Posted on - 1 Comment on Educating social workers on problem gaming
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Educating social workers on problem gaming

Patrick Prax was invited by Region Gotland to educate our local social workers and medical providers about problematic gaming, youth and “addiction”.


(the lecture was in Swedish – you can help us add subtitles on Youtube!)

The talk was in Swedish but Patrick recommends the book “What’s the Problem in Problem Gaming”. It is an anthology which provides a number of perspectives on the issue, such as players’ life conditions and lifestyle choices, problem gaming from a family perspective, the voices of treatment professionals, and how game design can become problematic. The book is an essential read for researchers in the field as well as for policymakers, social workers, clinical psychologists, teachers and others who encounter problem gaming in their profession, and the digital version is freely available to download here.

Vad är problemet med problematiskt datorspelande?
Många barn och unga spelar datorspel. För de flesta är spelandet ett utvecklande intresse eller avkopplande tidsfördriv. Somliga har svårt att begränsa datorspelandet vilket kan medföra att skola, kamrater och andra viktiga åtaganden försummas. För att kunna stödja barn i deras digitala vardag kan du som vuxen skaffa dig mer kunskap om datorspel. Hur fungerar spelvärlden? Varför väcker spel engagemang? Och när blir spelandet ett problem?

Du som i ditt arbete möter barn, unga och föräldrar är välkommen till en halvdag (för- eller eftermiddag) om datorspelande (på engelska ”gaming”). Ni får lyssna till Patrick Prax, forskare anställd vid institutionen för speldesign Uppsala universitet Campus Gotland, som kommer att ge er kunskap om gaming, presentera forskning på området och berätta vad vi vet om problematiskt spelande och hur det kan förebyggas och hanteras.

Föreläsningen arrangeras av BarnSam inom ramen för partnerskapet mellan Uppsala universitet Campus Gotland (UUCG) och Region Gotland.

Datum: 27 september 2018
Tid: 8.30–12.00 eller 13.00–16.30
Plats: Ljusgården Rådhuset, Visborgsallén 19 i Visby
Anmälan för regionens medarbetare via särskild länk som erhålls via BarnSam

Utbildning om problematiskt datorspelande 20180927 (.pdf)

Posted on - No Comments on Prof. Bartle back on the island!
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Prof. Bartle back on the island!

We’re continuing the expansion of our research wing at the Department of Game Design, and we are happy to announce that Prof. Richard Bartle is joining our team on Gotland as a guest professor!

We welcome professor Richard Bartle – Honorary Professor at University of Essex and Guest Researcher at the Department of Game Design at Uppsala University!

Professor Bartle co-wrote the first virtual world (MUD, in 1978), making him a pioneer within the massively multiplayer online game industry, wrote the seminal ‘Designing Virtual Worlds’ and authored the ‘Bartle Test’ which has inspired countless attempts to distinguish player types. He is also a respected and appreciated member of the game research community.

The man is no stranger to the department – he’s been an inspiration and a friend to many of us at the department since at least 2010 when he was the examiner for our colleague Mirjam Eladhari as she was finishing her PhD studies at Teesside. He’s regularly taken the time to come and share his expertise with us and our students; guest lectures on human rights in virtual worlds, strategic overviews of our education and research agenda, as well as providing our students with tons of insight at the Gotland Game Conference.

As part of his first tour of duty this autumn, Professor Bartle will share his perspectives in a guest lecture called ‘You – 40 years from now’, where shares his views on what it means to be a games student, game industry or games researcher today – in 40 years. The lecture is open to all students and the general public, but primarily geared toward first years GAME students.

Where: the Almedalen Library (room: E22),
When: Wed 26th of September, 13:15

Update: the lecture is now available on our YouTube-channel!

Posted on - No Comments on More GAME students on the Switch!
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More GAME students on the Switch!

Defunct was originally developed as a student project back in 2014 and has been available on Steam since 2016.

Today this team of former students are joining Niklas Hallin and his “Yono and the Celestial Elephants” with a release on the Nintendo Switch!

Well played and congrats Robert Graff, Jonatan Keil, David Forssell, Mikael Karlsson, Simon Öqvist, Petter Vernersson, Anders Hedström!

Posted on - No Comments on The Pioneers 2018: celebrating the schools that do things differently
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The Pioneers 2018: celebrating the schools that do things differently

“Creative education is vital. But creative education is, in places, broken.”, WeTransfer says. In order to support new, better, types of programs they teamed up with Lecture in Progress and developed The Pioneers list – highlighting schools around the world who deserve credit for doing things differently. They recently visited us on the island and spoke with our Director of Studies, Jakob Berglund-Rogert which led to this great write-up on how we approach game design at Campus Gotland!

The Pioneers 2018 Uppsala University Department of Game Design, Sweden

“A lot of departments look at game design from a media studies or from a computer science perspective, but we have an actual subject that is called games design,” Jakob explains. As part of the university’s faculty of arts, students sit alongside those from gender research and philosophy, narratologists and pedagogists, giving designers and developers the opportunity to work in areas such as medicine and psychology. The university also hosts a summer school in serious games where they teach the likes of biologists and physicists – “People with skills that can actually save the world,” Jakob says. […]

So if games themselves can serve as teaching tools, how do you teach aspiring game designers to do this effectively? For Jakob, one of the most important things students need to be equipped with is “some kind of ethical backbone.

“Since you’re making a mass product, you have a responsibility toward the world that you are communicating with. If you’re going to disrupt order you need to have thought about it long and hard. Game design is such a craft that a lot of students focus on the creation, but sometimes we forget to reflect on why we’re making something.” […] So right from the outset, students are taught to design with intent …

[emphasis added]

Click through to read the rest of the interview with Jakob.