Games and Play in a Time of Crises
Tuesday, 18 June, 2024
Submission deadline: Friday 26 January, 2024. Monday 5 February, 2024
Location: Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point Campus (room TBC)
Registration: free
Objective
As Benjamin Abraham (2022) reminds us: “[t]he games that we have been playing, for all the innocent pleasures they may bring, are profoundly entangled with the global processes that are fueling and deepening the climate crisis” (p. 5). Considering contemporary crises more broadly, digital games have been shown to be implicated in the rise of the far-right, the gig economy’s disruptions to organised labour, and the profound social transformations brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic both in terms of a renaissance in online socialising and the growth of extreme conspiracy theory groups.
Videogames cannot, in such urgent times, be studied in isolation from the climate, social, political, and economic crises that surround them. This preconference invites participants to reflect on how their research on videogame players, scientists, cultures, industries, and technologies might relate to such crises.
This preconference, sponsored in part by the Game Studies Division of ICA, invites participants to consider what it means to play, make, and research digital games and play at a time of accelerating climate, social, political, and economic crises. Are digital games a distraction from what seem like the more crucial questions of our time? Or are they central to addressing and understanding these questions, and, if so, how? This preconference encourages participants to consider the political ramifications of their current research projects, and to speculate on the potential of playing, making, and researching games to contribute—in constructive or destructive ways—to the ongoing crises of our time.
Paper topics could include (but are not limited to):
- Resistive or hegemonic activities of player communities
- ‘Game developer approaches to labour issues
- Games and ecocriticism
- Games and protest
- The role of games and play during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Game studies and academic labour
- The political role of game studies
- Games and education
- Games and discipline
- The prosocial benefits of games and gaming
- Games (and Game Design) as interventions in global (and local) crises
- Critical perspectives on cryptocurrency and the so-called metaverse
Submission instructions:
Please submit an abstract of 250-500 words that provides an overview of the presentation’s topic and include a title, and reference list. Submissions should include names, institutions, and contact details of all authors.
Please submit proposals through this Google Form. (Full Link: https://bit.ly/GamesCrisis2024)
How to register: Open to all. Registration form will be circulated.
Transport:
The pre-conference will be held at Queensland University of Technology’s Gardens Point campus, which is a short walk from Brisbane’s Central station. Attendees to ICA are encouraged to fly into Brisbane for the pre-conference, and can then take the train to the Gold Coast for ICA.
Organisers:
Brendan Keogh, Queensland University of Technology
Benjamin Nicoll, Queensland University of Technology
Erika Verkaaik, Queensland University of Technology
Maxwell Foxman, University of Oregon
Contact email