My Games Design

The next day started just as well as the first with a keynote from Suzanne de Castell and Jen Jenson titled "Playing with fire: Libertarian ludolgies" (see below). They have done a lot of work over the years investigating technology and gender issues in terms of access, equity and design, with their latest research indicating that many of the "facts" we take for granted about gender e.g. girls dislike competitive play, are actually artefacts of novice play. In fact they were able to alter play styles by setting up conditions for girls to become experts and replicate these across different sites. Suzanne and Jen went on to highlight issues such as neoliberal tolerance for misogyny and violence (e.g. where expert female player try to hide their gender instead of having to deal with a barrage of abuse from other players - see Fat, Ugly or Slutty for examples and an attempt to deal with this sort of thing), the need for researchers to go beyond describing how things

I recently got back from the 5th DiGRA conference - it was held at the Utrecht School of Arts in Hilversum, and has seriously given me a lot to think about! So much so that I think I'm going to have to split the post into two parts. The conference opened on the Wednesday night at club De Vorstin setting up a playful atmosphere with Chick n' Run races (where you have to rock back and forth on adult-sized play garden chickens against an opponent), B.U.T.T.O.N. (encouraging Brutally Unfair Tactics are Totally OK Now as you physically do all you can to win or stop your opponents from winning - one of many there from the Copehagen Game Collective ), and a Do It Yourself DJ installation (with which you can mix audio samples using old school cassette tapes) to name just a few of the attractions on offer. Plus Kid Koala performed the opening "keynote" - gotta love a conference that's opened by a guy in a koala suit! The next day, Eric Zimmerman's keynote gave t

Hmm, can't believe it's been two years since the last EARLI! This time it was held at the University of Exeter, so a little easier to get to, but I only went for a couple of days as I have another two conferences lined up over the next couple of months and I really do have lots of PhD work to be getting on with if I'm going to finish it anytime soon... The conference is still running at the  moment but I wanted to get my thoughts down while they are still fresh.  EARLI seemed bigger than ever this year with over 20 parallel sessions during each slot. But with so much of an emphasis on formal education and assessment there wasn't actually too much that I had to decide between. Obviously EARLI is an education conference so that's bound to be the focus and I suppose another reason why I didn't spend too long there was because I knew there wasn't a lot I would find especially relevant. I think there might have been even fewer presentations relating to games than