Right, I really needed that break from blogging… Frankly, I was feeling incredibly weighed down by the weight of academic papers that I had to write, and needed to focus on them. Here’s a list of all the papers, book chapters and presentations I’ve written or worked upon in the last month and a half:

• “Player Typology in Theory and Practice” (with Rebecca Lowenhaupt and Lennart Nacke)
• “BrainHex: Preliminary Results from a Neurobiological Gamer Typology Survey” (with Lennart Nacke and Regan Mandryk)
• “Neurobiological Foundations for Player Satisfaction Modeling” (with Lennart Nacke) in Game Telemetry and Metrics (eds. Mady Seif El-Nasr and Anders Drachen)
• “Chaotic Good in the Balance” in Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy (eds. Jon Cogburn and Mark Silcox)
• “Dungeons & Dragons & Dice &… Prop Theory for Role-Play”
  in Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy (eds. Jon Cogburn and Mark Silcox)
• “Prop Theory for Game Aesthetics”
• “Orthodox Science Fiction and Fictional Worlds”
• “Fictional Worlds in Films and Games”

That’s a lot of papers for someone who doesn’t work as an academic! Anyway, I now have this workload under better control, so with luck I should be able to get back into the blogging.

Blogging resumes again next week - hope to see you in the comments!

I’m posting this call for participants on behalf of the Save Energy project, which ihobo has been working on.

Hi,
We're looking for participants to a study on serious gaming. The experiment is a part of EU funded SAVE ENERGY project. This project aims to help Europe to get greener by saving energy in public buildings. The experiment is a study of energy habits and awareness.

We ask for your cooperation for 3 months, during which time you'll be filling out questionnaires once a month (taking no more than 1 hour), receiving some information messages once a week, and invited to participate in some online activities. Each participant will be given a gift voucher worth €40 as a compensation for their efforts.

If you're aged 18 or older, with free time during the summer and access to a computer and you want to participate, contact us and we will send you further instructions. The experiments will start in the third week of May and continue until August.

Contact: Olli Haino (click for email)

I'll be taking a short break from blogging over the next few weeks, but I'll be back in June with more to say on game design, aesthetics of play and game philosophy.

Back soon!