Olli Sotamaa
Biographic Data
| ID | 660132 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Olli Sotamaa |
| GIVEN NAMES | Olli |
| FAMILY NAME | Sotamaa |
| SIGNATURE | SOTAMAA O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tampere University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2972-5657 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Game Production Studies
Video games have entered the cultural mainstream and now rival established forms of entertainment such as film or television in terms of economic profits. As careers in video game development become more common, so do the stories about precarious working conditions and structural inequalities within the industry. In Game Production Studies, an international group of researchers takes a closer look at the everyday realities of video game productio…
Sidetalking
This article examines sidetalking – a usability feature introduced by Nokia in its N-Gage and 7700 devices during 2002 and 2003 – and positioned as innovative; sidetalking involved holding the phone sideways during calls. This reflected Nokia's attempt to cater to an imagined youth demographic defined by playfulness and individuality. However, the feature was widely mocked, becoming a cultural meme and contributing to the commercial failure of th…
Emotions in Game Data Work
This study explores the emotional dimensions of data work within the game industry. Through interviews with Finnish game industry professionals, the research reveals that data-driven work practices evoke a wide range of emotions, ranging from pleasure and satisfaction to insecurity and frustration. Data can act both as a helpful workmate and as a source of professional conflict and frustration, impacting the worker's sense of professionalism. Dat…
Understanding game data work
The game industry's content production, maintenance of live games, and processes of acquiring production funding increasingly rely on various kinds of data and its rigorous analysis. These new needs and functions have generated emerging forms of work, such as those of the data analyst, data engineer, and data scientist. Through in-depth interviews with 20 Finnish game industry professionals and an analysis of game industry job advertisements, thi…
Even if the algorithm is a terrible workmate, you just need to learn to live with it’
The digital game industry has actively integrated data-driven methods into its core processes. This interview-based study shows how game industry professionals perceive the role of data as part of their everyday work. Analysing the data-related notions and negotiations helps to explicate how mainstream data imaginaries are both reproduced and challenged in the different phases and contexts of game making. The analysis is divided into the followin…
Game Production Studies
In the introduction, the editors of this collection argue for the importance of game production studies at a point when the public awareness about the production context of video games has, arguably, never been higher.With so many accounts of video game development permeating player and developer communities, the task of game production studies is to uncover the economic, cultural, and political structures that influence the final form of games b…
Studying Game Development Cultures
By analyzing and contextualizing different aspects of the Finnish game development scene, this article provides concrete examples of why we need cultural studies of game development and how game development cultures can be studied. The article follows a three-layer approach, first exploring some of the historical and political developments that have shaped forms of local game production. Second, a focus is placed on working cultures within the in…
Rethinking game heritage - towards reflexivity in game preservation
While games and the cultures that have sprung up around them are diverse and vastly different from each other, most exhibitions dealing with them are based on a limited understanding of games that relies on symbolic brands on one hand and on the centrality of playable experiences on the other. This bias is potentially replicated by heritage institution collections starting to define how games become cultural heritage. While games research has sho…
Artful play
Yrjö Hirn (1870-1952) was an early Finnish scholar of aesthetics. He was well-connected and widely travelled a century ago. In 1916 he published Barnlek in Swedish, a book on the play and games of children. This monograph draws on a wide array of sources and discusses children's play as both a herald of things to come and as a living museum of past tools and practices. Hirn's book was translated into Finnish, Italian, and French, but today it is …
Public game funding in the Nordic region
In this paper, we explore the policies related to support structures surrounding national game industries, with focus on the three Nordic countries Finland, Norway and Sweden, and investigate what kind of context the Nordic welfare state model has provided for game development. The three cases illustrate how Nordic welfare state measures have interacted with the games industry over time. While the political ideals have been fairly similar, our st…
Through a Shot Glass, Darkly
Drinking games have a history several millennia long. Yet the global community of game scholars has barely touched drinking and games, leaving the area for researchers of health and safety issues. This article is a think piece that approaches drinking games as games and as play, ponders what the study of games can learn from drinking games, weighs what is at stake in them, and connects them to discussions in contemporary game studies relating to …
From hobbyists to entrepreneurs
This article sheds light on the formation of the Nordic game industry between 1990 and 2005. The first long-lasting game development companies within the region emerged in the early 1990s and one of the factors for the advent of a Nordic industry was the subculture surrounding the demoscene. By selecting three companies in Finland, Norway and Sweden, we look at the transition from subculture into formal companies. The study is informed by an oral…
Need for Perspective
This special issue of Games and Culture aims to engage in dialogue between different traditions of doing games research and to stimulate reflective responses about the overall state of the field
Media in the Ubiquitous Era
"This book focuses on the definition of ambient and ubiquitous media from a cross-disciplinary viewpoint, covering the fields of commerce, science, research affecting citizens" - Provided by publisher
On modder labour, commodification of play, and mod competitions
As the boundaries between play and work are becoming increasingly blurred among digital games, avid player labour is increasingly harnessed as a source of revenue. This article focuses on "modders", hobbyists who build on existing retail game titles, and the strategies the game industry uses to motivate and persuade these hobbyists to produce content that most effectively benefits the industry. Special focus is on industry-organized mod competiti…
Public game funding in the Nordic region
In this paper, we explore the policies related to support structures surrounding national game industries, with focus on the three Nordic countries Finland, Norway and Sweden, and investigate what kind of context the Nordic welfare state model has provided for game development. The three cases illustrate how Nordic welfare state measures have interacted with the games industry over time. While the political ideals have been fairly similar, our st…
Even if the algorithm is a terrible workmate, you just need to learn to live with it’
The digital game industry has actively integrated data-driven methods into its core processes. This interview-based study shows how game industry professionals perceive the role of data as part of their everyday work. Analysing the data-related notions and negotiations helps to explicate how mainstream data imaginaries are both reproduced and challenged in the different phases and contexts of game making. The analysis is divided into the followin…
Rethinking game heritage - towards reflexivity in game preservation
While games and the cultures that have sprung up around them are diverse and vastly different from each other, most exhibitions dealing with them are based on a limited understanding of games that relies on symbolic brands on one hand and on the centrality of playable experiences on the other. This bias is potentially replicated by heritage institution collections starting to define how games become cultural heritage. While games research has sho…
Need for Perspective
This special issue of Games and Culture aims to engage in dialogue between different traditions of doing games research and to stimulate reflective responses about the overall state of the field
On modder labour, commodification of play, and mod competitions
As the boundaries between play and work are becoming increasingly blurred among digital games, avid player labour is increasingly harnessed as a source of revenue. This article focuses on "modders", hobbyists who build on existing retail game titles, and the strategies the game industry uses to motivate and persuade these hobbyists to produce content that most effectively benefits the industry. Special focus is on industry-organized mod competiti…
Media in the Ubiquitous Era
"This book focuses on the definition of ambient and ubiquitous media from a cross-disciplinary viewpoint, covering the fields of commerce, science, research affecting citizens" - Provided by publisher
From hobbyists to entrepreneurs
This article sheds light on the formation of the Nordic game industry between 1990 and 2005. The first long-lasting game development companies within the region emerged in the early 1990s and one of the factors for the advent of a Nordic industry was the subculture surrounding the demoscene. By selecting three companies in Finland, Norway and Sweden, we look at the transition from subculture into formal companies. The study is informed by an oral…
Need for Perspective
This special issue of Games and Culture aims to engage in dialogue between different traditions of doing games research and to stimulate reflective responses about the overall state of the field
Public game funding in the Nordic region
In this paper, we explore the policies related to support structures surrounding national game industries, with focus on the three Nordic countries Finland, Norway and Sweden, and investigate what kind of context the Nordic welfare state model has provided for game development. The three cases illustrate how Nordic welfare state measures have interacted with the games industry over time. While the political ideals have been fairly similar, our st…
Through a Shot Glass, Darkly
Drinking games have a history several millennia long. Yet the global community of game scholars has barely touched drinking and games, leaving the area for researchers of health and safety issues. This article is a think piece that approaches drinking games as games and as play, ponders what the study of games can learn from drinking games, weighs what is at stake in them, and connects them to discussions in contemporary game studies relating to …
Game Production Studies
In the introduction, the editors of this collection argue for the importance of game production studies at a point when the public awareness about the production context of video games has, arguably, never been higher.With so many accounts of video game development permeating player and developer communities, the task of game production studies is to uncover the economic, cultural, and political structures that influence the final form of games b…
Studying Game Development Cultures
By analyzing and contextualizing different aspects of the Finnish game development scene, this article provides concrete examples of why we need cultural studies of game development and how game development cultures can be studied. The article follows a three-layer approach, first exploring some of the historical and political developments that have shaped forms of local game production. Second, a focus is placed on working cultures within the in…
Rethinking game heritage - towards reflexivity in game preservation
While games and the cultures that have sprung up around them are diverse and vastly different from each other, most exhibitions dealing with them are based on a limited understanding of games that relies on symbolic brands on one hand and on the centrality of playable experiences on the other. This bias is potentially replicated by heritage institution collections starting to define how games become cultural heritage. While games research has sho…
Artful play
Yrjö Hirn (1870-1952) was an early Finnish scholar of aesthetics. He was well-connected and widely travelled a century ago. In 1916 he published Barnlek in Swedish, a book on the play and games of children. This monograph draws on a wide array of sources and discusses children's play as both a herald of things to come and as a living museum of past tools and practices. Hirn's book was translated into Finnish, Italian, and French, but today it is …
Even if the algorithm is a terrible workmate, you just need to learn to live with it’
The digital game industry has actively integrated data-driven methods into its core processes. This interview-based study shows how game industry professionals perceive the role of data as part of their everyday work. Analysing the data-related notions and negotiations helps to explicate how mainstream data imaginaries are both reproduced and challenged in the different phases and contexts of game making. The analysis is divided into the followin…
Game Production Studies
Video games have entered the cultural mainstream and now rival established forms of entertainment such as film or television in terms of economic profits. As careers in video game development become more common, so do the stories about precarious working conditions and structural inequalities within the industry. In Game Production Studies, an international group of researchers takes a closer look at the everyday realities of video game productio…
Sidetalking
This article examines sidetalking – a usability feature introduced by Nokia in its N-Gage and 7700 devices during 2002 and 2003 – and positioned as innovative; sidetalking involved holding the phone sideways during calls. This reflected Nokia's attempt to cater to an imagined youth demographic defined by playfulness and individuality. However, the feature was widely mocked, becoming a cultural meme and contributing to the commercial failure of th…
Emotions in Game Data Work
This study explores the emotional dimensions of data work within the game industry. Through interviews with Finnish game industry professionals, the research reveals that data-driven work practices evoke a wide range of emotions, ranging from pleasure and satisfaction to insecurity and frustration. Data can act both as a helpful workmate and as a source of professional conflict and frustration, impacting the worker's sense of professionalism. Dat…
Understanding game data work
The game industry's content production, maintenance of live games, and processes of acquiring production funding increasingly rely on various kinds of data and its rigorous analysis. These new needs and functions have generated emerging forms of work, such as those of the data analyst, data engineer, and data scientist. Through in-depth interviews with 20 Finnish game industry professionals and an analysis of game industry job advertisements, thi…
Digital Games and Media (13 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Game design (5 works) · Game studies (5 works) · Media studies (5 works) · Psychology (5 works)