On June 12-16, 2021, the Games Institute (GI) held its inaugural International Conference on Games and Narrative. This 5-day conference welcomed participants and speakers from 47 universities, 28 of which were from outside of North America, some as far as Australia and South East Asia. Presentations included scholars at the forefront of games studies and offered a diversity of ideas and engaging discussions with keynote speakers, including Dr. Elizabeth LaPensée, Dr. Souvik Mukherjee, Dr. Clara Fernández-Vara, Dr. Jan-Noel Thön, Dr. Astrid Ensslin, and Dr. Kishonna Gray.
Conference topics involved narrative structure in videogames, narrative co-creation in games, narratives and social difference, gameplay and narrative, game worlds, and technology and presence. Participants had the opportunity to examine the intersection between videogames and narrative through a variety of online formats: live lectures, speaker panels, video essays, workshops, and live streaming gameplay with commentary and discussion. The entire conference was available online, in formats designed for maximum accessibility.
The conference organizing committee included GI members: Drs. Ken Hirschkop and Neil Randall (Games Institute/English Language and Literature), as well as GI doctoral students Lindsay Meaning, Alex Fleck, Justin Carpenter, Nicholas Hobin.
For more information, please visit ICGaN webpages to learn more about what the conference covered, and keep up to date on future conference news.