Mindtrek 2018

On the 10th and 11th of October, I had the chance to attend Mindtrek 2018 — an international technology conference held here in Tampere. I'm an extremely shy person, so networking-oriented events admittedly aren't my strongest suit, but I decided to try to get the most out of the two days by going to as many presentations and lectures as I managed to, especially the games-related ones.

The first presentations I attended were on the Academic Mindtrek -side of the conference: five 15-minute presentations on game-related researches and studies. The quality of the presentations varied quite a bit: some of the presenters weren't clearly as confident and skilled speakers as others, and the 15 minute time limit caused some of them to hurry through the final results. Not to mention that some of the studies had so small survey sizes that the results didn't seem all that trustworthy.

To me the most captivating one of the bunch was a research about viewer's perception of elements used in game live streams, held by Pascal Lessel. The study researched how different features in live streams (chat boxes, giveaways, emojis, etc.) affected the viewers and which of them were the most important. The part of the results that piqued my interest the most was that even those viewers who refused to interact with the stream (by using a chat box, for example) still considered these features necessary, and as something that improved their experience. I immediately recognised myself from this description, and I've been thinking about why this is the case ever since.

Artist's interprentation of what Liberland might look like one day.

Perhaps the most memorable program of all was the presentation on Liberland, a self-proclaimed micronation between Croatia and Serbia. Although the presentation was originally meant to be held by the president Vit Jedlička, he unfortunately wasn't present, and thus the presentation was held by the finnish ambassador instead. The finnish ambassador had a lot to say about Liberland's brand beer, beach parties and dreams of building a futuristic city, but when asked, even he seemed to stumble at trying to explain how seriously Liberland should be taken. The presentation overall was entertaining, but I can't say I will be applying for citizenship anytime soon.

I also attended few other programs, most of them having to do with using technology in education. I did see one presentation about immersive imagining research, but the subject matter was too complicated for me, and ended up flying over my head. The last ten minutes being mostly advertising for the company the presentor worked for didn't help in making the presentation any more interesting either.

The very last presentation I saw was particularly interesting: it had to do with how video games can be used in education to teach students of topics like history, science and teamwork. Games are an extremely under-utilised method of teaching, so I was excited to see that there's genuine research on the subject: for example, the presenter mentioned that using the game Kerbal Space Program to build rockets in class had inspired young students to gain more interest in science. He also encouraged the parents in the audience (and in general) to express interest in their children's hobbies and communicate with them properly, instead of just dismissing games as waste of time, which I appreciated greatly.

Overall I have mixed feelings on how much I enjoyed Mindtrek. While most of the presentations I saw were enjoyable, and gave me at least some snack for my thoughts, the conference in general was so business- and networking -focused that as a student I couldn't help but feel out of place. (The food was delicious though. Especially the berry pie on second day lunch, that pie was godly).