A Blog on Game Studies in the Turkish language: Kafa Ayarı

A few weeks ago I mentioned here on my blog my desire and plan to run a game studies blog in the turkish language. Recently I was lucky enough to toss at the turkish Blog Kafa Ayarı, who already had started to do some work into a direction I imagined would be similar with the type of blog that I had in mind. After some initial e-mail exchanges and conversation with the people from Kafa Ayarı, we soon agreed that I could contribute with my writings to their already existing endeavour. In other words, instead of starting my own game studies blog in turkish, I will publish my turkish articles at Kafa Ayarı.

A little note on Kafa Ayarı: It is a collaborative blog founded by Kerem Yavuz Demirbaş, who wrote his MA on Auteurship in Game Design at the IT Kopenhagen with Espen Arseth. It is the only active turkish game studies blog to my knowledge. I’m glad being able to contribute it from now on.

Two of my articles are already up. One of them is a brief note on the broader meaning of the word Paidea in Ancient Greece. It points at a potential to approach genres like serious games, edutainment, or state-run games like America’s Army from a different, more critical perspective.

The other article is about one of the most important “old-school” game researchers in Turkey, Metin And, whom we have unfortunatley lost last week at the age of 82. While being a hommage to this great researcher, this article also gives a brief overview of the game studies tradition in Turkey and points at the possibilities that it bears for the video game-centric game studies of the newer generations.

As I said already, both articles are in turkish (for now). Taking this chance, I want to thank the people at Kafa Ayarı again for their kindness to accept me as a writer into their collaborative blog.