Plans for the fall

Let me first start off by saying that I love my job and I think I’ll be able to share my experiences there in the upcoming

Linn cupping kaffehuset friele

This is me cupping at my job at a coffee roaster here in Bergen.

year. I haven’t decided if I’ll start a new blog or continue writing here, though. I like this space for all my “other” activities. But there are few of them and I suspect there’ll be fewer still. One of my main goals for the rest of the year is to do a little analysis of how I see my education being put to good use. I keep noticing skills I learned from Media Studies and I’m thankful for having them.  I really do feel like I have the right skills to do this job well – and that’s reassuring. I want to spread the confidence to other media students, you know? Because there is little understanding of what Media Studies skills can be used in jobs and the corporate world – but I see myself using these skills all the time.

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Do you or have you played MUDs?

Maren and I are giving a presentation on computer games for librarians next week “Bibliotekdagene i Bergen”.

LambdaMOO mapWe’re both super honored to be asked – as we both consider librarians to be the coolest professionals around. We worked on our outline last weekend and I’m very excited. I think we’ve come up with a presentation recipe that’s going to be a big success. I’m worried that we’re cramming too much in, but I have faith that our structure will allow for it. So we’ll be talking a little about the history of computer games from hacker culture to consumer culture. We both felt it was important for us to focus a bit on computer game genre and all that it entails. And the icing will be a bit of fan culture. I’ll translate and share here later.

But for now I’m in need of some help. I want to at least briefly touch on the subject of MUDs to MMORPGs – text based worlds to graphical worlds. And I want some good text avatars. I thought I had several but after tearing my bookshelf apart (yes – I have no order) I can only find one, which is that of Mr. Bungle in LambdaMOO: ” a fat, oleaginous, Bisquick-faced clown dressed in cum – stained harlequin garb and girdled with a mistletoe-and-hemlock belt whose buckle bore the quaint inscription “KISS ME UNDER THIS, BITCH”. And I’m thinking …. nawww … there must be something a little nicer. I want colorful definitely, but not this grim and dirty. So I’m asking – do you know of any text avatars I can use? Do you have a favorite? I would also love some good room descriptions and any fond memories you have!

And while we’re on the subject. Do you know of any MUDs/MOOs still alive? I ask because I have a sneaky feeling that text based games are on their way back. Just looking at Causal Gameplay Design Competition.

Play with your food


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!

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My women’s day thank you

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.

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cHixOrs


When I should have been studying for my INFO 100 exam (I have no idea how I’m going to pass that thing) I had lunch with these beautiful ladies on wonderfully productive Maren’s initiative. It was a great lunch although somewhat sad for me, because these three brilliant ladies are all at the beginning of their Master’s and are about to venture out on writing about gaming. There certainly is a great deal of sorrow in my heart for seeing the back-end of my venture – I was so extremely jealous of their vigor and excitement! Urgh – how emo of me!!!

The hours passed quickly and I’m sure we only covered half of what we wanted to talk about. Topics:

  • games designed for girls – what’s bad and what’s good about them
  • Wii, DS, Consoles
  • Boyfriends helping out with games – good or bad thing (I was silent – but very interested)
  • Hedvig (on the far right) is getting married next summer so we went into a frantic and excited creative spurr of having a Nintendo themed wedding!
  • The price of stuff – pinkishness – and loads of hardware chit chat
  • I learned a lot about the role-playing community here in Bergen – which was REALLY interesting!

Oh – there was just too much to blog about here – excellent and intelligent women who are interested in gaming – it was just such pure joy!!! Just talking about different gameplay strategies for the new games coming out was music to my ears!

Anyways – we’re gonna try and meet up once in a while – and I’m sure others are welcome as well! So if you’re studying an aspect of gaming – let us know! Discussions are passionate, lively and enlightening! I learned so incredibly much and also felt that I could contribute as well! I think we left it that we should meet up before Christmas! Unless I get to work more the weeks before Christmas (which I’m hoping for) – I’m free whenever after December 1st and before December 20th (YAY – SINGAPORE!!!!). In my humble opinion, I think we should keep teaching staff and men out of the equation – but that’s just my opinion, don’t know what the rest of the gals think.

Girl gamers

I had the priveledge of meeting a new enthusiastic Media Masters student a few weeks ago looking to write something about gaming. Yay!!!!! From what I understand, she had grown up being a bit of a gamer and didn’t quite understand why other girls weren’t as well. We ended up having a conversation about the phenomenon “female closet gamers”. You know the type…the girls who’ll gladly dismiss games as a waste of time and a nerdy thing – but secretly they have a nintendo at home! Anyways…it seems like this is the topic she wants to pursue – and I just thought I’d throw it out there and see if anyone knows of someone doing something of the same research?

I guess she’s gonna have to divide between casual and ‘serious’ (although I hate that word) gamers. And I know I’ve got some articles hidden away here somewhere in my del.icio.us. (it’s taken me SUCH a long time to find a tagging system that actually works for me – some stuff just gets lost). I’m wondering how best to tackle such a question.

I’ve already mentioned Hilde Corneliussen (also…didn’t a student from good ol’ HI department hand in a thesis about this recently?)and Torill Mortensen. Also Henry Jenkins ofcourse.

The student is a blogger – AND WE LOVE BLOGGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So bless her!!!

She’s written a post where she ponders about tackling the Nintendo Wii and how they’re trying to bring in the casual gamers and women (in Norwegian) and I was thinking it might be interesting to analyse how the Xbox360, PS3 and Wii differ in their advertising.

But I thing she’s more of an audience kind of gal! I’m wondering if the answer lies in finding the hardcore female gamers who are out of the closet, interview them to see if they think it’s a big deal or not? And I think maybe she should stay away from MMORPGs – because they sometimes seem to be an exception. And I think it would be cool to look at 20 year olds and above.

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