Category: Guest Lectures

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!

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!

Niklas Nylund is a museum researcher working for the Finnish Museum of Games in Tampere, Finland. He is also working on a PhD at the Game Research Lab at the University of Tampere. He’s visiting us at the end of the month, and we’re taking the opportunity to have him share his deep knowledge and passion for the native gaming scene of our Scandinavian sister country!

Room: F20
Time: Tue 27/2, 16:00
Title: Finnish gaming from the 19th to the 21th century

The Finnish game industry is responsible for international hit games such as Nokia Snake (1997), Max Payne (2001), Angry Birds (2009) and Clash of Clans (2012). These games did not spring up overnight, however. The success of Finnish game companies is grounded on a centuries long interest in games and gaming, with a vivid gaming culture already in place in the 19th century. Researcher Niklas Nylund from the Finnish Museum of Games talks about what Finnish gaming has looked like in three different centuries.

The lecture is open to all game students on a first-come-first-serve basis!

psst… if exploration of eastern European gaming history is your jam and you want to warm up, we can highly recommend the GGC 2015 talk “(Video) Games and Information Warfare” by our old friend (and colleague of Niklas), Ave Randviir-Vellamo.