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DiGRA Australia 2020 Conference Program

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DiGRA Australia 2020 Conference Program

Queensland University of Technology

Day One Program – February 10th
Gardens Point campus, Building Z, Room 406 (GP-Z-406)

8:45am

Pre-Conference Coffee

We invite you to meet the DiGRAA Board and organising committee for coffee at The Pantry, near the venue. Newcomers to DiGRA are especially encouraged to attend.
9:00am

Registration Opens
9:30am

Welcome to DiGRAA20
10:00am Christopher Barkman Not that Kind of Level: Metalepsis and Narrative Levels in Pony Island and Doki Doki Literature Club
10:15am Lucy Sparrow, Fraser Allison, Martin Gibbs and Michael Arnold Productive Distrust: Playing with the Player in Digital Games
10:30am Jacqueline Burgess and Christian Jones Exploring How Players Create Emergent Narrative and Character in Strategy Games
10:45am Discussion
11:00am

Morning Tea
11:30am Luke van Ryn “It takes food to make food”: Survival and Sustainability in Don’t Starve
11:45am Ben Abraham Towards Carbon Neutral Gaming: Report on the Carbon Disclosure in Game Development Project
12:00pm Hugh Davies Spatial Politics at Play: Hong Kong Protests and Videogame Activism
12:15pm Discussion
12:30pm Erin Maclean “Boys wouldn’t find it believable”: How Realism Intersects with Female Inclusion in Shooter Videogames
12:45pm Gawain Lucian Lax Unsettling Identification: Bodies, Boys Love, and Visual Novels as Transgender Architecture
1:00pm Harriet Flitcroft The Two Laras: Gender and Femininity in Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider: Legend
1:15pm Discussion
1:30pm

Lunch

One Hour
2:30pm Sidney Irwin, Anjum Naweed and Michele Lastella Harassment or Light-hearted? Examining the Normative Rules of Trash Talking in CS:GO Esports
2:45pm Jessica Formosa, Daniel Johnson, Selen Turkay and Regan Mandryk
 The Impacts of Passion for Esports on Wellbeing
3:00pm Anjum Naweed and Sidney Irwin “Against OUR rules”: A Preliminary Taxonomy of Unsportsmanlike Conduct in FPS Esports
3:15pm Discussion
3:30pm

Afternoon Tea
4:00pm David Cumming The Game of Watching Games: Gamifying and Monetising Esports Spectatorship
4:15pm Mark R Johnson and Jamie Woodcock “And today’s top donator is”: How Live Streamers on Twitch.tv Monetize and Gamify their Broadcasts
4:30pm Will Balmford Collecting, Displaying and Not Playing: Steam Sales and Digital Game Collections
4:45pm Discussion
5:00pm

Social Event

Join us at Little Big House on Grey Street (just across the bridge at South Bank) for Dinner and Drinks

 

Day Two Program – February 11th
Gardens Point campus, Building Z, Room 406 (GP-Z-406)

8:45am

Registration, Announcements
9:00am Yu Shan and Nathan Corporal New Realities in Cyberspace: Understanding the Virtual Reality Location-Based Entertainnment in China
9:15am James Keogh Buying Skins: Cultural Intermediaries and the Localisation of Australian Games
9:30am Ben Abraham Towards Carbon Neutral Gaming: Report on the Carbon Disclosure in Game Development Project
9:45am Discussion
10:00am Taylor Hardwick ‘Keeping PAX safe and secure for everyone’: Problematising Safety and Inclusivity in PAX Aus’ Code of Conduct Policy
10:15am Jay Grice Virtually Safe: An Ethnographic Account of Sydney’s Queer Gaming Spaces
10:30am Madeleine Antonellos, Bjorn Nansen and Martin Gibbs “Wearing research on your sleeves”: Participant Observation in a Cosplay Community
10:45am Discussion
11:00am

Morning Tea
11:30am Melissa J. Rogerson and Martin Gibbs The Precursors to Modern Hybrid Boardgames
11:45am Brian McKitrick The History of “Let’s Play” on the Something Awful Forums
12:00pm Premeet Sidhu and Marcus Carter The Critical Role of YouTube and Twitch in D&D’s Resurgence
12:15pm Discussion
12:30pm Christian McCrea Videogame World-Building as Ideation, Praxis and Design Model
12:45pm Alexander Muscat Mechanics & Materialities: WORLD4 and the Effort of Looking in Videogames
1:00pm Dan Golding Finding Untitled Goose Game’s Dynamic Music in the World of Silent Cinema
1:15pm Discussion
1:30pm

Lunch

One Hour
2:30pm Ben Egliston Videogames and the Data Analytic Imaginary
2:45pm Lachlan Howells Performing Both Sides of the Glass: Game Affordances and Streamer Content
3:00pm Rodney Zsolczay, Ross Brown, Frederic Maire and Selen Turkay Vague Gestures: Game Input for Burns Patients
3:15pm Discussion
3:30pm

Afternoon Tea
4:00pm Marcus Carter, Kyle Moore and Jane Mavoa It’s Not an Island, It’s a World: Fortnite, Temporality, and Worldness
4:15pm Lawrence May and Fraser McKissack The Disciplinary Architecture of Videogame Houses
4:30pm Mahli-Ann Butt and Fae Daunt TankSpanking and HealSluts: Exploring Kink and Playful Intimacy
4:45pm Discussion
5:00pm

Conference Wrap Up and DiGRA Australia AGM

 

Acknowledgements

The DiGRA Australia 2020 National Conference has been made possible due to financial support from QUT’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the QUT Digital Media Research Centre.


Frequently Asked Questions and Other Information

Lunch at the conference will be provided. Refreshments will be provided for the morning and afternoon tea breaks.

Registration is required. Please register via this TryBooking link before Friday, January 24 2020.

DiGRA Australia 2020 National Conference – Registration Open

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The national conference for DiGRA Australia will be held at Queensland University of Technology’s Gardens Point campus, Brisbane, On 10-11 February, 2020.

As with all previous DiGRA Australia events, the 2020 conference has free registration, and we encourage game studies researchers and students, and industry representatives to attend and participate in the conversation.

Please register via this link if you intend to attend.

More details, including the program, will be published in the new year.

 

 

DiGRAA 2019 – What’s Next?

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We are delighted to announce that DiGRAA 2019 will be held at The University of Sydney, February 12-13. The CFP is available here.

Key Dates

November 12th – Abstract Submission Deadline

December 12th – Notification of Submission Outcome

February 12th & 13th – Conference

Call for Expressions of Interest to Host DiGRA Australia 2019 National Conference

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The Australian chapter of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) invites expressions of interest from relevant departments, schools, or centres at Australian universities to host the fourth DiGRA Australia National Conference in February 2019.

The successful host will be selected by the DiGRA Australia board. The board will be guided by the following criteria in making their decision:

  1. The conference should be run by a department with a cohort of academics and postgraduates producing research relevant to the field of game studies.
  2. The host should be able to provide the necessary institutional support to ensure a successful conference.
  3. The host should be able to head the peer-review process, with assistance from the DiGRA Australia board.
  4. Following the success of previous national conferences, the 2019 conference should have no registration fee and, pending on submissions, be capable of running a single track for two days.
  5. In the event of more than one competitive bid, cities other than Sydney and Melbourne will be preferenced to support regional equity.

The deadline for expressions of interest is Friday, 31 August. The board will decide on a successful host in early September, with the intent to see a Call For Papers released shortly afterwards. Ideally, the peer review process for abstracts will be complete by mid-December.

Please send expressions of interest that address the above criteria, or any queries, to the DiGRA Australia President, Brendan Keogh (brendan.keogh@qut.edu.au).

DiGRAA 2016 National Symposium Program

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Please find below the final program for our DiGRAA 2016 Symposium. If you note any errors, please contact us.

The event will be held at Swinburne University in the AGSE building.

Thursday 17 November

Time Begin

Time End

Title
9:00 12:00 Postgraduate Workshop (separate registration required)
11:30 12:00 REGISTRATIONS OPEN
11:45 12:30 Lunch (provided)
12:30 1:30 KEYNOTE: Douglas Wilson, RMIT University
1:45 3:05 SESSION 1: Questioning Play

Elegantly Wasted: Gestural Inexcess and the Console Video-game Player – Brendan Keogh

Restricted creativity: Effects of restricted modding tools on Doom modder sentiment and participation – Geoffrey Hill

Kubil Kazi (Night Child): Using Virtual Reality Technology to Teach Indigenous Astronomy – Rhett Loban

Reflective Experiences in Videogame Play – April Tyack and Peta Wyeth
3:05 3:20 Afternoon Tea
3:20 4:40 SESSION 2: Limits of Games

Pick-up Artists and The Game: The Gamer Outside of Videogames – Adrian ChenThe Only Self is Our Quantified Self – Kyle Moore and Robbie Fordyce

The Fallout of Narrative Agency: what players want – Daniel Dunne

Oldest Culture, Newest Medium: What Emerges from the Clash? – Jakub Majewski
4:40 4:50 Coffee break
4:50 6:10 SESSION 3: Gender and Sexuality

Girlfriend Mode: Gamer Girlfriends, Support Roles and Affective Labour – Mahli-Ann Butt

Moments of Crisis: Contested Worlds of Gender Diversity in Videogames – Erin Maclean

Walkthrough for The Mirror Stage: Her Story and ‘Real’ Games – Tania Marlowe

I Exist: Improving the Representation of Queer Perspectives in Videogames – Alayna Cole

 

Friday 18 November

Time Begin

Time End

Title
10:00 11:00 SESSION 4: Modes of Play

People versus the city: playful citizens in ‘smart cities’ – Troy Innocent

Being a Boardgamegeek – Melissa Rogerson, Martin Gibbs and Wally Smith

The Enlightened Jammer: Intrinsic Drives for Game Jam Participations – Xavier Ho
11:00 11:15 Morning Tea
11:15 12:15 SESSION 5: Trials

The Agony and the Ecstasy: Tension and Death in Multiplayer First Person Shooters – Brad Power

Abuse of virtual characters comes as no surprise – Fraser Allison

Cruelly Optimistic Contingency in Games and Gaming Culture – Kyla Allison
12:15 1:15 Lunch (provided)
1:15 2:15 SESSION 6: Histories

Ways of seeing game history: The Vectrex as a transitional object – Benjamin Nicoll

Reading Arcade Representations in Film Through Pre-Game Studies Film and Screen Research – Christian McCrea

Mario Maker Mondays: One and Thirty Years in the Making Of – James Manning
2:15 3:15 SESSION 7: Watching Games

Let’s Play Videos: Towards An Idea Of A Player’s Play-Story – Zhia Zariko

Towards a phenomenology of broadcast mediated gameplay: A case study of broadcast e-sport – Ben Egliston

eSports Spectatorship in Australia – Marcus Carter, Martin Gibbs, Robert Fordyce, Naomi Robinson and Emma Witkowski
3:15 3:3o Afternoon Tea
3:30 4:30 SESSION 8: Ethics

Stranded in Paradise: Capitalism, Colonialism, and Nonhuman Animals in Games – Adam Brown

Games with Violence: A Mixed Method New Zealand Study Into Player Experience – Gareth Schott

Legitimations of instrumental digital play in mainstream newspapers – John Pike
4:30 5:30 SESSION 9: Tensions

Digital Gaming in a Time of Climate Change – Benjamin Abraham

Seen and Not Heard: ‘Quiet’ Proliferations of Misogyny in Metal Gear Solid – Christopher Foster

Vivian James – The Identity Politics of #Gamergate’s Avatar – Mahli-Ann Butt and Thomas Apperley

 

2016 DiGRAA National Conference CFP

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2016 DiGRAA National Conference CFP

We invite you to contribute to a two-day game studies symposium from November 17th-18th, 2016 to be held at Swinburne University of Technology. The theme for the DiGRAA Symposium 2016 will be ‘Tensions’.

**Please note: There has been a submission extension. Submissions are now due on Friday August 26th.**

 

Details

Games have frequently been sites of conflict, contention, and competition. As both games and gaming culture develop, however, these sites of conflict and their related tensions are shifting across multiple axes. Games themselves are objects of tension in different ways: while conflict is still often used to drive narrative and gameplay, designers continue to experiment with the line between comfort and unease. Conversely, those who play and make games are more diverse than ever before, and the tensions over representation, politics, and demographics continue to dominate public games discourse. The purpose of the 2016 DiGRAA Symposium is to explore the tensions in all aspects of engaging with games. This may include: gameplay, mechanics, game design, or game culture.

We organise such an event acknowledging that understanding games is not an exclusively academic endeavour and excellent work is occurring in a wide variety of spaces outside of formal scholarship. Consequently, we encourage non-academic game researchers, critics, designers, developers and artists to attend and contribute to the event.

Some suggestions for topics include (but are not limited to):

  • Representations of race
  • Gender and sexuality
  • Sex in games
  • Conflict as game mechanic
  • The aesthetics of violence
  • Death and tension

 

Important Dates

Abstract Submission Deadline – Aug 26

Notification of Acceptance – Sept 19

Symposium Date – Nov 17-18

 

Following on from the success of previous DiGRA Australia events, we fully expect that DiGRA Australia 2016 will remain a single track conference.

 

 

The Event

The conference will run from 13:00 – 17:00 on the 17th November, and from 9:00 – 17:00 on the 18th November at Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn campus. An evening social event and exhibition will occur on the 17th on campus. A morning doctoral workshop will run from 9:00 – 12:00 on the 17th, which will require registration prior to the event

 

Submission Format

We invite interested authors or makers to submit 400-800 word abstracts (not including references), anonymous for peer review. We will also accept full papers of up to 4,000 words and the same rules apply. Submissions from academics are typically expected to have references to reflect the author’s engagement with existing scholarship.

We advise potential authors to review the abstracts accepted for publication at previous DiGRA Australia conferences as a guide to the expected tone and quality. We welcome submissions that explore both in-progress and complete works, but must represent novel (unpublished) scholarship. If the abstract resembles previously published work, we recommend the author explicitly identify the additional contribution of their DiGRAA submission. We recommend that papers articulate the issue or research question to be discussed, the methodological or critical framework used, and indicate the findings or conclusions to be presented and/or the relevance to the wider game studies discipline. Papers can present any kind of research, analysis or commentary, but should be written so that the importance of the work can be understood by reviewers working in different disciplines or using different approaches.

 

Accepted abstracts will be uploaded to the DiGRA Digital Library as will accepted full papers.

 

Submission Process

Submissions will be made online, via easy chair.

 

Easychair Submission link:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=digraa16

 

Please enter your 400-800 word abstract or full paper in the abstract box in easy chair, as well as uploading it as a formatted attachment.

 

Conference Chairs

Ms Laura Crawford (Vice President, DiGRAA Australia/Lecturer Games and Interactivity, Swinburne University of Technology)

Dr Daniel Golding (Lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology, Media and Communications)

Download conference program

Draft Conference Program DiGRAA2015

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Monday 29th Schedule:

12:30pm 

3rd floor foyer, Robert Webster Building

 Registration:
1:00pm 

Room 327, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 

 

 Welcome 

DiGRAA President: Martin Gibbs

 

Conference Chair: Tom Apperley

 
1:15pm 

Room 327, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 

 Keynote:  Expansion pack: making Games Studies a robust disciplineSal Humphreys (University of Adelaide)

 

 
2:15pm 

Room 327, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 

 Session 1:Chair: Darshana Jayemanne (University of Melbourne)

 

Challenging Whiteness: Contrapuntal Analysis and Polyphony in Broadening Protagonist Diversity

Sumedha Iyer (UNSW Australia) and Lois Spangler (Queensland University of Technology)

 

The Disruptive Potential of Regional Game Studies

Bjarke Liboriussen and Paul Martin  (University of Nottingham, Ningbo)

 

Algorithms Pushed Me to the Dark Side: Questions for Procedural Rhetoric

Erik Champion (Curtin University of Technology)

 
3:15pm Coffee Break (uncatered)
3:30pm 

Room 327, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 

Kensington Campus, UNSW Australia

 

Map: http://tinyurl.com/oecwo4g

 Session 2:Chair: Grant Bollmer (University of Sydney)

 

From the Sidelines: Choice and Consequence in Game Design

Catherine Baird (Squiz)

 

Reconceptualising Gendered Game Spaces

Gemma Roberts (Macquarie University)

 

Gone (Riot Grrl) Home: Methods of gender and genre inclusion in Gone Home

Rowan Tulloch (Macquarie University) and Liz Giuffre (University of Technology, Sydney)

 
4:30pm(5:30pm finish)

 

Room 327, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 

 Session 3:Chair: Tom Apperley (UNSW Australia)

 

Playstyle and place: On the territorial identity of tactics in Dota 2

Ben Egliston (University of Sydney)

 

A Situated Approach to Urban Play: The Role of Local Knowledge in Playing Ingress

Kyle Moore (University of Sydney)

 

Masquerade: Social Influence of Full-Body Game Interaction on Public Displays

Niels Wouters (KU Leuven & University of Melbourne) , John Downs (University of Melbourne), Marcus Carter (University of Melbourne ) and Andrew Vande Moere (KU Leuven)

 
6pm-8:30pm 

The Arthouse Kitchen url: http://tinyurl.com/q3eawpg

 

 

 Dinner and drinks (catered with vegetarian options) 

Please register via eventbrite if you wish to attend: http://tinyurl.com/nfymv2x

 

 

 

Tuesday 30th Schedule

9:00am 

Foyer, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 Registration
9:30am 

Room 327, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 

 

 Session 4:Chair: Marcus Carter (University of Melbourne)

 

Why BioShock Infinite is the best pt. 1: The Elizabeth-Anna Rabbit Duck Illusion

Mahli-Ann Butt (UNSW Australia)

 

It’s-a-me, Mario – But who is Mario? Positioning the participant researcher in game studies

Tina Richards (Griffith University)

 

Generic Avatar

Luke van Ryn (UNSW Australia), Tom Apperley (UNSW Australia), Justin Clemens (University of Melbourne) and Robbie Fordyce (UNSW Australia)

 
10:30am 

Room 327, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 

 

 Session 5:Chair: Kyle Moore (University of Sydney)

 

Motion Capture and the Technical Inscription of the Body

Grant Bollmer (University of Sydney)

 

Embodied Identities and Natural User Interfaces

Marcus Carter (University of Melbourne)

 

The Body Language of Fear: Fearful Nonverbal Signals in Survival-Horror Games

Eduardo Velloso (University of Lancaster) , Thomas Löhnert (University of Bath) and Hans Gellersen (University of Lancaster)

 
11:30am Coffee Break (uncatered)
11:45am 

Room 327, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 

 

 Session 6: 3 x 15 minute papersChair: Rowan Tulloch

 

Ecological Notions in Games: A Typology Towards More Inclusive Environmental Relations

Ben Abraham (independent scholar) and Darshana Jayemanne (University of Melbourne)

Legitimations of digital game play in mainstream newspapers

John Pike (University of South Australia)

 

Journey to the Moon – The First Interactive Narrative

Joel Zika (Deakin University)

 
12:45pm Lunch (uncatered)
1:30pm 

Room 327, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 

 

 Session 7:Chair: James Meese (University of Technology, Sydney)

 

The Kandy Kolored Tangerine-Flake Wall-Mounted, Water-Cooled and LED-Colored Battlestation

Marcus Carter, Bjorn Nansen and Martin Gibbs  (University of Melbourne)

 

‘Funky little amoebas and poos’ – Customising the play experience of board games

Melissa J. Rogerson, Martin Gibbs and Wally Smith (University of Melbourne)

 

The Design of Systemic Moral Gameplay in Papers, Please

Malcolm Ryan (Macquarie University) , Paul Formosa (Macquarie University) and Dan Staines (UNSW Australia)

 
2:30pm 

Room 327, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 

 

 Session 8:Chair: Sal Humphreys (University of Adelaide)

 

SimCity and the Problem of the ‘Feedback Loop’

Eli J. Boulton (University of Melbourne)

 

Approaches to cultural heritage in role-playing games

Jakub Majewski (Bond University)

 
3:10pm Coffee Break (uncatered)
3:30pm 

Room 327, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 

 

 Session 9:Chair: Christy Dena (SAE QANTM)

 

Triad of Design: Applied to Open World Quests

Ivan Beram (SAE)

 

Escaping the room: Creating interactive puzzles from narrative space

Allan Fowler (Waiariki Institute of Technology) , Foaad Khosmood, David Gillette and Michael Haungs (California Polytechnic State University)

 

Inviting you in: Design choices in the opening sequences of Dragon Age and Skyrim

Michael Hitchens (Macquarie University)

 
4:30pm(5pm finish)

 

Room 327, 3rd floor Robert Webster Building

 

 DiGRAA Meeting 

Chair: Martin Gibbs (University of Melbourne)
5:30-7pm 

The Doncaster Hotel

 

Map: http://tinyurl.com/pfr9aua

 After Conference Drinks 

Informal drink at local Kensington pub 10 minutes walk from campus.

 

DiGRAA2015 Registration Open

DiGRA 2015 Conference