On LGBT players of BioWare games
The Cyberpsychology journal has just published “Dressing Commander Shepard in pink”, an article about the experience of queer playing, focusing on Czech LGBT fans of Bioware role-playing games. It is a collaboration between Tereza Krobová, Ondřej Moravec (both of whom are/were my graduate students) and myself. Abstract after the jump.
Monsters by the Numbers
My critique of video game monsters, published in the 2013′s Monster Culture in the 21st Century book (edited by Marina Levina and Diem-my Bui), is now available here. It features Dead Space, Deleuze, Zelda & more fun stuff. You can get the full book on the Bloomsbury website.
Australian games in Czechoslovakia
A couple of months ago, my Australian game historian friends asked me if there were any links between Australian and Czechoslovak game cultures. The answer is YES! Several 1980s 8-bit Australian titles belonged among the best received games and one spawned a Czech remake. To read more about the antipodean links, read my article on the Play It Again blog.
Progress update: Games behind the Iron Curtain
It’s already been a year since I defended a dissertation on the history of computer games in the 1980s Czechoslovakia. It’s time to gather all the links to my published work on this topic and give an update on where this project’s heading.
CEEGS 2014 FTW
On October 10-11, me and my colleagues from the MU Game Studies association organized the first Central and Eastern European Game Studies conference, which took place at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. We had a blast and according to the feedback so far, so did the participants.
Comedy of Contingency
My piece on user-generated slapstick in video games has just been published in the International Journal of Communication. I did most of the research and writing for it while on a PhD internship at Microsoft Research New England’s Social Media Collective.
Interview: Nancy Baym on Musicians, Fans and Music Industry
About ten months ago, while still a Ph.D. intern at Microsoft Research New England, I did an interview with the media scholar (and my co-mentor at MSR) Nancy Baym about the topic she’s currently focusing on – the transformation of music in the age of social media. Originally intended for publication in Czech, here’s the audio version of it for my English-speaking friends and colleagues.
Monstrosity “gamified”
At DiGRA 2013 in Atlanta (such a fun, intense and inspiring conference!), I had the pleasure to give a talk based on my chapter for the book Monster Culture in the 21st Century, edited by Marina Levina and Diem-Mi Bui. It was about the “gamification” of monsters. As I didn’t submit a full paper, I am now uploading the slides with some comments to make sense of the slides. » » » »
Mission: ECREA Istanbul
In October, I spent an amazing week in Istanbul, Turkey, attending the ECREA 2012 conference and its pre-conference od digital games. I presented a paper on “different histories” of digital games and a poster about fan translation of Game of Thrones into Czech. Links to my presentations after the jump.
Games as Mischief Machines
I am currently a Ph.D. intern at Microsoft Research New England. I feel incredibly lucky to work with people like Mary L. Gray and Nancy Baym. As an intern, my goal is to design and complete a project related to social media. My project is focusing on the ways people use virtual environments of video games to create physical humor.
Transmedia Generation in Prague
On June 18, 2012, our Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism invited my former MIT professor Henry Jenkins to take part in a symposium on participatory cultures. It was the first time Henry gave a talk in the Czech Republic, and of course, a great opportunity for discussion, presentations & various musings by local and foreign media researchers. My impressions and videos after the divide!
Fan subtitling: Game of Thrones gone Czech
In September, I finished and defended the thesis for my second Master’s degree in Linguistics and Phonetics and Translation Studies. In order to cross over into my main field of media studies, I chose to study fan subtitling in the Czech Republic. What I found were stories of aspiration and competition, generosity and flame wars.