This actually makes great sense: “For the first time, the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) and the Foundation of Digital Games (FDG) will partner in an unprecedented gathering of games researchers. We invite researchers and educators within game research, broadly construed, to submit their work.” More at: http://www.digra.org/145807/#more-145807
Tag: game studies
anything games, games research related
Verkkolähetys: Professoriliiton seminaari
Tänään Kansallismuseon auditoriossa on klo 13 alkaen Professoriliiton syysseminaari “Tutkimusta kaikkien hyödyksi”. Itse puhun siitä miten perustutkimus kohtaa innovaatiot pelitutkimuksessa. Seminaaria voi seurata ilmaiseksi verkkolähetyksenä osoitteesta: http://video.helsinki.fi/Arkisto/flash.php?id=20485. Seminaarin kutsu ja ohjelma ovat täällä: http://www.professoriliitto.fi/@Bin/412110/Professoriliitto_Syysseminaari_webversion.pdf.
UTAgamelab has new website!
The website of University of Tampere Game Research Lab has been redesigned, with updated information about our research projects, research staff, the university degree education we provide, plus with information about seminars, conferences, public talks and other activities that we engage in. Check them out at: http://gameresearchlab.uta.fi.
Video Game Policy: new book
Most recent book to come out in the Routledge Advances in Games Studies series that I have contributed into: Video Game Policy: Production, Distribution, and Consumption (edited by Steven Conway & Jennifer deWinter) is now available for pre-order. Here is the table of contents, including our co-authored chapter on re-conceptualizing what “video game violence” is, and means, with Gareth Schott:
Introduction – Steven Conway & Jennifer deWinter
Section I: Intellectual Property, Privacy, and Copyright
1.Laws of the Game: Intellectual Property in the Video Game Industry – Mark Methenitis
2.Digital Locks, Labor, and Play in Canada’s Copyright Policy: Filtering Power through Configurations of Game Development – Owen Livermore
3.The Princess Doesn’t Leave the Castle: How Nintendo’s WiiWare Imprisons Indie Game Design – Theo Plothe
4.Policies, Terms of Service, and Social Networking Games – Stephanie Vie
Section II: Rating Systems and Cultural Politics
5.E(SRB) Is for Everyone: Game Ratings and the Practice of Content Evaluation – Judd Ethan Ruggill and Ken S. McAllister
6. Games for Grown-Ups?: An Historical Account of the Australian Classification System – Steven Conway and Laura M. Crawford
7. Rockstar versus Australia – Mark Finn
8. Play Britannia: The Development of U.K. Video Game Policy – Ren Reynolds
Section III: Violence in Video Games
9. Re-conceptualizing Game Violence: Who Is Being Protected and from What? – Gareth Schott and Frans Mäyrä
10. Playing Around with Causes of Violent Crime: Violent Video Games as a Diversion from the Policy Challenges Involved in Understanding and Reducing Violent Crime – James D. Ivory and Adrienne Holz Ivory
11. Banning Violent Video Games in Switzerland: A Public Problem Going Unnoticed – Michael Perret
12. Toxic Gamer Culture, Corporate Regulation, and Standards of Behavior among Players of Online Games – Thorsten Busch, Kelly Boudreau, and Mia Consalvo
Section IV: Politics and Regulations
13.The Right to Play in the Digital Era – Tom Apperley
14. Against the Arcade: Video Gaming Regulation and the Legacy of Pinball – Carly A. Kocurek
15. Curt Schilling’s Gold Coins: Lessons for Creative Industry Policy in Light of the 38 Studios Collapse – Randy Nichols
16.The Ban on Gaming Consoles in China: Protecting National Culture, Morals, and Industry within an International Regulatory Framework – Bjarke Liboriussen, Andrew White, and Dan Wang
17. Regulating Rape: The Case of RapeLay, Domestic Markets, International Outrage, and Cultural Imperialism – Jennifer deWinter
Afterword – Ashley S. Lipson
The publisher’s web pages with ordering information can be found at: https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138812420.
The Video Game Debate, new book available for (pre)order
New book available for preorder: The Video Game Debate: Unravelling the Physical, Social, and Psychological Effects of Video Games (eds. Rachel Kowert & Thorsten Quandt; publisher: Routledge). Table of contents for this highly interesting, multidisciplinary volume is below:
1. A Brief History of Video Games – James D. Ivory
2. The Rise (and Refinement) of Moral Panic – Nicholas D. Bowman
3. Are Electronic Games Health Hazards or Health Promoters? – Cheryl K. Olson
4. The Influence of Digital Games on Aggression and Violent Crime – Mark Coulson and Christopher J. Ferguson
5. Gaming Addiction and Internet Gaming Disorder – Mark D. Griffiths
6. Social outcomes: Online game play, social currency, and social ability – Rachel Kowert
7. Debating How to Learn From Video Games – John L. Sherry
8. Video Games and Cognitive Performance – Gillian Dale and C. Shawn Green
9. Exploring Gaming Communities – Frans Mäyrä
10. No black and white in video game land! Why we need to move beyond simple explanations in the video game debate – Thorsten Quandt and Rachel Kowert
The publisher’s pages for the book are at: http://www.tandf.net/books/details/9781138831636/
There is also an Amazon.com page for pre-ordering: http://www.amazon.com/The-Video-Game-Debate-Psychological/dp/1138831638 .
Also, the author’s version of my chapter that discusses the study of “gaming communities” is available from here: http://people.uta.fi/~frans.mayra/Gaming_Communities.pdf.
Talk in London about Hybrid Playful Experiences
I will give a talk about “Hybrid Playful Experiences – Bridging the Physical-Digital Divide” this Wednesday in London, at the Innovations for the Benefit of Packaging and Commercial Printing event. This research is related both the the ‘Hybrid Media COST Action’ (FP1104) that we collaborate with several European partners, as well as research on playfulness and hybrid experiences, carried out in such research projects of ours as Hybridex, OASIS, Ludification of Culture and Society and others. The vacation period is July in Finland, but there is still some work to do – this will be my last work trip though, before the summer vacation starts. More information about the event: http://wcpcswansea.com/events/24-06-2015/Innovations-for-the-Benefit-of-Packaging-and-Commercial-Printing#agenda .
The Dark Side of Game Play, book out
Finally: the very important “Dark Play” volume that has long been in the making is finally out! Titled The Dark Side of Game Play: Controversial Issues in Playful Environments (Routledge 2015), the work is edited by the excellent team of Torill Elvira Mortensen, Jonas Linderoth and Ashley ML Brown. It includes 15 chapters expanding our understanding of what ‘play’ is and what it means, including my text about “dark play of children”, including the sometimes perhaps subversive uses for LEGO pieces and video games they often come up with (a draft version of my chapter is here). Here is the table of contents:
Part I: Introduction
1. Dark Play: The Aesthetics of Controversial Playfulness
Torill Elvira Mortensen and Jonas Linderoth
Part II: Discourses of Dark Play
2. Analyzing Game Controversies: A Historical Approach to Moral Panics and Digital Games
Faltin Karlsen
3. Of Heroes and Henchmen: The Conventions of Killing Generic Expendables in Digital Games
René Glas
4. Don’t Forget to Die: A Software Update is Available for the Death Drive
Emily Flynn-Jones
Part III: Dark Play or Darkly Played?
5. Killing Digital Children: Design, Discourse and Player Agency
Björn Sjöblom
6. Little Evils: Subversive Uses of Children’s Games
Frans Mäyrä
7. Darkly Playing Others
Miguel Sicart
Part IV: Dark Play and Situated Meaning
8. Three Defences for the Fourteen-Inch Barbed Penis: Darkly Playing with Morals, Ethics and Sexual Violence
Ashley ML Brown
9. Exploring the Limits of Play: A Case Study of Representations of Nazism in Games
Adam Chapman and Jonas Linderoth
10. Keeping the Balance: Morals at the Dark Side
Torill Elvira Mortensen
11. Fabricated Innocence: On How People Can be Lured into Feel Bad Games
Staffan Björk
Part V: Designing for Dark Play
12. Massively Multiplayer Dark Play; Treacherous Play in EVE Online
Marcus Carter
13. Dark Play in Dishonored
Kristine Jørgensen
14. Sonic Descents: Musical Dark Play in Survival and Psychological Horror
Isabella van Elferen
15. Boosting, Glitching and Modding Call of Duty: Assertive Dark Play Manifestations, Communities, Pleasures and Organic Resilience
Alan Meades
Link to publisher’s information page about the book: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138827288/.
Paris keynote
I am happy to be the keynote speaker in the “Game Studies – à la française!” conference that takes place in the University Paris 13, 3-5 June 2015. My talk is titled “Inter- and Multidisciplinarity of Game Studies: The Expanding Challenges”. You can access the conference program here: http://gsalf.hypotheses.org/edition-2015-les-supports-du-jeu-video/le-programme
Narrative Theory, Literature, and New Media: new book
New book, edited by Mari Hatavara, Matti Hyvärinen, Maria Mäkelä and myself, is now available for pre-order: Narrative Theory, Literature, and New Media: Narrative Minds and Virtual Worlds (Routledge). This interdisciplinary work discusses and analyses constructions of storyworlds and minds in games as well as in literature and media from multiple perspectives. Here is the table of contents:
Introduction: Minds in Action, Interpretive Traditions in Interaction Mari Hatavara, Matti Hyvärinen, Maria Mäkelä, and Frans Mäyrä
Section I
1. Texts, Worlds, Stories: Narrative Worlds as Cognitive and Ontological Concept Marie-Laure Ryan
2. Storyworlds and Paradoxical Narration: Putting Classifications to a Transmedial Test Liviu Lutas
3The Charge against Classical and Post-Classical Narratologies’ “Epistemic” Approach to Literary FictionGreger Andersson
Section II
4. How You Emerge from This Game Is up to You: Agency, Positioning, and Narrativity in The Mass Effect Trilogy Hanna-Riikka Roine
5. Playing the Worlds of Prom Week Ben Samuel, Dylan Lederle-Ensign, Mike Treanor, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Josh McCoy, Aaron Reed, and Michael Mateas
6.Scripting Beloved Discomfort: Narratives, Fantasies, and Authenticity in Online Sadomasochism J. Tuomas Harviainen
7.Storyworld in Text-Messages: Sequentiality and Spatialisation Agnieszka Lyons
Section III
8. Defending the Private and the Unnarratable: Doomed Attempts to Read and Write Literary and Cinematic Minds in Marguerite Duras’s India Cycle Tytti Rantanen
9. Of Minds and Monsters: the Eventfulness of Monstrosity and the Poetics of Immersion in Horror LiteratureGero Brümmer
10. Narrative Conventions in Hallucinatory Narratives Tommi Kakko
11.Narrative and Minds in the Traditional Ballads of Early Country Music Alan Palmer
Section IV
12.Mind Reading, Mind Guessing, or Mental-State Attribution? The Puzzle of John Burnside’s A Summer of Drowning Matti Hyvärinen
13 Mind as World in the Reality Game Show Survivor Maria Mäkelä
14 Performing Selves and Audience Design: Interview Narratives on the Internet Jarmila Mildorf
15 Documenting Everyday Life: Mind Representation in the Web Exhibition “A Finnish Winter Day” Mari Hatavara
Afterword: A New Normal? Brian McHale
Publisher book page link: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138854147/.
Finland in ‘Video Games Around the World’ book
I got today in mail delivery my author’s copy of the very interesting book Video Games Around the World (The MIT Press). Edited by the encyclopaedicly knowledgeable and eminently productive Mark J.P. Wolf, it features 40 essays about games and game cultures in different parts of the world (all continents are discussed – even Antarctica gets a mention). With 656 pages this is a major, international collaborative event for global game studies, and I am happy to having been part of the project. Hopefully it will stimulate even more detailed, and also comparative, international studies in the future. I have also put online an early draft version (dated in April 2012) of my own chapter on Finnish games and game culture here: http://people.uta.fi/~frans.mayra/Mayra-Video_Games_in_Finland.pdf. More of the book from the MIT Press page at: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/video-games-around-world.
And, if you are interested in games and game culture of Finland, I very much recommend the recent Finnish Video Games: A History and Catalog by Juho Kuorikoski, the most comprehensive work on the topic and probably the leading work on games of any single, small country from this perspective.
frans goes blog 
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