Category: events

Call for Papers: Physical and Digital in Games and Play seminar

May 29-31, 2013, University of Tampere, FINLAND

Digital games have had a visible role on the contemporary rise of game cultures and game studies, but there are still under-explored research areas in the relation of digital games to other forms of games and play, including e.g. traditional card and board games, play with physical toys, paper-based puzzles, and physical sport games. The research carried out in such areas holds potential for both interesting comparative work in theoretical and empirical game studies, as well as for serving inspiration for experimental design research into hybrid, digital-analogue or augmented game designs.

‘Physical and Digital in Games and Play’ seminar invites presentations from multiple topics related to the unique characteristics of physical play or digital play, as well as to the interplay of these two. The aim of the seminar is to bring together scholars of games and play from diverse fields and to stimulate dialogue between them.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Theoretical analyses of hybrid games, hybrid toys and hybridity in games

• Case-studies of hybrid play products

• Hybrid experiences in physical and digital play

• Toy design and designer toys

• Board game and table top game design

• Sports and exergames

• Game franchising and IP

• Collectibles cultures

• Cosplay

• Augmented reality games

• Live action role-playing

• History of toys

• Avatar/Body/Doll

• Digital copy vs. physical copy

• Game industry vs. toy industry

• Folk games, folk toys and player created hybridity

• 3D Printing and games

• Games and art, playgrounds and museums, toys and readymade

• Physical and digital in gambling

The seminar is the ninth in the annual series of game studies working paper seminars organised by Game Research Lab at University of Tampere. Due to the work-in-progress emphasis, we strongly encourage submitting late breaking results, working papers and/or submissions from graduate students. Early considerations from projects currently in progress are most welcome, as the purpose of the seminar is to have peer-to-peer discussions and thereby provide support in refining and improving research work in this area. Tentative plans have been made on a publication of selected papers.

The papers to be presented will be chosen based on extended abstract review. Full papers are distributed prior the event to all participants, in order to facilitate discussion.

The two-day event consists of themed sessions that aim to introduce current research projects and discuss ongoing work in studies of games industry, innovation and design processes. The seminar will be chaired by Professor Frans Mäyrä (School of Information Sciences, University of Tampere). There will be invited paper commentators who will be announced later.

The seminar will be held in Tampere, Finland and will be free of charge; the number of participants will be restricted.

Important Dates

* Abstract Deadline: February 25, 2013

* Notification of Acceptance: March 11, 2013

* Full Paper deadline: April 22, 2013

* Seminar dates: May 29-31, 2013

Submission Guidelines

The extended abstract submissions should be between 500-1000 words (excluding references). Abstracts should be sent to <physicaldigitalseminar {at} gmail.com> as plain text only (no attachments). Guidelines for submitting a full seminar paper will be provided with the notification of acceptance.

Our aim is that everyone participating has been able to read materials submitted to the seminar. Therefore, the maximum length for a full paper is set to 6000 words (excluding references). Note also that the presentations held at the seminar should encourage discussion, instead of only repeating the information presented in the papers. Tentatively, every paper will be presented for 10 minutes and discussed for 20 minutes.

Seminar web site: http://physicaldigitalseminar.wordpress.com/
Event page at Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/397317950347657/

Organised by: http://gamelab.uta.fi
University of Tampere / SIS, TRIM / Game Research Lab

This was recently posted to DiGRA’s Gamesnetwork mailing list, please circulate:

The Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) announces the Call for Participation for DiGRA 2013, to be hosted by Georgia Institute of Technology at the Georgian Terrace Hotel in Atlanta Georgia. DiGRA 2013 will bring together a diverse international community of interdisciplinary researchers engaged in cutting edge research in the field of game studies.

Theme: DeFragging Game Studies

This year’s proposed theme is a playful linguistic remix of the terms “frag” and “defrag.” Defragging is the computer term for reducing file fragmentation. Fragging, derived from the military term for killing a superior officer of one’s own unit, has become video game parlance for the temporary killing of another player.

In the early game studies community, a good deal of fragging (in all three senses) took place between various camps, schools of thought and disciplines. This included discussions as to whether or not game studies should split into more discipline-centered communities; however, the overall trend has been to continue to grow our field as an “interdiscipline” that includes humanities, social sciences and psychology, computer science, design studies, and fine arts. Borrowing from the computer engineering term, the theme for DiGRA 2013 highlights this process of defragmenting, which both embraces and better articulates our diverse methods and perspectives while allowing the game studies research community to remain a coherent and unified whole.

DiGRA 2012 will take place immediately proceeding Dragon*Con, America’s largest multigenre fan convention. For more information, visit: http://www.dragoncon.org/

For more information, visit: http://dm.lmc.gatech.edu/digra2013/ or email digra2013@digra.org

Another interesting PhD dissertation will be publicly defended soon (Oct 18th) here in the University of Tampere:

Harviainen J. Tuomas, “Systemic Perspectives on Information in Physically Performed Role-play”. Acta Universitatis Tamperensis; 1764, ISBN: 978-951-44-8913-6, Electronic series: Acta Electronica Universitatis Tamperensis; 1237; ISBN of the electronic version: 978-951-44-8914-3; URN: http://urn.fi/urn:isbn:978-951-44-8914-3. Tampere: University of Tampere Press, 2012.

Abstract:

This dissertation examines information phenomena that take place in, and related to, physically performed pretence play. The emphasis is on one hand on the play experience and the elements constituting it, but underneath that all exist information processes which essentially define the perimeters of what can be done during play and how.

Being primarily a metatheoretical work, the dissertation draws on the empirics of earlier researchers and practitioners, further supported with the author’s own experiments and field observations. References are analyzed with the use of systematic analysis, a hermeneutical method for finding their key essences, which are then compared with other works. Through this process, new data emerges from the combinations of the old, as seemingly disparate concepts are shown to actually discuss the same things.

The primary research question of the dissertation is “What are the essential information systems traits of live-action role-playing situations, and how do those traits affect information behavior during play?” To understand that question, I explain how live-action role-playing can be defined and what the discursive limits of the phenomenon are. Through a look at how larping takes place also in activities such as historical re-enactment, sadomasochist roleplaying and post-modern magic, I show that the same processes exist in them, but with a different type of framing.

People inside a play-space require information, and their play consists of information behavior: active searches, ongoing searching, passive attention and passive searching are all utilized. Players interact with each other and the fictional environment through cognitive subject representations, constructed as extrapolations from information given by the organizers. This makes a larp a self-referential, multiple index entry information system. Within it, the play is its players’ primary frame of reference, and the activities within seem separate from mundane existence.

As parts of any inevitably missing information cannot be found inside the game-system, players use various strategies to handle the conflict between needing more information and not being able to access optimal sources for it without breaking the fictional reality. Their reliance on second-hand sources, particularly cognitive authorities – persons or groups presumed to be in the know – is heightened.

Players also protect the illusion, by engaging in boundary control, the act of screening what is allowed to cross the magic circle. Participants berrypick information so as not to disturb the illusion of play with direct searches to outside sources. They also blunt information that would cause problems to the activity at hand and its fiction, and they seek to follow the agreed upon rules of the play while supporting the immersion of others.

In a hermeneutical sense, role-playing consists of multiple texts that interact with each other. Some of them take place outside the fictional reality of play, others within, and some cross the magic circle, being transformed by it. Players constantly re-signify elements within the fictional reality, so as to keep it functional and interesting, thus creating evolving texts out of the re-significations and any meaningful actions they perform. The participants interpret such texts and reference to them in their own play. In order to be intriguing, many larps manipulate their players’ information uncertainty, in the form of an anomalous state of knowledge (ASK), to either extend the experience or to enhance learning.

To study and explain these issues I construct and introduce the sub-field of liminality informatics, the analysis of ritualistic, liminal activities as information systems. Liminal spaces do not just include key information processes – their very liminality requires those processes (as well as others) in order to exist.

All these phenomena also exist in information environments that are not connected to games or play. The play-context, however, makes them more prominent and visible than in many other cases, and thus easier to observe and analyze. The artificial nature of games, including the way a designer can manipulate their systems properties and internal documents, further emphasizes this. By analyzing the impact of the information environment in liminal games, it is possible to understand much more also about the influence of information environments in mundane life.

See: http://acta.uta.fi/english/teos.php?id=1000162