Current students

In 2022, the University of Waterloo Games Institute secured $50,000 of funding over two years from the Ontario government to provide scholarships to students pursuing careers in the gaming and esports industries. Following successful two round of scholarships awarded, the next round of applications is now open!

The Games Institute is currently facing a significant challenge to our model of operations. The budget cuts and hiring freeze have had a direct impact on the level of our staffing and the services we have been providing.

First Person Scholar, the middle-state publication supported and published by the Games Institute, is taking an indefinite hiatus due to a lack of resources. This includes funding cuts to the GI, but also a lack of game studies graduate students with enough funding to allow them time to work on FPS. FPS will remain available as an archive for everyone to access and use.

On January 9th, the Games Institute (GI) welcomed a delegation from the Faculty of Arts including Drs. Alexie Tcheuyap (Dean of Arts), Anna Esselment (Associate Dean, Graduate Studies), and Ana Ferrer (Associate Dean, Research) for a tour of the Institute.

Drs. Gerald Voorhees (Communication Arts) and Daniel Harley (Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business) have published ADE for Games: Approaches to Anti-Racism, Decolonization, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Games Research and Creation, a book generated from the ADE Speaker Series. This book is available as a free online resource, or a paid physical copy, through Play Story Press. 

If you were to ask any Games Institute (GI) member to generally state what their area of expertise is, almost a third would identify themselves as an “HCI researcher”. Human-computer interaction (HCI) is a multidisciplinary and intersectoral field where researchers investigate information technology design in various, intersectional ways. From improving the usability of interactive devices, understanding user behaviour, to broadly, and ubiquitously, understanding human experiences with technology, the field is constantly evolving and expanding the spectrum of what is considered “HCI research”.

On November 22, GI faculty members Drs. Lai-Tze Fan (Sociology and Legal Studies) and Neil Randall (English Language and Literature) participated on the panel “The Practical Side of Interdisciplinary Research” which focused on the “ins and outs of building teams across faculties.”

On November 26th, the GI showcased a selection of member research projects at the Tech Horizons Executive Forum event in Toronto, hosted by WatSPEED and CIBC. Pamela Maria Schmidt (Interdisciplinary Project and Communications Manager) and Dr. Emma Vossen (Knowledge Mobilization and Research Impact Officer) represented the GI and the multitude of interdisciplinary research projects that were created by GI members.

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Games Institute Seed Funding Program

In 2022, the GI ran its first-ever Seed Grant competition in which both faculty and students, who are active members of the GI, could apply for up to $15,000.00 to invest in a new collaboration or project with fellow members of the Institute. The awarded research groups had until the end of 2023 to finalize projects and spend all funding.

From May 15-19, 2023, the GI hosted the second iteration of the International Conference on Games and Narrative (ICGaN). 120 attendees from 34 universities, 14 countries, and 4 continents joined to explore the conference theme of Isolation and Return: The Making of Narrative Worlds.