Kristine Jørgensen's paper on audio in WoW

Audio and Gameplay: An Analysis of PvP Battlegrounds in World of Warcraft" by Kristine Jørgensen analyzes how audio is constructed and experienced by battleground players.

It's a little heavy on generating a lot of fine grained categories that felt confusing to me, but quite useful in offering a nuanced discussion of how players actually experience audio. Very nicely done, and recommended.

Claudio Fogu's very interesting paper

"Digitalizing Historical Consciousness" by historican Claudio Fogu is a rich, thoughtful paper. I don't agree with all of it, but Fogu argues that playing a video game is "closer to acting in drama than narrating in literature or representing in painting."

This is exactly the argument I make in my book. He goes on to observe that gaming is a matter of role playing, simulation, immersion and interaction -- not representation. I think he underestimates the importance of visual experience in video gaming (it is after all *video* gaming!) which he views as representation not immersion, but largely his formulation appears correct to me.

You need a university account to get to his paper but it comes right up if you google "Claudio Fogu video." It's in the journal History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History.

User creativity, governance, and the new media

There is a special issue of First Monday published just today, "User Creativity, Governance and the New Media," edited by Yong Ming Kow and me (mostly by Yong Ming).

It has some very interesting articles -- check it out. First Monday is a wonderful venue - completely free, open, accessible. It reaches a wide audience and has many first rate articles. I always enjoy browsing there.