This one-day event will feature a high-profile keynote, intimate conversations with leading game researchers, and a showcase with playable demos and provocations. Our focus is on the leading innovations and debates at the intersection of games and communication.
Location: Washington, DC at the AU Game Lab
New Announcement: Keynote Address by Mia Consalvo (Concordia University).
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM: Check-In Registration and Coffee
9:00 AM – 9:05 AM: Opening Remarks (Maxwell Foxman & Benjamin Stokes)
9:10 AM – 9:50 AM: Playing with Keywords: Provocations to Rethink Our Field
Speakers are challenged to articulate, define and explain key cultural keywords in the study of games. They will both define and explain why the term should or should not be used.
Presentations include:
- “The Game Industry,” David Nieborg (U. of Toronto)
- “Interactivity,” Sarah Stang (York U.)
- “Simulation,” Joe A. Wasserman (WVU)
- “Serious Games,” Md Waseq Ur Rahman (U. of Oregon)
- “Empathy,” Kelli N. Dunlap (iThrive Foundation)
- “eSports,” Nicholas David Bowman and Gregory Cranmer (WVU/Clemson)
9:50 AM – 11:00 AM: Emerging Frontiers in Games + Communication
A panel looking at emerging lines and areas of research at the intersection of games and communication.
Presentations include:
- “Hacking for Nostalgia,” Jared Hansen (U. of Oregon)
- “Video Game Communities in Latin America: The Case of League of Legends in Mexico,” Luis Graciano Velazquez and Manuel Chavez (MSU)
- “Translating Informational Game Data into Real-time Entertainment: Understanding the Practices of eSports Commentators,” Jirassaya Uttarapong, Dale Schofield, Nicholas Abadiotakis and Donghee Yvette Wohn (NJIT)
11:05 AM – 12:10 PM: University Studios Showcase
Given the growth of games, immersive media and related studios in communications programs, this showcase will highlight work, insights and challenges that accompany making games.
Showcase includes:
- AU Game Lab (and the Humanities Truck) (with Benjamin Stokes)
- Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (with John Balash)
- Drexel University’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio (with Tony Rowe and Frank Lee)
- MAGIC Spell Studios @ RIT (with Andrew Phelps)
12:15 PM – 1:10 PM: An “Unconferenced” Lunch
A semi-structured lunch organized around key issues we need to work through as a field
1:10 PM – 1:50 PM: Dialogues about Methods that Break Play
What communications methods need to be rethought when it comes to the study of games? Dialogues between presenters and attendees will take place which are mediated by a leading scholar in the field.
Dialogues include:
- “Rethinking Content Analysis in Games,”Sean Burridge, Michael Gilbert and Jesse Fox (OSU) versus “Playing the Analysis: Qualitative Game Content Analysis,” Rowan Daneels, Steven Malliet, Michel Walrave and Heidi Vandebosch (U. of Antwerp/LUCA School of the Arts)
- “Methods of Power,” Yasheng She (UC Santa Cruz) vs. “Methods of Understanding Narrative” Kai Kehrer (U. of Freiburg)
2:00 PM – 3:15 PM: Keynote Speaker: Mia Consalvo (Concordia University)
Streaming is currently taking the world by storm, and has quickly become a major means by which people are engaged in online interactive media content. At the same time, the business of the videogame industry is understudied, as are the operations and mechanics of associated media platforms for the dissemination of live gameplay, particularly compared to work done to better understand games and players. Apart from attention to a few major companies such as Valve and smaller indie studios, we know little about how such businesses are shaping and reshaping how play happens. Even less attention is given to companies that support play, including services such as Twitch. Twitch.tv is currently the most widely adopted and influential platform for live streaming of videogame play in the West. Yet we know little other than popular accounts of how it originated and now functions. Beginning with a grounding in relevant theory and current research in cultural practices and online streaming behavior, this talk explores various components of Twitch such as its history of monetizing streaming activities including its Partner and Affiliate programs for streamers, its work with game developers to integrate Twitch API elements into games, and its ownership by Amazon. I argue that such platforms are attempting to reshape multiple aspects of the gaming experience, including how we play, how we watch others play, and how games themselves are made. This has broad potential impact when we consider games (and streaming itself) as educational tools, the impact of streaming as an education platform in tangentially related areas engaged in informal education such as art or computing, and the aggregation of audience in these new forms of interactive engagement.
3:15 PM – 5:30 PM: Games & Research Showcase and Reception
The final event of the day will exhibit demos, research and funder work. The goal of these presentations (through posters, demos and other forms of interactivity) is to show and not just tell about research.
Showcase includes:
- “Lost & Found: Teaching Prosocial Aspects of Religious Legal Systems,” Owen Gottlieb (RIT)
- “Crescent Loom: An Application of Learning Game Design Best Practices to a Neural Simulation,” Wick Perry (Reed College)
- “Fragile Equilibrium: An Action Game of Melancholic Balance,” Andrew Phelps (RIT)
- “ProblemUp!: A Playful Approach to Mediated Learning,” Cary Staples, Vittorio Marone and Katherine H. Greenberg (U. of Tennessee/UT San Antonio)
- “Building Frights: Haunted Houses, VR Games, And Genre Conventions,” Jonathan Villareal and Bobby Schweizer (Texas Tech)
- “Emotional Regulation and Empathy: The Effect of Game-Based Biofeedback on Empathetic Response to Game Characters,” Lisa Nguyen, Ashley Churchill and Siqi Cheng (Texas Tech/Beijing Normal U.)
- “Embodying a patient requiring an organ donation in an interactive VR environment: How variances in perspective-taking lead to different prosocial outcomes,” Benjamin Li and Hye Kyung Kim (NTU)
- “Bringing the symphony to the nursing home: Exploring the potential of immersive technology to promote well-being and quality of life among older adults with cognitive impairments,” Taylor Weigel and Meara Faw (Colorado State)
- “The Role of Immersion and Emotions in Persuasive Games,” Maral Abdollahi and Eu Gene Lee (U. of Minnesota)
- “Halo CE : Communicating Cultural Norms via Design Decisions,” Kelli N. Dunlap (iThrive Foundation)
A reception (co-organized with HEVGA) will occur along with the showcase.
Many thanks to our sponsors for their support of the conference