[Roleplaying] Peer review articles for live roleplaying

[Jaakko Stenros]

> What are the "other circles" that you mention? Do you mean the
> classical literature on play, or the knutepunkt-books?
> I ask because i dont want to make similar mistakes.
> - It would be interesting to make a kind of bibliography, which one
> could use when writing about topics connected to larp.

Studying games - and especially role-playing games - is plagued with
the traditional "no one but me has ever thought of studying this!"
syndrome. It is very often history-less. In regards to RPGs, most
people do find Fine and Mackay, but after that it is pretty random.

> While the "hobby"-publications are good, there are significant
> differences in them and scientific journal article and conference
> contributions. It has to do with how the latter must be shaped to take
> part in a debate that goes on in the field where it is written.

That is true. However, at this point in time, anyone who completely
ignores the Nordic expert tradition is not believable in my eyes. Yes,
it is very uneven and more design-oriented than academic, but outside
the literature on role-play in social psychology, it is the single
largest contribution to the field.

> I have thought about the idea if it would have been possible to make a
> session during knutepunkt which was more research oriented, in other
> words, where those who works with larp in a research could meet,
> present, read and discuss each others papers in the style of academic
> conference. It might have made most sense to do something like this
> right before or after the convention itself, because i think this
> should be more academic than what take place at knutepunkt. What do
> you think of such an idea?

If we can find someone who is willing to organize it, I think making
it happen is quite easy. There is a meeting on Knutpunkt 2010 on
Sunday. If someone volunteers I can try to push for such a day?

Jaakko