Week 44
Genova, Italy

Honestly,  I am lucky because in the conferences I had been in, I always learn and discover something new and interesting. I enjoy them.

However, it takes me a time to digest my learning experience. No-one has asked me to summarize my learning experience on writing in this events, but I start to believe this would be a benefit. The idea emerges few weeks ago while organizing my papers and some of them are related to conferences. It has been refreshing to go through the material. Now I want to start a “habit” to summarize at least some key points. So, here some memoirs of my learning experience at vs-games.

1. The keynote from the representative of the European Commission (Marco Marsella)  mention about the importance of design games for different context. I am sure he did not refer exactly of what I have on mind about context. In any case, it is the first time that I listen explicitly about the term, specially when innovation is part of the key words nowadays.  What a good time to finalize my dissertation: Hypercontextualized Games. The new funding process of the European Union, in my opinion, is interesting and also challenging….. ideas spinning and time to move forward! 🙂
2. To re-counter with persons I met at the beginning of my journey is priceless! Hope to keep in touch with them properly now. One example is Rafael. Great to see you again and nice talks. Looking forward to follow your very interesting projects!!!
3. Knowledge!  It is other topic I am very interested. See my dissertation again. Well, the research done with Prof. Lim is extremely interesting…. I learn much from him and Aparajithan while talking with them. Really inspiring talks!
4. A common interest from GALA and DiGRA at this moment relates to methodologies. Challenge I do not see any time soon to be solved. However, the talk of Igor Mayer was very inspiring in reference to this topic.
5. At the time to see and play games, I detect the game of Latin America from global-conflicts. Unquestionably I needed to talk with the person at charge of the stand.  People who know me are aware I have specific and strong arguments about this type of games. So, here I have the opportunity to exchange to try to understand more of the minds behind the games. I am glad I have the conversation with the person presenting the games, which his business card I cannot locate 🙁  . A post about this topic will show up at some point in time, as it requires a discussion as a sensitive topic as it is.
6. Gamification was also present. I am not subscribed to the ideology of gamification. Actually I am against, specially in the way it is used and described. One day I will write about this because it also requires a post of its own.  However, when I hear the talk of Donald Brinkman from Microsoft clarifying that for them gamification is to pay attention to the process and evolution of it, I got positively surprised. Microsoft saying this, when other companies are actually trying to promote gamification without much analysis or understanding of the topic. Donald  even showed an interesting slide pointing the arguments related to gamification in academia (photo below, the slide was good and my camera dead, but my phone did an attempt to take a photo). I wonder why he did not mention Jesse Schell in his talk.…. Hmmm…. Schell has a critical talk about gamification at google (link). More about this topic will come, but this is a brief summary.

Several talks, games and papers were interesting, which I encourage to read in the proceedings published at Elsevier. This summary focuses on my learning experience…. Hmmm… I guess I need to elaborate in the “term”: learning experience.  

Here some memoir photos, of the event in general. Somehow the location remind me home….

 

Ah! Do you know that the blue jeans are actually originally from Genoa .  All things one learn!

Interesting people I met during these days, and the atmosphere was very nice. 😉  Hope to see this group soon. Thank you to the organizers!

 

next post:  my pleasant discovery at the gala dinner…..