DiGRA 2007 underway

DiGRA 2007 underway
Originally uploaded by FransBadger.

In her opening speech Tanya Krzywinska, DiGRA President (speaking in Tokyo University Yasuda Auditorium, pictured) described this year’s games research conference as “Godzilla” — which it in a sense is; even the proceedings book is almost 900 pages! The week is well underway, and today, in one of Thursday’s last sessions I have also my own paper presentation. It is still too early to make any thorough analysis of the directions game studies (the discipline) or digital games research as a whole is taking, but the conference appears to run smoothly, everything appears to be well organised, so many thanks for everyone involved. I am really happy DiGRA conferences have now been organised in three continents, and we can in a sense move into a new phase in building the international community. I personally think it could be a good idea to perhaps to scale this thing (conference) down a bit, an entire week is exhausting, we need more and smaller activities, and it is also necessary to set the focus or tracks tighter in advance (providing a sort of semi-flexible grid where to fit best submissions while taking care of not having serious conflicts between paper sessions discussing same issues — not a simple trick, of course). Thus, the field is maturing, changes are taking place, and all of us need to take notice.