Events

Dr. Bird will emphasize the two types of language taking place in video games: mechanical, coded language, and visual, representational language. She presents the importance of teaching the history of Indigenous representation in games and will break down various examples from Custer’s Revenge to the Mortal Kombat and Red Dead Redemption series to demonstrate these types of gamic language.

This event corresponds with an in-person workshop. Separate registration required and seating is limited.

Due to technological advancements, communicating with computer systems using natural language has become a casual phenomenon. Speech-based systems, like Siri or Cortana, have become widely popular among people due to their convenience. Speech interaction encompasses a social component as it reflects the fundamental human capacity for communication and enables interpersonal engagement through verbal exchange. This makes human-agent interaction an essential topic of research in the field of human-computer interaction.

This panel highlights emerging scholars in Black game studies. Panelists will present recent and/or ongoing work, sharing a glimpse of the emerging research questions animating the field. Topics include Black worldbuilding in and across games (Fletcher), perceptions of Black male exceptionalism in gaming cultures (Dashiell), and the relationship between avatar representation and Black user experience in social VR (DeVeaux).

Across digital media, Black people are portrayed in ways that are derogatory and harmful–if we are depicted at all. The representation of afro-textured hair is noticeably limited, with options ranging from comically large afros, unstyled “dread” locs, and misshapen cornrows. Through projects like ‘Ye or Nay? and the Open Source Afro Hair Library, artist A.M. Darke explores the consumption of Black bodies and the construction of a Black virtuality. In this talk, Darke shares a critical and liberatory approach for engaging marginalized communities in games and digital media.

With recent waves of layoffs, high-profile workplace harassment cases, and a notoriously short career length for gender minorities and people of colour, the transition of new workers into the game industry involves navigating a spate of barriers to equity and success that have been understudied in academic research. This panel talks about "The First Three Years", an ongoing longitudinal study of graduates of game programs in Canada and the United States, following the journey of 207 students as they move into the game industry.

An enduring appeal of interactive entertainment media such as video games is that they invite the user to co-create the on-screen experience. More than an invitation, these experiences demand near-constant attention from players—and do so on myriad dimensions, including cognitive (problem-solving), emotional (affective reactions), apparatus (control or interface intuitiveness), exertional (physical activity) and social (attending to social agents).

What if we could make complex social and cultural questions playable? And what if we could do so through interactions with familiar digital interfaces set in alternative presents and near futures? The work I will discuss sits at the intersection between the design traditions of speculative and critical design on the one hand, and the philosophies and best practices of game design, playful media and interaction design on the other.

Spectating digital games can be exciting. However, due to its vicarious nature, spectators often wish to engage in the gameplay beyond just watching and cheering. To blur the boundaries between spectators and players, we propose a novel approach called "Fused Spectatorship", where spectators watch their hands play games by loaning bodily control to a computational Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) system.

Since the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985, Asia has remained the center of the manufacturing of video game hardware (China and Southeast Asia), the center of game innovation and the birthplace of most game genres (Japan), and the largest reliable resource of consumers (nearly half of game players reside in Asia).