Category: game studies

It is important to spread the word, copying the DiGRA 2011 CFP text here, for the official link, go to: http://www.digra.org/news_new/114.

THINK DESIGN PLAY
5th International Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Conference
14-17 September 2010

Hosted by the Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands

www.gamesconference.org

Call for participation

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After Leveling Up in the Netherlands (2003), Changing Views in Canada (2005), Situated Play in Japan (2007) and Breaking New Ground in England

(2009) the 5th DiGRA Conference returns to Utrecht for Think Design Play

The goal of the DiGRA conference is to advance the study of games and playfulness. DiGRA 2011 seeks to connect game research to the creative industries and society by fostering the development of an integrated practice of game research, design, engineering, entrepreneurship and play. The conference is designed as a physical and online playground for meaningful dialogue between all players in the field of games. Whilst the conference will include the presentation of (peer-reviewed) papers and practice, invited talks and workshops, we are also very interested in supporting alternative forms and processes through which to participate and stimulate debate and discussion.

Topics

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The focus of the 2011 DiGRA conference is on integrated practices of game research, the creative industries and society (think: game design, engineering, entrepreneurship and play). We invite contributions on all topics and perspectives.

Submission and deadlines

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Submissions are subject to peer review. Submissions should be in ACM SIG format and PDF (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates). Full papers will be published in conference proceedings, special issue journals as well as at the Digital Library of Digital Game Research Association on the DiGRA website (http://www.digra.org/dl).

Papers (individual or multi-author): submit an abstract of 600-800 words.

Full papers (optional): manuscripts of up to 7.000 words will be accepted for review. These will be reviewed and judged separately from abstract submissions. You do not need to submit an abstract in order to submit a full paper.

Alternative forms: we are also very interested in supporting alternative forms and processes through which to participate and stimulate debate and discussion, think:  posters, panels, roundtables and workshops but feel free to move beyond!

• Abstract papers and alternative forms submission: 21 February 2010
• Notification of acceptance:  12 April 2010
• Full paper submission: 18 April 2010
• Full paper notification of acceptance: 17 June 2010
• Camera ready version: 8 August 2010

The 5th DiGRA conference is hosted by the Utrecht School of the Arts The Utrecht region is the prime location in the Netherlands for activities related to game design and technology. The Utrecht School of the Arts is one of the largest art and culture-oriented institutes in Europe. The institute links design education and research to the creative industries and society. The DiGRA conference is hosted by the Faculty of Art, Media & Technology where creative design & research are practised in the combined fields of games, media and music, for entertainment as well as meaningful application. Together with Utrecht University, the Utrecht School of the Arts founded the Dutch Game Garden, an incubator for new game companies. and participates in the extensive GATE game research program.

I am not travelling to the US personally, but here is something that looks very interesting in this year’s Game Developers Conference: The Great Gamification Debate, featuring (taken from the GDC 2011 Schedule):

SPEAKER/S: Jesse Schell (Schell Games), Ben Sawyer (Digitalmill), Jane McGonigal (Institute for the Future), Ian Bogost (The Georgia Institute of Technology), Noah Falstein (The Inspiracy), Margaret Robertson (Hide&Seek), Ross Smith (Microsoft) and Margaret Wallace (Playmatics)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: TBD
TRACK / FORMAT: Serious Games Summit / Panel
DESCRIPTION: Only platform FanBoy wars have created a more passionate debate then the overall fracus between gamification’s current proponents and its detractors. Strong opinions exist on both sides of the pro/con debate that it seems suitable to have an actual honest debate over the merits, incarnations, and future of gamification. Featuring a who’s who of passionate GDC regulars and gamification developers who’ve deployed actual solutions into the field, this session will provide a unique debate format hosted by the Serious Games Summit advisory board and moderated by Noah Falstien of The Inspiracy. Assigning sides via a coin-toss to force each participant to prepare arguments for and against despite their own heartfelt positions The Great Gamification Debate will present all attendees with a deep critical analysis of the emergent space’s strengths and weaknesses. Both sides will compete to win the debate. Once the final opinion is fielded and a winner is declared each participant will be allowed a final closing moment to speak to whatever personal opinion they still hold but were unable to express in the heat of competition.

Hopefully all you who go there, participate!

This hefty tome is definitely worth all the extra publicity we can spare: Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola have done major cultural service to game, culture and art studies (as well as to the history) by collecting and putting together an amazing volume of photos, descriptive texts and cultural essays to celebrate the fine art of live action role-playing, Nordic style. Great work, congratulations. For more, see: http://nordiclarp.wordpress.com/

May 5^th-6^th, 2011, University of Tampere, FINLAND

The games industry carries the image of innovation and creativity, but still we know relatively little about the innovation processes that take place within the industry. To date, games and innovation have been studied in several disparate fields, including cultural studies, design research and industrial economics and management. Perhaps due to such a fragmented nature of academic work on the subject, the bulk of the influential work on games and innovation is found in practically oriented guidebooks authored by experienced games industry experts.

The present seminar aims at bringing together scholars of games and innovation from diverse fields and stimulating dialogue between them. Moreover, the goal of the seminar is to encourage the further development of rigorous academic research on the topic while keeping the work accessible to game professionals.

The seminar is welcoming submissions on the praxis of game development, the characteristics of innovation in game context, supply and demand for innovation in games, creativity and games, and the relationship of game innovation and legal practices. It has been argued that the growing level of concentration of the games industry has rendered innovation virtually non-existent in game development. The submissions are encouraged to comment on this claim. What is innovation in games? How does it manifest? Can you measure it? How has it changed since digital games were first introduced? Is creativity in games domain-specific? What is the status of innovation praxis within games industry?

Full text of the CFP is here: http://gamesandinnovationseminar.wordpress.com/cfp/

I am visiting the Homo Ludens 2.0 conference in Utrech this week, organised by the Playful Identities project. Below is the text of my abstract:

“The Culture and Identity of Casual Online Play”

It is relatively easy to find examples of deep, immersive play that has effects on personal or social identity: an intensive psychodrama, live action role-play, and even some massively multiplayer online (MMO) game players report experiences that have affected the ways they perceive themselves, or human condition in general. Most of contemporary play, however, is not deep or transformative in a similar manner. This talk will focus on casual gameplay that takes place in Facebook games such as Farmville (70-80 million users in 2010), as well as through mobile phone applications such as Foursquare (a location-based game for smartphones). The aim is to discuss the significance and meaning making activities that takes place among this kind of games, and highlight their contribution to game cultures.

Casual play is typically characterised by short sessions of playful interaction with games that are not particularly challenging, complex or extensive by character. It is also possible to play this kind of ‘casual games’ in a manner that is very dedicated and immersive, but then the play style approaches that of core or hardcore gamers, rather than casual play. The non-immersive character of casual play allows participants to divide their attention to other activities and issues beside that of gameplay, making such games particularly suitable for various social uses and purposes.

Based on a series of research projects and participant observation, the expanding range of casual game experiences will be discussed, as well as the social, entertaining and cultural uses which the contemporary online casual games have been adopted for. From this perspective, casual play appears to be an enabler in different personal and social processes, sometimes momentarily moving to the centre of attention, while mostly keeping in the periphery. While the vocal parts of game cultures have mostly articulated the pleasures of strongly immersive gameplay, the players of contemporary casual games have started to put forward an alternative view on what constitutes ‘good gameplay’, based on a slightly different aesthetics of play.

– In my final paper my intention is to focus on the internal tensions and conflicts that relate to setting ‘casual’ in relation to identity, or creation of culture around such an internally ambiguous concept.