News

The Games Institute is excited to announce the CfP for the upcoming International Conference on Games and Narrative 2025 (ICGaN'25). This year’s conference theme is “Adapt, Adopt, Adjust: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Adaptation, Storytelling, and Simulation” asks us to consider the power of adapted and adaptive narratives, experiences, genres, and mechanics. 

The Games Institute (GI) in collaboration with Engineering Outreach recently hosted a collaborative event that turned the GI into a vibrant workshop for young virtual reality (VR) enthusiasts.

On July 2^nd, the Games Institute (GI) welcomed its latest postdoctoral fellow Dr. Geneva Smith. Dr. Smith, who is also an instructor of Game Design in Communication Arts and will be co-supervised by Drs. Lennart Nacke (Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business) and Mark Hancock (Management Science and Engineering).

The Games Institute Podcast has been featured on the HigherEdPods platform, a directory for university associated podcast series from institutions like Harvard, Stanford, Zurich, MIT, and many, many more.

CHI 2024 ran from May 11 - 16, and many GI members attend to present their papers, in-progress studies, and projects.

On March 16, Dr. Shana MacDonald (Communication Arts) spoke with Joe Scarpelli on Global News about the recent social media controversy surrounding Kate Middleton Princess of Wales.

Congratulations to the following GI faculty members for securing $565,580 in Tri-Agency funding for their research projects!

Dr. Adan Jerreat-Poole (Communication Arts) received an Insight Development Grant for their project "Disabled Feminists and Digital Storytelling: Zine-Making Pandemic Lives" ($21,330).

Dr. Lai-Tze Fan (Sociology and Legal Studies) is a collaborator on the Insight Development Grant "Digital Imaginations and the Decameron Storyworld" ($66,750).

Dr. Lennart Nacke (Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business) received an NSERC Discovery Grant for his project "Engineering Novel Game Technology To Improve People's Lives" ($52,000 per term for five terms totalling $260,000).

Dr. Ville Makela (Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business) received an NSERC Discovery Grant for his project "Developing Technologies for Bringing Physical Objects into Virtual Reality" ($41,000 per term for five terms totalling $205,000 + $12,500 for the Discovery Launch Supplement).

Visiting scholar, Eléa Thuilier (University of Galway) presented her research to the Waterloo community at the Games Institute which focuses on designing and assessing virtual rehabilitation through Exergames for people with Osteoporosis.

Members of The First Three Years Project PhD candidate Kenzie Gordon (University of Alberta), Dr. Jennifer Whitson (Sociology & Legal Studies), Dr. Johanna Weststar (Western University), and Dr. Sean Gouglas (University of Alberta) published an op-ed in The Conversationto unpack why so many layoffs are currently happening in the games industry.

For the first time in over five years, the Royal Society of Canada | La Société royale du Canada hosted their Excellence and Engagement Symposium in the Waterloo Region on November 15, 2023. The University of Waterloo was proud to present the varied and interdisciplinary projects the research institutes at the University engage in.