Information

NEWS OF POTENTIAL INTEREST


CALL FOR PAPERS

7th International Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games Computer Game Space – Concept, Form and Experience
Bergen, Norway
2-4 October 2013
2013.gamephilosophy.org

We hereby invite scholars in any field of studies who take a professional interest in the philosophy of computer games to submit papers to the 7th International Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games, to be held in Bergen, Norway, 2-4 October 2013.

Player experience and dynamics in computer games are structured around apparent spatial relations inside the gameworld. It is furthermore common to use spatial metaphors such as “action space”, “possibility space”, “experiential space” to explain central aspects of these games. For this conference we invite papers that aim to clarify and critically evaluate views about the nature of spatial relations in computer games. The papers may address such questions as: Is space in games fictional or real? What is the nature of space in games if it is not fictional? What are the formal properties of space in computer games? What is the role of spatial relations in defining interactivity? What is the relation between in-game spatial orientation and ordinary spatial orientation?

Accepted papers will have a clear focus on philosophy and philosophical issues in relation to computer games. They will refer to specific examples from computer games rather than merely invoke them in general terms.

In addition to papers that are directed at the main theme we invite a smaller number of papers in an “open” category. We are especially interested in papers that aim to continue discussions from earlier conferences in this series.

The abstracts should have a maximum 1000 words including bibliography. Please note if you intend your paper to fit in the “open” category. Deadline for submissions is 17:00 GMT, 14 June 2013. Please submit your abstract in PDF format through review.gamephilosophy.org. All submitted abstracts will be subject to double blind peer review. Notification of accepted submissions will be sent out by 15 August 2013. A full paper draft must then be submitted by 25 September 2013 and will be made available on the conference website.

We also issue a call for workshops to be held on 1 October. Please contact the program committee chair if you are interested in organizing a workshop.

For information about the conference please visit 2013.gamephilosophy.org and gamephilosophy.org. A wiki-based bibliography for the conference theme will be made available.

Olav Asheim
Kristine Jørgensen
Rune Klevjer
Stephan Günzel
Gordon Calleja
Patrick Coppock
Olli Tapio Leino,
John Richard Sageng, program committee chair

CALL FOR PAPERS

G|A|M|E Games as Art, Media, Entertainment
The Italian Journal of Game Studies
http://www.gamejournal.it/

Special issue
Video game subcultures
Playing at the periphery of mainstream culture

curated by Marco Benoit Carbone (U College London) and Paolo Ruffino (Goldsmiths, U of London)

Hardly identifiable with a unique audience, video games are an ever growing variety of texts and practices, with diverse technological, aesthetic, and cultural features. They form a complex, protean, and stratified medium, involving different kinds of audiences. They are addressed to the male and female markets alike, propose forms of family entertainment, welcome casual gamers as well as 'hardcore' players, and are equivalently sold to children, teenagers and over-35s. Furthermore, their reception in different countries and regions (Asia, Europe, USA, Australia) highlights very different uses and segmentations in relation to audiences and other media.

However, even as “gamers” are increasingly hard to define in stratified and multi-faceted markets, it is not clear whether or not the production of games actually articulates an equally nuanced series of relations between “local” content and “global” recipients. This posits a question regarding the possibility of games to actually entail cultural specificity in regard to their authors and their place of origin, as most of them are transnational titles that apparently replicate similar game mechanics, regardless of their countries and agents of production.

From this standpoint, the medium of the video game is largely supported by global industries, proposing over-arching cultural standards for aesthetics and narratives.

The overall historical processes have shaped a pervasive yet apparently homogenized medium, whose symbols and references today are part of a larger visual and pop culture, embraced and celebrated by escalating numbers of supporters.

These aspects have implications on the ideological and political level. As video game culture is becoming pervasive and influential on a global scale, game creators and audiences have also been producing narratives of “independence”. Games are allegedly emerging as a medium for personal expression or collective engagement for addressing social causes. However, despite these claims that the medium may be actually a new and burgeoning vessel for works of social resistance, it has rarely been questioned exactly which forms of connivance, subversion, or deviation might, could or should emerge from games, or whether these practices would remain entrenched in the systems that produce them.

This issue of G|A|M|E aims to investigate the above issues relating to the audiences, the different practices, and the possible ideologies at work in this medium, in the contexts of the economic systems in which games are made and consumed.  Not only G|A|M|E encourages scholars to look at these forms of cultural productions by mapping their possible socio-cultural specificities or categorizing their relations to the “mainstream” industry, but it also encourages to raise questions about the very possibility of defining gamers as one or more subcultures.

Considering the complexity of this topic and the uncountable forms of experiences which could belong to it, G|A|M|E invites game scholars and practitioners alike. This Call accepts contributions in the form of papers, but short texts and visual examples are also welcome. We will consider proposals from game scholars as well as artists, game designers, hackers, journalists, players.

**Further research questions might include, but are not limited to:

– Have gamers as a subculture ever existed, and in which ways?
– Does the controversial opposition between "mainstream" and "subculture" hold any value for the medium of the video game?
– Is it possible to claim or demonstrate that video gaming has gone mainstream at some point in some context?
– How has this very idea been developed inside the journalistic and critical video game culture (e.g., as “hardcore” vs. “casual” games and gamers?)
– Is there any particular correspondence between types/genres/themes and particular (gaming) subcultures?
– How does the industrial process of making and marketing games address to different clusters of consumers?
– Is it possible to claim recognition for the medium without falling into apocalyptic or redemptive narratives (“all games are bad” / “good”)?
– What kind of overlap is there between the consumption of games and other media in terms of the audiences?
–Are games defined more by their internal logic or from the aesthetic and figurative aspects they carry

Keywords
game art; indie games; online communities; arcades; age; sex; race; gender: minorities; hacking; modding; homebrew; abandonware; consumer culture; culture jamming; mainstream; subculture; underground; trans-nationality; resistance

Abstract deadline: 26 April 2013
Notification of acceptance: 10 May 2013

All accepted abstracts will be expected to submit a full paper by 19 July 2013. We expect to release this special issue in Autumn 2013.

Proposals and questions to subcultures@gamejournal.it