News

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.

Congratulations to Mara Gagiu for winning the Best Student Research Poster at the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games Online. Her poster entitled "MMPX Style-Preserving Pixel Art Magnification" presented her research about the MMPX algorithm with GI faculty member Dr.

Dr. Luke Potwarka, GI faculty member and Associate Professor of Recreation and Leisure studies, published “In Search of Inspiration: Re-thinking the Potential for Demonstration Effects” with the Sports Information Resource Centre.

Dakota Pinheiro, English PhD student researching 21st century American protest and crisis literatures, has been awarded the Jack Gray Graduate Fellowship Award from the Department of English Language and Literature. This scholarship is awarded once a year to a full-time graduate student based on academic excellence. Read about the award here.

Lillian A. Black, English PhD student researching queer feminist theory in media, has been awarded the W.K. Thomas Award from the Department of English Language and Literature. This scholarship is awarded annually to a full-time graduate student based on academic excellence.

Jenn Rickert, English PhD researcher and Community Experience Curator for the Games Institute, has been awarded the David Nimmo English Graduate Scholarship from the Department of English Language and Literature. This scholarship is awarded to a full-time graduate student based on academic excellence.

Jonathan Baltrusaitis, English PhD student and Instructor at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, has been awarded the Lea Vogel-Nimmo English Graduate Professionalization Award from the Department of English Language and Literature. This award is given to a graduate student on the basis of academic excellence and merit of professionalization activities. 

Sabrina Alicia Sgandurra, PhD student and First Person Scholar Editor-in-Chief/Book Reviews Editor, has been awarded the Rhetoric Essay Prize for her essay entitled “Playing with The Virus: COVID-19 and ‘Pandemic-Rhetoric’ in Games” from the Department of English Language and Literature.

Toben Racicot, English PhD student and GI Podcast co-host, has been awarded the TA Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Department of English Language and Literature. "Toben's work in English 109 and English 294 was exemplary.  Student assessment and feedback was excellent, especially in the areas of TA engagement and communication," notes the Adjudicator. 

The HCI Games Group at the GI collaborated with researchers from the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology to provide a visual storytelling experience that explores and explains how nanotechnology is used in our everyday lives, including an explanation of the covid vaccine.

Click to Play!

The project combines digital visual storytelling and game technology. Read more about it here.