Montreal Game Studies Symposium To Focus On Guitar Hero

Author: by Beth A.

In their continued effort to develop Montreal game studies around interdisciplinary engagements with shared objects of inquiry, Ludiciné and The Montreal GameCODE Project have announced that the Montreal Game Studies Symposium academic summit for 2007 will focus on the Guitar Hero franchise. The symposium will be held on Friday January 26, 2007 from 1-5 p.m. at Concordia University. The event will feature head-to-head competition on Guitar Hero 2 and a series of short talks and discussion from invited scholars in the Montreal area. The Symposium "serves to address that a video game does not have to tap a prevailing moral panic to engage scholarly critique." Rather, the organizers claim, Guitar Hero "combines familiar features of digital game play, music play and fan culture to produce an intriguing new media form that challenges game studies, music studies and digital culture studies scholars to think again". In particular, the symposium will discuss "...issues of gameplay, interface and embodied play, performance and spectacle, player culture and game audiences, game design and markets, musicality and authenticity, sound simulation, play and the magic circle, cognition and skill, and nostalgia and cultural fantasy" as relating to Harmonix and RedOctane's popular title. The event is open to the public and no prior experience with the game is necessary to be involved in the competition. For more information, visit the The Montreal GameCODE Project website.