Welcome to the Games Institute
We share the following sources with anyone seeing this
Indigenous Lives:
- Delivering on Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action
- #IndigenousReads
- 5 Indigenous Video Games You Should Be Playing
- The Difficult History of Indigenous People in Video Games
- WPL: Indigenous Voices
BLM:
- Blacklivesmatter.ca
- Office of Human Rights, Equity, and Inclusion: Anti-Racism Resources
- DOHR: Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation
- Where are all the Black Designers?
FPS Links:
- FPS: Agniq Suaŋŋaktuq And Kisima Inŋitchuŋa (Never Alone)
- An FPS interview with Tanya DePass, Black gaming scholar, that touches on the #Blackout
- FPS Articles on How Fantasy Games Deal with Race
- FPS Book Review on Woke Gaming: Digital Challenges and Oppression and Social Justice
The Games Institute (GI) is a multidisciplinary research centre at the University of Waterloo focused on the study of games, gamification, interactive technologies and immersive environments (AR/VR).
News Items
Our members are busy people; whether they’re taking their research to conferences, delivering keynote addresses, or running workshops at museums, we bring you the news to keep you informed on the latest research and activities.
Research Spotlights Blog
Every story offers an insider’s look into the Games Institute. How does brainstorming lead to new research directions? What really happens at the GI Game Jams? How does play-testing drive better game design? All this and more.
News
- Sep. 17, 2020First Person Scholar announces new Editor in Chief and Co-managing Editors
First Person Scholar officially announced the instalment of a new Editor in Chief and two Co-managing Editors, steering the middle-state publication into exciting directions and carrying on with the great legacy established by their predecessors.
- Sep. 16, 2020Lindsay Meaning analyzes the video game "Kim" in article published in Loading...
In her latest article published on Loading..., Lindsay Meaning analyzes the adaptation of the novel Kim (1901), by Rudyard Kipling, into a video game by the same name, Kim (2016).
- Sep. 10, 2020Study by Gustavo Tondello and Lennart Nacke shows personalized gameful systems lead to higher task performance
New GI member research published in Frontiers in Computer Science shows that personalized gameful systems lead to higher task performance.
Blog
- Aug. 25, 2020Behind the redesign of Energize, the sustainable energy game (pt. 2)
- Aug. 18, 2020Behind the redesign of Energize, the sustainable energy game (pt. 1)
- Aug. 4, 2020The Pam Report part 4: Building interdisciplinary, boundary-breaking environments
Building interdisciplinary, boundary-breaking environments
Although interdisciplinarity is stressed in academia, there is an evident gap in facilitating this in the corporate and administrative worlds. Much like academia, working environments from multidisciplinary teams with people bringing in perspectives from numerous academic backgrounds and various positions on methodology and knowledge. The GI administrative team is in a unique position where they must work with the academic world along with the internal, University structure, and external industry partners.
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Subscribe to our Events Mailing List to hear about all of the exciting things happening at the Games Institute!
Participate in Our Research
Subscribe to our Research Participants Mailing List to hear about opportunities to be a study participant in the work done by The Games Institute researchers!
First Person Scholar
Weekly critical essays, commentaries, and book reviews on games.
GI Jam
A thrice-annual, multi-day event hosted by The Games Institute (GI). Each of the events are open to the public and are designed to appeal to a wide variety of playful people.
Game Dev Club
Every Tuesday and Thursday from 6pm-9pm at the GI.
This is your opportunity to meet and collaborate with local game developers in a casual atmosphere.
Show off your latest projects, receive valuable play-testing feedback from like-minded peers, learn new tools and techniques, and network with potential collaborators.
Meet our people
Kevin Harrigan
Associate Professor, Drama and Speech Communication
Kevin Harrigan is a member of the University of Waterloo's Canadian Centre for Arts and Technology (CCAT). He teaches courses in multimedia and computer-game design in the Digital Arts Communication (DAC) program, and has been a technical expert witness in legal cases regarding Electronic Gaming Machines (EGMs).
