News

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.

Mark Hancock, Associate Director of the Games Institute and Associate Professor in the Department of Management Sciences, traveled to the Rochester Institute of Technology to give a talk at the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Colloquium on Wednesday November 7.

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.

Amy Liang, GI Resident and UWaterloo alumnus, joins us in the Collaboration Space next Thursday, November 8 at 12pm to share her research on using Virtual Reality (VR) to enhance second language learning experiences. This talk is free and open to all.

Liang graduated from the University of Waterloo with a BA in Psychology and a Minor in Human Resource Management. Her research looks at second language learning acquisition, with a particular focus on innovative methods such as VR applications.

Event details

Tony Smith and Kristina Llewellyn represented the Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation (DOHR) project at the Canadian History of Education Association (CHEA) conference in New Brunswick, October 18-21, 2018. Their co-presentation was entitled "Building Just Relations: Oral History and Virtual Reality in History Education".

Jason Hawreliak, co-founder of FPS and Assistant Professor of Game Studies at Brock University, authored "Multimodal Semiotics and Rhetoric in Videogames," published Oct 10, 2018. The book is available in hardcopy and as an eBook.

Milad Soroush, GI Resident and PhD student in the department of Management Sciences, will be presenting his paper entitled  "Investigating game mechanics that target players' self-control while maintaining engagement" at CHI Play 2018.

The City as Platform lab (cityasplatform.com), an associate lab of the Games Institute, published a Whitepaper to present their findings from their "Right to the Smart City" symposium that took place March, 2018 at Harvard University. Their work aims to help municipalities, experts, and community members plan smart cities together.