Curating a Community for Novices and Experts: Lessons Learned from the International Conference on Games and Narrative

This report incorporates elements from the research spotlight "ICGaN 2023 - Isolation and Return Through the World of Hybrid Viewing" by Sid Heeg. It has been updated and, in parts, rewritten to reflect upon additional challenges and achievements of the International Conference on Games and Narrative.

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. The conference organizers urged games and interactive media scholars to explore how societally, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a reconsideration and reorientation of our personal and communal lives. This resulted in 17 sessions, 47 unique presentations, 5 keynotes from academia and industry, 3 workshops, 4 academic game streams, and a game jam. The conference also had strong community support, with over 40 GI members and volunteers in attendance with 11 holding positions in the conference Organizing Committee. 

ICGaN began within a small reading group led by Drs. Ken Hirschkop and GI Executive Director, Neil Randall (both faculty from English Language and Literature) called the “Games and Narrative Reading Group” (GNRG). The GNRG started in early 2020 as a way for humanities graduate students specializing in games studies to discuss narrative theories, emerging literature on multimedia, and apply them to the medium of games. Dr. Hirschkop, an expert on film and literary narrative theories but new to the world of games, encouraged the group to consider how game mechanics interact and impact linear storytelling motifs, and the different ways in which stories can be built in non-linear fashions for open-world games. Dr. Randall, as a games and narrative scholar, added a counterpoint to Dr. Hirschkop’s more traditional perspective. These discussions created the basis for ICGaN. The vision for the conference was to engage all narrative scholars—including those in other disciplines such as social sciences, engineering, and design.    

When the possibility of a 2023 conference came into question, Drs. Hirschkop and Randall returned as conference co-Chairs, and put together a committee made up of graduate students and GI staff. The first order of operation for the 2023 Organizing Committee was to investigate the possibility of hosting the conference in a hybrid format. Hybridity increases the scale of any operation and in context of a conference, the labour is doubled—what exists for those in virtual spaces, must also exist for those in physical. Both worlds must also have opportunities to interact with one another. 

The inaugural ICGaN was hosted in a fully virtual format on account of the active lockdowns. With universities gradually opening their doors again, hybridity became an important question alongside consideration of which conference format would be most inclusive. As the conference was mostly geared toward graduate students, the Organizing Committee held discussions with GI student members about which format they preferred. The results varied. Many students felt that the pandemic inhibited both emerging and established researchers to share their work with wider audiences and took away the valuable opportunity to network. Even when held virtually, a majority found that vital conferencing aspects were untranslatable in virtual formats. For instance, Lindsay Meaning, PhD student in English Language and Literature, and member of both the 2021 and the 2023 ICGaN Organizing Committee, noted that “online spaces are really great for the academic part of the conference, but it’s hard to know when to say something,” and found it difficult to socialize. Alternatively, virtual conferences—or at the very least, virtual components—increase accessibility in numerous ways from being more welcoming to those with mobility restrictions or chronic illnesses, to creating an opportunity for those who do not have the funds necessary to travel. For scholars conscious of their environmental footprint, virtual conferences are also more eco-friendly. 

The Organizing Committee concluded that a hybrid conference was essential in a post-pandemic world and to maximize accessibility. For the virtual portions, the same format used for the 2021 ICGaN would be replicated, which relied on a mixture of the platforms Discord and Gather. While Discord allowed for high quality video sharing, chat rooms, image hosting, and a high degree of customization, the importance of Gather was its use of avatars and proximity chat integrated with web-conferencing tools. Gather encourages users to design custom spaces where users, with their avatars, can walk around rooms, overhear conversations when close to others, and project their voices so all occupants in the virtual room can hear. This encourages virtual participants to engage more actively and organically, as the software replicants small side conversations, intimate table discussions, and large lecture halls. It even has integration for virtual games to provide a more social aspect. While Lindsay Meaning helped create rooms that mimicking the GI, GI member Joseph Tu (Systems Design Engineering) was actively working with the developers of Gather on another project and was able to provide exclusive assets to further increase customization and curation of the virtual spaces.

The in-person and hybrid elements were supported by Dr. Randall’s CFI-funded Storyboard Lab. The Storyboard Lab challenges what it means to do work and research in hybrid formats, and investigates best practices for curating engagement utilizing large, interactive touch screen displays. For the conference, seven of these large displays were used along-side two 360-degree Owl cameras to run concurrent sessions, workshops, academic game analysis streams, and socials. Conference attendees praised this blend of software as it provided those core conference experiences that are often lost in virtual formats. Meaning noted that this specific blend of software to create this unique hybrid set-up “made the in-person interactions feel more spontaneous, organic, and off the cuff.”

An important component of curating an interdisciplinary conference is catering to different disciplines and divergent conference norms. Alex Fleck, PhD Candidate in English Language and Literature and member of the Organizing Committee, found that:

This also meant finding keynotes from various disciplinary backgrounds, in both academia and industry, to not only encompass the breadth of narrative work but also to appeal to a larger audience. The conference featured 5 keynotes: Dr. Jakub Szamałek (Narrative Director at Rebel Wolves), Dr. Jesper Juul (Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts), Dr. Kishonna Gray (University of Kentucky), Dr. Mark JP Wolf (Concordia University, Wisconsin), and Dr. Mia Consalvo (Concordia University, Montréal). Many of these scholars are the forefront of games studies and some—such as Dr. Juul—are considered living, founding figures of the discipline itself. In the case of Dr. Szamałek, he is an industry professional who, in his previous life as a Principal Writer at CD Projekt Red, worked on video game titles such as The Witcher 3 (2015), Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), Thronebreaker (2018), and more. Dr. Wolf even decided to attend the conference in person to better network with young scholars and like-minded academics in different disciplines.  

The conference was opened to GI members to sit in on session, and in particular, the Organizing Committee encouraged faculty and graduate students from non-humanities disciplines to sit in on keynotes and sessions that sparked their interest. Many did take the opportunity, such as Dr. Michael Barnett-Cowan, Associate Professor in Kinesiology and Health Sciences who specializes in virtual reality (VR) and brain imaging. Dr. Barnett-Cowan, who is now looking an embodiment, immersion, and narratives in VR along with his graduate students, sat in on a few sessions exploring narrative to see how it correlates to their own research. They were also joined by PhD student Ellie Sanoubari (Systems Design Engineering) who’s research blends robotics and storytelling. She was also interested in learning about the complexity of video game narrative construction. Both said that the panels they attended helped re-orient their perspectives on how to approach narratives, and potential contacts for future interdisciplinary projects. 

GI staff also guided and mentored graduate students that were part of the Organizing Committee with their expertise on planning large events and logistics, administrative duties, communications, and management. Fleckand Meaning worked closely with GI staff to learn the ins and outs of planning a large hybrid conference as members of the logistics portion of the organizing committee, who oversaw what the other committee members were doing. “It’s a different experience than research,” Fleck noted. “If it’s there, try it, and you may find you’re really enjoying it,” and encouraged other graduate students to take on these non-research opportunities to gain skills that they otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn in the regular PhD ecosystem. “I learned more about communication, professional communication, especially with people you don’t know,” Meaning said. “People management, task delegation, guiding a team…it really teaches you to try and not do everything yourself…[and] knowing when not to write that extra email.” 

Along with GI members who attended the conference, 26 GI members showed their support by volunteering as technical supports, logistical supports, submission reviewers, and even session chairs. Many of the GI’s interdisciplinary researchers who are rooted in STEM research, such as Mohamed Fouda (Community Member working for Dr. Oliver Schneider), Dr. Stuart Hallifax (alumni, currently User Experience Researcher at Ubisoft), Dr. Hector Perez (Postdoctoral fellow, School of Public Health) and Dr. Will Zhao (Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business) were all interested in supporting the conference and learning about how humanities research can apply to their own work. As such, the sessions they chaired were matched with their active research interests, so they could both provide commentary on the subject from an alternative perspective, while also learning from experts versed in humanity-based methodology and research. For example, Dr. Perez had the chance to chair the Session “Serious Game Projects: The Health Care Sector” which featured Dr. Sjors Groeneveld (Saxion University) who presented “Gamifying Community Health Nursing Competencies: A Hybrid Learning EnvironmentDesign using Serious Gaming”; and Dr. Katherine Shaeffer (Shadow Health) and PhD Candidate Najwa Al-Tabba (University of Florida) who presented “Diversifying the 'Verse: Social Determinants of Health Meet Character Creation”. Dr. Groeneveld is a scientist, Dr. Shaeffer is an industry professional, and Al-Tabba, is working on an interdisciplinary PhD at the faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Both presentations focused on how game design, and gamification, help create training simulations. The presenters, who all identify as developers, emphasized the importance of narratives making games feel immersive, and the positive correlation this has to improving knowledge retention for their target audience: busy healthcare professionals. This research also directly aligns with Dr. Perez’s own, and was able to give him further insight on how important narration is for immersive training in the health sector.