Blog

Several GI members presented research and spoke on panels at the 2019 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences (Congress) from June 1-7 at the University of British Columbia. Congress is the largest annual academic conference in Canada, providing a venue for over 70 scholarly associations.

[Congress brings] together academics, researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners to share findings, refine ideas, and build partnerships that will help shape the Canada of tomorrow.

- Congress Mission Statement

Marvin Pafla, GI and Collaborative Systems Laboratory (CSL) member and Master’s student in System Design Engineering, presented in this year’s Canadian HCI and Graphics Interface Conference in Kingston, Ontario, May 28-31. His paper “Jumping the Bandwagon: Overcoming Social Barriers to Public Display Use” explores why digital, public displays have low interaction rates.

Shout out to CSL Director, Stacey Scott, who was invited as a keynote speaker at this year’s conference!

The Critical Media Lab (CRIME Lab), directed by Marcel O'Gorman, hosted a Research Showcase on April 3, 2019 entitled "Infrastructure at Play". At the showcase, GI faculty member Lai-Tze Fan and GI English Graduate student members AC Atienza, Lillian A.

Tina Chan, M.Sc. candidate in Applied Health Sciences has been speaking with the media recently as her work on mental health support and mental health gameful design gains traction.

The Games Insititute (GI) Game Jam takes place every term. But, once a year, the event becomes a part of something larger: every Winter, the GI Game Jam becomes a satelite event for the internationally renowned Global Game Jam.

Fall 2018, Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs launched the first ever GRADflix competition. Graduate students were invited to create a 60-second video, moving slide show, or animation about their research. Entries were judged based on communication, creativity and visual impact, and technical quality.

Several members of the Games Institute and the UW Touchlab participated in the 13th annual ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces & Spaces (ISS) in Tokyo, Japan from November 25-28, 2018. The research they presented ranged from work on multi-touch surfaces and interactive 3D spaces to optimizing how health care providers collect feedback from patients.

Horizon Zero Dawn is a popular AAA game set in a post-post apocalyptic world where you play as a female protagonist, Aloy, and use a focus - an Augmented Reality-style interface - to help you battle mechanical animals. The game set the stage for the conversation, but the spotlight was on the panelists.

Alexandra Orlando, an alum of the Games Institute and a former Editor in Chief for First Person Scholar, maintains a YouTube channel for academically-oriented games criticism. When she's not working on video essays, she works as freelance writer.

How can games guide us, change us, and help us?

This was the question that left me speechless, simply because I wasn’t sure where to begin or even how to fully answer it. The question was the first of many posed by an eager group of Mexican exchange students visiting the GI.