News

Dr. Lennart Nacke joined reporter Brian Bourke from Kitchener Today to weigh in on the societal value of games. Nacke was invited to join Bourke because interest in the negative effects of violent videogames is reemerging in the media following the publication of a meta-study showing the results of 24 studies looking at heightened physical aggression post-gameplay in youths from 9-19.

Sarah Stang, Essays Editor for First Person Scholar and PhD student in the Communication and Culture program at York University, delivered a co-presentation with Dr. Aaron Trammel at ReFig 2018.

Their presentation, entitled "The Misogynist Ludic Bestiary: How Women are Made Monstrous in Dungeons & Dragons (D&D)" was a condensed version of a longer article the two co-authored:

Tina Chan, Masters of Science candidate in the School of Public Health and Health Systems, is presenting a paper at IUW entitled "Designing for Engagement in Peer to Peer Support Using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy with Gamification and the Proteus Effect".

Chan's research draws from crowdsourcing studies that combine online peer to peer (P2P) support with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), as well as the Proteus Effect.

Quantum Cats (2015), a game that allows players to learn and engage with concepts from quantum physics, is currently featured at the Ontario Science Centre exhibit "Quantum: The Exhibition," an exhibit created by the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC).

Caroline Wong will be presenting a poster at IUW, 2018 at the University of Toronto. Wong is a Master's student of Management Sciences studying the benefits of touch-enabled systems that improve our interaction with large datasets.

Wong argues that making data visualization tools touch-enabled can make personal data more meaningful and accessible to non-experts rather than technologies that only allow for point-and-click.

Marco Moran-Ledesma, a System Design Engineering Master's student, will be presenting a poster at the Inter-University Workshop (IUW) at the University of Toronto, Nov. 17. In this poster, he outlines his preliminary research on a system he proposes to improve the VR experience.

Multisensory Brain and Cognition (MBC) lab researchers Michael Barnett-Cowan, Séamas Weech, and Sophie Kenny went to the Society for Neuroscience 2018 conference that took place in San Diego, November 3-7, 2018.

Sophie Kenny, alum of the Games Institute and MBC lab, presented a poster on the effect of narrative on presence and cybersickness in Virtual Reality (VR). The poster reported the findings from a study she co-authored with Seamas Weech and Michael-Barnett Cowan.

John Yoon, GI resident and English PhD student, chaired a panel at the Enthusiast Gaming Live Expo (EGLX) in Toronto, October 26-28. His co-panelists were Campbell Macrae, Executive at the UW Smash club, Andre Paradis, Founder of the UW LoL club, Alexandra Orlando, Games Institute alumnus and Games studies researcher and streamer, and Charlie Watson, CEO and founder of SetToDestroyX.

DualPanto, a non-visual haptic device for the blind, was featured on the Arduino blog, October 22. The device allows visually impaired users to engage with video games that would otherwise be inaccessbile to them:

Toben Racicot, GI resident and English PhD student, will be attending the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association conference in Baltimore, November 8-10. His paper, "Trauma and Demogorgons: Analyzing Dungeons & Dragons in Stranger Things", examines the impact that roleplaying games have in strengthening psychic protections in anticipation of future traumas.