The University of Florida's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Department of English has announced the 2007 UF Conference on Games and Digital Media: "World Building: Space and Community," which will be held in Gainesville, Florida, on March 1-2, 2007, in conjunction with the annual Conference on Comics, which will be March 3-4.
This third annual conference on games will focus on the construction of digital worlds, with particular emphasis on the various spatialities of games and other digital media. The conference will explore spatiality as it is employed in the construction of virtual worlds both in terms of the graphemic representation of game objects, as well as the dual role these spaces perform as both narrative structures and sites of play. Coordinators are also interested in spatiality as it relates to the development of social space (including online spaces like
World of Warcraft and gaming message boards) as well as the relationship of real-world locations like arcades and game cafes to the play experience.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
· Classic roleplaying games, and their construction of narrative and social spaces.
· Narrative eccentricity of gaming worlds (Extra lives, continues, linear level design, etc)
· Single-screen games (
Pong,
Tetris, Popcap's web-based games, etc)
· The spaces beyond the screen (Pits, the sky, halls of mirrors, etc)
· Constraints of gaming (Forced scrolling, immovable objects, level timers, etc)
· Play as narrative advancement (The restriction of game plots to plots that involve frequent breaks for violence)
· Human opponents, monsters, and bots
· Hints and Advice (Informal social networks and professional help)
· Playing together (MMOG clans, hanging out in the basement, and family gaming)
· Games as performance (
DDR, party games, and speedruns)
· Alternative reality games (As social spaces and as worlds "layered" on the real world)
· Artificial socities and virtual pets (
The Sims,
Civilization, and
Tamagochi)
· Spaces of play (Arcades and gaming cafes)
· Representations of three-dimensional spaces on the screen (Old side-scrollers, the fake-3D of
Doom, and "true" 3D gaming)
· The many failures of virtual reality
· Stories in/about gaming (Roleplaying stories, official fiction, historical reenactment)
· Competitiveness in gaming (High score lists, tournaments, and professional gaming)
· Games on television (Captain Power, the Super Mario Super Show, and G4)
· Digital reworkings (Photoshopping, machinima, and fanvids)
· Gaming and "geek" culture (Penny Arcade, gaming conventions, the legacy of E3)
· Interfaces and the mediation of mediality
Abstract submissions should be approximately 250-500 words in length. Presentations will be 15 minutes with 5 minutes of question and answer. The deadline for abstract submissions is January 1st, 2007. Abstracts should be submitted via the
2007 UF Conference on Games and Digital Media website.
