pages) and the game material (81 pages). At first glance from a larp-study perspective, the work looks shallow. It isn't. There's loads of clever stuff in it. Plus her intents, and the inherent problems, are explicated well. The general presentation is good. The best part, by far, is the way in which Ikonen studies the game's design process as a learning tool. Too many people in edu-games concentrate just on the game run itself. I also liked the fact that the world-creation process has been well documented. Some comparison with Svanevik's (2005) work with collective design would have been nice, though. The reference list on edu-larp is good enough for a master's thesis: The are earlier Finnish theses, stuff from BRAP, classics like Huizinga, and some stuff on Østerskov. She also effectively cites my immersion theory (2003) instead of a GNS-like split, though without a reference. I could point out some more applicable material, but those are in Danish (the Sanvik & Waade book) or hard to find (like Shick's recent paper), so no real problem there. The same with the limited look on narrativism and narratives, some Kim or Lehrskov might have done good, but are by no means big omissions. The one real weakness, which might affect applicability to other play cultures, is that the author seems to forget that gamist-style players exist. They're not prominent here, but they are a very real phenomenon. So some of the findings in the game material and event description should be taken with a grain of salt. Some others, like the brief visit to player-character dissonance on p. 61, are worthy contributions to the whole larp research field. Plus, I cannot really argue with a game design style that allows children to have "stubbornness" as a game attribute. :) Elegant design, really: the players defined 10 attributes - such as that one, strength, intelligence and trustworthiness, with a number. These were later turned into verbal material, with key phrases bolded. Looked very efficient. All in all, a very positive surprise. I hope the author makes summaries of her findings at some point, in English, and publishes them in a reviewed form. I cannot do so, except to say that "yes, it appears indeed to work fine as a teaching tool, but has limitations." Surprise, surprise. Current Music: Sunset Wings - Covering for Solace (4 Comments |Comment on this)
3:40 pm	Orchard: Session fifteen. I hope I can remember everything. I've been too busy with first preparing for Knutepunkt and then later with either praising or offending people with comments about things that took place there. Anyway,( Read more... ) Current Music: Leonard Cohen - Live in London (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
7:16 pm	Knutepunkt 2009: A Travel Report. So I went to Knutepunkt in Norway, after all. The book looks real nice, and some of the articles in it too. But more on that in a few days. Now, the travel report: Soon after I arrived on Wednesday, I met a gorgeous woman in the backroom of a porn shop. I gave her two pills, and she gave me the keys to her apartment...( Read more... ) very relevantly asking "Which of you guys lost their nose-fuck virginity last night?"( Read more... )Great trip, I attended more program than I expected, and enjoyed almost all of it. Loads of friends both old and new, loads of inspiration. Several ideas which will blossom into games or game ideas in the coming months. Current Music: Skare - Solstice City (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
12:47 pm	KP Book Online. In bits, day by day, the Knutepunkt 2009 book seems to be coming online. Some articles are still missing. It looks pretty. You can find the main page with links to the articles here. Current Music: Verde - Kärmes (Comment on this)
Monday, March 30th, 2009
12:31 pm	New Scenario Available Tobias kindly uploaded Ditch'd (Enjoy the Silence) to the Jeepform site this weekend. So it's now freely available for public consumption, here. Translations, too, are of course very welcome (nudge-nudge-wink-wink). A more thorough version, with added running instructions, will possibly be made available after a few more runs have been done. Current Music: Anabasis & Gargrim the Liar - Two Worlds (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
12:20 pm	KP book, cont. I received my own KP book paper this morning, in two forms. One with everything recommended by the language proofer - the same one who'd mangled the paper I mentioned last week - and one where the editor in charge of it (Eirik, a fellow victim of the 2005 fiasco) had already removed almost all of the bad recommendations. In all honesty, the proofer did catch several small errors that I'd missed myself, and some of the recommendations were good enough to accept. A few, however, were horrific - changes in the entire meaning of key sentences, and altered language in direct quotes. Thankfully, it seems that after the brief information break, things are looking up again. Now, if this cursed month-long flu would just vanish, I'd be really happy... Current Music: Kospel Zeithorn - Stop making sense, m#therf#cker! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
10:32 pm	KP book scepticism. As my more frequent readers know, I have a bad habit of complaining. I am extremely loyal to people I trust, but if I encounter a point where I feel that my trust has been misused, I turn extremely bitter. This is one of those. I have been watching the development of the KP 2009 book. The idea is very good - a light approach to the field, with less academia. Some people involved with the project, however, have been less than professional with their work, it seems. For example, a friend's "proofread" article, which had traveled through two editors after the so-called proofreading, contained 43 new double-spaces, as well as numerous new grammar errors. It's almost as if a certain P.B. is back... And I have not received a view-copy of mine yet. It's as if the book just is not a priority. In any way. I know it's secondary priority for many, a novelty item that may not see much use. But this time the image given to some authors is even worse, it's "total disrespect". I hope the editors will prove me wrong (and withhold payment to at least one _totally incompetent_ asshole). On the upside, several other facets of KP seem to be shaping up extremely well. And people in charge of those (especially T.K.E.) have done a marvelous job so far. I expect to enjoy the event a lot. Current Music: Dimmu Borgir - Enthrone Darkness Triumphant (8 Comments |Comment on this)
10:40 am	Role-playing research papers. A couple of days ago, I was pointed to two recent articles on role-playing research, both of which appeared in Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 2 (2009). The first one is Michael Robert Underwood's The friends that game together: A folkloric expansion of textual poaching to genre farming for socialization in tabletop role-playing games. It's a look at certain social aspects of tabletop rpg, via Exalted. There's also some liminality stuff included, but nothing very deep. It's a small, OK contribution to the field, and does have some theory critique. The second one is An examination of living through enjoyment: Live-action role-play by Amanda Odom, a shallow look at Cthulhu larp, with next to no grounding in references. An academic-style play report more than research, I'd say. The interesting thing is that in addition to my favorite piece of larp-research-loathing, Falk & Davenport, she quotes Gordon's article from Lifelike - but no other works besides three games. Her approach is also quite limited (oriented on narrativism) and I wonder how on earth the paper passed peer review with such a low backing of references to her arguments. Much wheel-reinvention there. But hey, it's still an academic, reviewed paper on larp - something one can agree with, or refute, in future works without any qualms. Current Music: Ester Poland - Vehnäsammio (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
2:47 pm	Orchard: Session fourteen. Dear players who were away: Due to session content, I ask you to read the hidden parts of this post only after we've played the next one. It's more fun if you do not know all this. ( Read more... ) The others are already sleeping when they arrive at the cottage, yet they drink some of Cady's vodka anyway, and eventually pass out. In the morning they wake up as the others are leaving - Cady taking a taxi to get her car, and Runner and Nyx going shopping.( Read more... ) On the desk is a note saying "We're picking up Runner, who fucked things up even worse than you two did." And having gotten wise, Cady had hidden all the booze.( Read more... ) Later that night, the others return, and find them drunk, semi-naked and asleep in each others' arms, in the main bed. Soundtrack for the session: Sieben - As They Should Sound; Godspeed You Black Emperor - lift yr. skinny fists like antennas to heaven! Current Music: Sieben - As They Should Sound (Comment on this)
Monday, March 16th, 2009
2:12 pm	Online role-play of the Master/slave kind. A very nice paper which I had the pleasure of pre-reading and commenting last year, on Gorean role-play in Second Life, is now online. It was written by Tjarda Sixma, and published in Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 1(3). Here is a link. It's of particular interest to people who are interested in seeing a rather different sort of online BDSM-type dynamic. Current Music: ______ - . (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 13th, 2009
11:54 am	Revisiting the IJRP threads + Surveys I've found a morbid enjoyment of the way IJRP is discredited in various places. My favorite is still the RPG Site thread I linked a few weeks ago, which recently became active again. Some of the best comments: "It is not that unpublished, non-academic editors do no belong on this new journal's board. It is the fact that their understanding of the topic is not coupled with editors who can claim to be peers in their peer reviews and article authors of previously published and reviewed material. Having published a paper here and there, and knowing that people like, say, Richard Bartle, Kurt Lancaster and Markus Montola may have published a thing or two of some relevance, I find this just lovely. And from annother guy: "Also, the journal has already been quoted as saying that if you scorn their ideas, it's just because you're "anti-intellectual." So as with the Forgers, it all boils down to, "me smart, you poopyhead." I must confess that such an attitude does not exactly make the pot look like it's boiling over with promise of great insights." I quite clearly remember saying in my paper that anti-intellectualist style players, who favor the "simple fun" aspects of role-playing, tend to be hostile towards theory. Not that "all those who oppose theory are anti-intellectualists". But I guess it's easy for some to misread such things, especially if one is hostile to the whole thing in the first place. Oh, and we're all just a biased niche group within the hobby, with absolutely no merits to discuss role-playing on an academic basis. As this is a claim by guys who have no idea who Gary Alan Fine is, it must be true. :) In contrast, it's a true pleasure to see summaries like this written about role-playing theory. On a very different note, I just found out that Godfather had distributed the questionnaire Satu and I designed in 2005, at a larp in Italy, and will be sending me results. Plus there was some further interest in using it over there. I look forward to comparing the new data with the ones I published in Jornal of Interactive Drama in 2006. Current Music: Marko & Myky - Mekonium Baby (Comment on this)