The Games Institute is currently facing a significant challenge to our model of operations. The budget cuts and hiring freeze have had a direct impact on the level of our staffing and the services we have been providing.
First Person Scholar, the middle-state publication supported and published by the Games Institute, is taking an indefinite hiatus due to a lack of resources. This includes funding cuts to the GI, but also a lack of game studies graduate students with enough funding to allow them time to work on FPS. FPS will remain available as an archive for everyone to access and use.
In 2022, the University of Waterloo Games Institute secured $50,000 of funding over two years from the Ontario government to provide scholarships to students pursuing careers in the gaming and esports industries. Following a successful first round of scholarships awarded to thirteen students (two graduate and eleven undergraduate), the next round of applications is now open!
First Person Scholar (FPS), a middle-state publication supported and published by the Games Institute, has released its latest special issue titled “Gaming Paratexts.”
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.
Games Institute (GI) faculty member Dr. Shana MacDonald (Communications Arts) successfully secured a $74, 232 grant for the “Exploring the visual culture of misogyny across material and digital archives” project.
GI members present at The Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY). The conference takes place in Tampere, Finland from October 14 to October 17, 2024. GI members attended to present their papers, in-progress studies, and projects.
Games Institute (GI) faculty member Dr. Igor Grossmann (Psychology), in collaboration with his team at Wisdom and Culture Lab, successfully secured a $1.5 million grant for their “Wisdom across cultures beyond traditional decision-making paradigms” project.
The Games Institute (GI) welcomed representatives from AMD, a global leader in advanced computing technologies. The delegation toured the GI facility, exploring GI labs and learning about ongoing research that are currently taking place at the GI.
GI members launches open-access feminist journal. This journal comes out of Drs. Wiens and MacDonald’s Feminist Think Tank, a research collective based at the GI, focusing on intersectional feminist design.