This blog is dormant since I keep myself too busy with too many other projects all the time. So, no time for more serious blogging these days.
An update on what I do these days:
Left Gameplayer.se and founded Skillpoint Productions HB to launch the website Skillpoint.se together with fellow editors Sofia, Lars and Sebastian who also left Gameplayer.
Visit us at: http://www.skillpoint.se
Dabbled in necromancy and managed to raise from the dead my old deathmetal band Engraved together with Martin Runnzell. (Actually tried to revive the band already back in 2002, but ended up singing in Doom metal band Wounded Heaven instead).
The demo can be enjoyed on our myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/engravedsweden
Newsupdates about the band are regularily posted on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Engraved/206235095364
Also a proper homepage is in the pipeline: http://www.engraved.se/
Monday, October 25, 2010
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Another circus in the swedish game journalist ranks
Level7 just held their annual award for best swedish game mag, writer and blog. Apperently last years winner got pissed off because he didn't win this year.
Here's the coverage in blogs. All in swedish alas.
The temper tanrum from Petter Hegevall.
The official response to the tantrum from Level7s chief editor Erik.
The response from this years winners, Level, through Thomas Wiborgh.
Criticism from game journalists regarding the circus:
Emmy Z
Michael Gill
Victor Leijonhufvud
Tobias Jensen
And last but not least, it's discussed in an episode of Spelradion.
My thoughts? Well... completely unecessary drama. Everyone knew the rules and noone could give a fuck about hurt pride. It is what it is regardless our opinions about it. Lashing out at it though, in an effort to discredit a competitor, is extremely unprofessional and childish.
End of story.
Here's the coverage in blogs. All in swedish alas.
The temper tanrum from Petter Hegevall.
The official response to the tantrum from Level7s chief editor Erik.
The response from this years winners, Level, through Thomas Wiborgh.
Criticism from game journalists regarding the circus:
Emmy Z
Michael Gill
Victor Leijonhufvud
Tobias Jensen
And last but not least, it's discussed in an episode of Spelradion.
My thoughts? Well... completely unecessary drama. Everyone knew the rules and noone could give a fuck about hurt pride. It is what it is regardless our opinions about it. Lashing out at it though, in an effort to discredit a competitor, is extremely unprofessional and childish.
End of story.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Quick note
My next reflection will have to be postponed... Running a tight schedule at the moment. Hopefully I'll be able to write it after the weekend
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Reflections on the Pirate Bay Spectrial - Unprofessional
Before the trial began, and a few days into the trial, I was of the firm conviction that The Pirate Bay would lose the trial no matter what happened at the court. An outcome I dreaded because of the implication towards indirectly punishing technology and internet infrastructure (internet is after all just a chaotic swarm made up of links and file transfers at the core, and little else). My certainty rather stemmed from the belief that the court would follow the assumption that copyright infringement is a priority matter over integrity or morality, as seems to be the agenda of our current government (yes, I'm cynical like that). Point is, with all this international pressure I had a hard time seeing any other outcome. That, and most because I suspected the copyright lobby would have pumped money into the case, hiring the most professional representatives they could, to get a guilty verdict on The Pirate Bay.
Perception is, however, as we all know relative. It didn't take many days for this belief to start to shatter. Severely. It is by now actually, as the trial has ended and we're waiting for the verdict, that I've started to suspect The Pirate Bay cannot lose this first trial at all. And the reason is because the prosecuting side have totally failed to give at least me as a listener any confidence at all, neither in their case nor in their professional skills.
Before I begin to elaborate, just let me quote a colleague who listened in a little now and then: "Are they serious? Is this really happening in a court in Sweden? I cannot believe the prosecuting side can behave like that. Can't those companies hire better and more competent people than that? Don't they have education?". And so on. I kinda agree with her though
- my already low trust in the swedish law system has gotten even lower after this spectacle.
I didn't react initially to this personally though. I expected no lawyers on either side to be especially technologically adept. So it wasn't until the hearing of the first the accused and later the witnesses it struck me how completely lost they were. There seemed to be a total confusions on both sides of what the trial was about, but in this chaos the defense lawyers at least were keeping to point and arguing from a topic-basis and a law point of view. The prosecuting side didn't. They (as far as I experienced it listening in on the live streams) were rather making a vulgar display of power, pushing numbers, rhetorics and playing on emotions. I even dare say they used indirect slander as a offensive tactic.
I preceived especially Danowsky and Pontén this way. I pride myself of being quite good at seeing through rhetorics, and the way these two lawyers argued were rarely substantial, rather always rhetorical. Both sides used rhetorics at turns of course but the prosecution seemed to have this as their main tactic. There's many examples of it,but I think the most apparent one is Danowskys reappearing argument that the accused were criminals, because copyright infringement is criminal and TPB supports copyright infringement. It sounds like a heavy argument, but is nothing but plain manipulation of the line of thought by rhetorics. Yes, copyright infringement is illegal, but it is the courts responsibility to decide if TPB is actually supporting copyright infringement by hosting links, and if that in itself can be illegal. The prosecutions thus, in short, tries to put the verdict into the mouth of the court. But it is no argument, they are only saying "The accused are guilty because they are guilty" without adding proof or substance to the claim. They are using tautology as a tactic, and it makes their argumentation void and irrelevant.
Now, we all make mistakes, and we sometimes fool ourselves with our own rhetorics, and you can't blame a biased side for jumping to conclusions, because it's human. However, the lack of professionalism on the accusing side doesn't end there. No, they also attack the accused with claims of them being criminals because of the name of the site. That the fact it contains the word "Pirate" clearly shows it is illegal activity, or intent to support illegal activity. Well, if that's the case, isn't it time to put Sid Meier or Disney behind bars by now? How can a serious lawyer really support a stance like that? How can something so abstract as a name be used as evidence of criminal intent? I don't think I need to argue further why it's banal, because that's just common sense to most people.
Even though rhetorics or strange accusations might be common in a courtroom (I have no idea, this is the first trial I've followed live. I hope not though.) I refuse to believe slander, threats, insults and attempts at defamation are normally acceptable in the courtroom. While witnesses for both sides were pushed really hard, the methods used by the prosecution left my jaw hitting the table as I was listening. Especially grave did I (amongst many others as proven by the now legendary flower mountain) find the attacks on Professor Roger Wallis. To me, with my academic background, it is not even in this world that anyone would question the status or knowledge of a Professor emeritus. There's is few more honorable things to be in the academic world after all, and the amount of research and knowledge needed to get there is more than a normal man could bear in a lifetime. Discrediting him and his research is just not something any educated, professional and serious individual would do. And especially not something I expect from a lawyer. All it has resulted in is making the prosecutor look desperate and the opposite of serious.
And all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. It has left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and a total lack of respect for the swedish justice system. I cannot respect a judge that doesn't put down his foot and keep order in the court. I cannot respect prosecutors that attacks someones person or threatens them. How can we trust a legal system where this kind of behaviour, this kind of bullying and slander can be tolerated?
Also, if TPB wins this trial it means it won't be an interesting or important win, because they didn't win because they were right. They in that possible case won because the other side were incompetent, did bad research and behaved like fools in the courtroom. And if the prosecuting side wins, well then it's just a scandal. I find it very grave, because it will hurt both sides of this conflict in the long run.
Maybe it won't matter, because the verdict will get appealed anyway, but if this continues on higher instance.... well, to quote Wallis himself, "God save Sweden". And I'm an atheist, what does that say about my hopes here?
Perception is, however, as we all know relative. It didn't take many days for this belief to start to shatter. Severely. It is by now actually, as the trial has ended and we're waiting for the verdict, that I've started to suspect The Pirate Bay cannot lose this first trial at all. And the reason is because the prosecuting side have totally failed to give at least me as a listener any confidence at all, neither in their case nor in their professional skills.
Before I begin to elaborate, just let me quote a colleague who listened in a little now and then: "Are they serious? Is this really happening in a court in Sweden? I cannot believe the prosecuting side can behave like that. Can't those companies hire better and more competent people than that? Don't they have education?". And so on. I kinda agree with her though
- my already low trust in the swedish law system has gotten even lower after this spectacle.
I didn't react initially to this personally though. I expected no lawyers on either side to be especially technologically adept. So it wasn't until the hearing of the first the accused and later the witnesses it struck me how completely lost they were. There seemed to be a total confusions on both sides of what the trial was about, but in this chaos the defense lawyers at least were keeping to point and arguing from a topic-basis and a law point of view. The prosecuting side didn't. They (as far as I experienced it listening in on the live streams) were rather making a vulgar display of power, pushing numbers, rhetorics and playing on emotions. I even dare say they used indirect slander as a offensive tactic.
I preceived especially Danowsky and Pontén this way. I pride myself of being quite good at seeing through rhetorics, and the way these two lawyers argued were rarely substantial, rather always rhetorical. Both sides used rhetorics at turns of course but the prosecution seemed to have this as their main tactic. There's many examples of it,but I think the most apparent one is Danowskys reappearing argument that the accused were criminals, because copyright infringement is criminal and TPB supports copyright infringement. It sounds like a heavy argument, but is nothing but plain manipulation of the line of thought by rhetorics. Yes, copyright infringement is illegal, but it is the courts responsibility to decide if TPB is actually supporting copyright infringement by hosting links, and if that in itself can be illegal. The prosecutions thus, in short, tries to put the verdict into the mouth of the court. But it is no argument, they are only saying "The accused are guilty because they are guilty" without adding proof or substance to the claim. They are using tautology as a tactic, and it makes their argumentation void and irrelevant.
Now, we all make mistakes, and we sometimes fool ourselves with our own rhetorics, and you can't blame a biased side for jumping to conclusions, because it's human. However, the lack of professionalism on the accusing side doesn't end there. No, they also attack the accused with claims of them being criminals because of the name of the site. That the fact it contains the word "Pirate" clearly shows it is illegal activity, or intent to support illegal activity. Well, if that's the case, isn't it time to put Sid Meier or Disney behind bars by now? How can a serious lawyer really support a stance like that? How can something so abstract as a name be used as evidence of criminal intent? I don't think I need to argue further why it's banal, because that's just common sense to most people.
Even though rhetorics or strange accusations might be common in a courtroom (I have no idea, this is the first trial I've followed live. I hope not though.) I refuse to believe slander, threats, insults and attempts at defamation are normally acceptable in the courtroom. While witnesses for both sides were pushed really hard, the methods used by the prosecution left my jaw hitting the table as I was listening. Especially grave did I (amongst many others as proven by the now legendary flower mountain) find the attacks on Professor Roger Wallis. To me, with my academic background, it is not even in this world that anyone would question the status or knowledge of a Professor emeritus. There's is few more honorable things to be in the academic world after all, and the amount of research and knowledge needed to get there is more than a normal man could bear in a lifetime. Discrediting him and his research is just not something any educated, professional and serious individual would do. And especially not something I expect from a lawyer. All it has resulted in is making the prosecutor look desperate and the opposite of serious.
And all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. It has left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and a total lack of respect for the swedish justice system. I cannot respect a judge that doesn't put down his foot and keep order in the court. I cannot respect prosecutors that attacks someones person or threatens them. How can we trust a legal system where this kind of behaviour, this kind of bullying and slander can be tolerated?
Also, if TPB wins this trial it means it won't be an interesting or important win, because they didn't win because they were right. They in that possible case won because the other side were incompetent, did bad research and behaved like fools in the courtroom. And if the prosecuting side wins, well then it's just a scandal. I find it very grave, because it will hurt both sides of this conflict in the long run.
Maybe it won't matter, because the verdict will get appealed anyway, but if this continues on higher instance.... well, to quote Wallis himself, "God save Sweden". And I'm an atheist, what does that say about my hopes here?
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Reflections on the Pirate Bay Spectrial - Introduction
Today one of the most important trials in Swedens modern history was ended. Well, important at least regarding copyright infringement and the future of internet. So, with one foot in the gaming industry (not only as a journalist, I have friends and family in that business), as well as having the academic curiosity it was impossible for me to not follow this case on a day by day, hour by hour basis, listening in on the live feeds and following the voices in the blogosphere. This has of course ended in a few reflections, which I'd like to share a few.
Before going into that however I'd like to make a little disclaimer, so noone will come and try to put words in my mouth later. And so you people reading this also am aware of my policitical and academical stance in this matter. I am a supporter of copyright, and I believe in the creators primary right to their work. However, I do not support the way copyrights are used by the corporate world as a power tool. I have in many chronicles in the past argued for the gaming industry to adapt to the consumers needs and not turn potential customers into criminals. An opinion that I find rare in the swedish gaming industry, surprisingly.
I'm not going to dive to deeply into that debate right now though. However I will point out that while I sympathise with those who, like the swedish Pirate Party, criticise our current copyright system as well as IPRED and FRA, I am not siding with them politically. My political views stand firm in a socialist fundament, and my opinions in this matter are colored by my academical knowledge regarding both computer and IT-history as well as digital commerce.
That said, tomorrow I will start my first rant regarding the TPB trial. I'm not sure I will come to a point, but there are plenty observations I really need to get out of my system. Stay tuned.
Before going into that however I'd like to make a little disclaimer, so noone will come and try to put words in my mouth later. And so you people reading this also am aware of my policitical and academical stance in this matter. I am a supporter of copyright, and I believe in the creators primary right to their work. However, I do not support the way copyrights are used by the corporate world as a power tool. I have in many chronicles in the past argued for the gaming industry to adapt to the consumers needs and not turn potential customers into criminals. An opinion that I find rare in the swedish gaming industry, surprisingly.
I'm not going to dive to deeply into that debate right now though. However I will point out that while I sympathise with those who, like the swedish Pirate Party, criticise our current copyright system as well as IPRED and FRA, I am not siding with them politically. My political views stand firm in a socialist fundament, and my opinions in this matter are colored by my academical knowledge regarding both computer and IT-history as well as digital commerce.
That said, tomorrow I will start my first rant regarding the TPB trial. I'm not sure I will come to a point, but there are plenty observations I really need to get out of my system. Stay tuned.
How things develop
It is interesting how things turn out. After my last post here I was thinking in the line of mostly keeping it for game-related post and musings on mmorpgs and the sort. That never happened, instead after some brainstorming with Thord Daniel Hedengren at Pakten and my co-blogger Andreas Uppling, we instead gave birth to the swedish mmo-focused blog-project MMOnly.
That blog is just in it's infancy still, but our hope is that it will evolve into something more than just a mere game-blog.
So, this blog once again became true to it's name, Unfinished Project. But I've decided to use this blog for more serious discussion, not necessarily dedicated to just the gaming world anymore. But rather for some more general reflection about things in either a grander scale or a microscale.
We'll see how that goes ;)
That blog is just in it's infancy still, but our hope is that it will evolve into something more than just a mere game-blog.
So, this blog once again became true to it's name, Unfinished Project. But I've decided to use this blog for more serious discussion, not necessarily dedicated to just the gaming world anymore. But rather for some more general reflection about things in either a grander scale or a microscale.
We'll see how that goes ;)
Monday, November 24, 2008
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