Game History Annual Symposium

First Edition: Cultural History of Video Games

Montreal, Canada: June 27th-28th 2014

Submission deadline: January 24th 2014

Link to PDF document: http://www.sahj.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Game-History-Annual-Symposium-CFP.pdf

#——————————————————————————————–

CfP text:

In spite of preservation and accessibility issues, the history of video games has become a topic of interest for a growing community of scholars and museum curators around the world. In Digital Play (2003), Stephen Kline, Greig de Peuter and Nick Dyer-Witheford invited us to understand video games as a complex network of interactions between industrial structures, technological innovations and sociocultural exchanges. In doing so, they also provided us with a useful tool to map out which areas have been explored more thoroughly, and which have been left out.

We seek to expand our understanding of the communities that forged and continue to forge game culture. The conference will propose two tracks: design histories, and play histories. These communities can be inspected through the material traces such as games, promotional artefacts, manuals and other props, as well as through direct observation or interviews. Thus, scholars from a variety of disciplines, such as media history, communication studies, cultural studies and sociology should feel welcome to submit. In gathering specialists from many fields, we hope to create a dynamic research environment to study the multiple communities that define gaming culture throughout history.

Invited speakers

▫ Tristan Donovan (Replay, 2010)

▫ Mia Consalvo (Canada Research Chair in Game Studies & Design)

▫ John Szczepaniak (The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers, 2014)

▫ Philippe Ulrich (Captain Blood; Dune; founder of Cryo)

Cultural events

▫ Game exhibition (curator: Skot Deeming)

▫ Concert by L’orchestre de jeux vidéo (Pollack hall, Mcgill University)

Tourism

▫ Special hotel rates for conference participants

▫ Centrally located near the subway and Quartier des spectacles

▫ 35th Montreal International Jazz Festival

Abstract submission

▫ 800 words plus bibliography

▫ Please indicate which track you want to be part of: design histories / play histories

▫ Submissions will be anonymized and reviewed by the conference chairs for the 2014 edition (Maude Bonenfant, Jonathan Lessard, Martin Picard, Carl Therrien)

▫ Submission deadline: January 24th 2014

▫ Please send to GameHistoryMTL@gmail.com