CEEGS 2015 aims to integrate the community of Central and Eastern European game scholars and professionals and serve as a platform for academic exchange and networking. The conference is a continuation of the event hosted by the Masaryk University in Brno in 2014, and aims to establish a platform for games studies scholars from and beyond the region and facilitate the emergence of a unique perspective into the international arena of game studies.
THEME AND SCOPE: DISTRIBUTED GAME STUDIES?
This year we would like to work with a concept borrowed from computer
science via software studies. The concept of “distributed game studies”
(inspired by “distributed computing”) suggests a perspective that
emphasises networking and decentralisation. Components of a distributed
system work and interact in synergy in order to achieve a common goal;
consist of components on networked hosts that interact via middleware so
that they appear as an integrated facility.
In distributed systems, resources need to be shared by more than one
user and several computations are being executed simultaneously,
potentially interacting with each other. Such system is easy to extend
and modify, it allows integration of new components. It possesses the
ability to accommodate a growing load in the future. It can be scalable
and additional resources can be added in order to host additional
components and is indifferent to actual place of computation and data
storage. Finally, it continues to work in the presence of a fault. Such
description can be employed in the analysis of games, especially in
terms of their susceptibility to modification and adoption of new
content; and can also be applied to the structure of the field of game
studies itself, as well as its knowledge production practices.
In our conference, we are primarily interested in emphasizing the
relevance of regional clusters in our discipline and ensuring reliable,
systematic communication between them. We invite participants to address
how different approaches to the game medium can synergise, resulting in
the convergence of ideas and broadening the scope of the academic
discourse of game studies. We would also like to encourage addressing
the properties of “distributed system” paradigm: resource sharing,
openness, concurrency, scalability, transparency and fault tolerance, as
the inspiration for the following game studies issues:
– circulation of knowledge in the area, emerging initiatives, hubs and
research projects;
– different readings of games and fan “takeovers” of franchises and game
worlds;
– susceptibility to extension: modding, expanding, remaking;
– new business models (DLCs, games in episodes/seasons);
– web-based, social, multiplayer online (massive and not) games;
– multipurpose/serious games;
– games becoming mainstream;
– changes in game industry system (indie vs. big companies, niche
gaming, crowdfunding and its issues)
– economies of scale change and technological change
– non-linear and local histories of digital and non-digital games
– introduction of VR technologies, haptic interfaces, alternate reality
games etc.
– diversification of the game development community
– changes in the ‘gamer’ identity
– inclusion of non-digital games into game studies
– “unfinishedness” of games which are released as incomplete products;
– indie games and their openness to failure,
– innovative productions, game experiments;
– art/alt games; glitch aesthetics; game hacking, exploiting; subversive
gameplay;
– local games: discourses of nationality, ethnicity and regionality
– ideology, representation and genre problems in video games.
We encourage you to fit your own research problems and points of view
into the proposed framework, but please note that we are open to all
kinds and shapes of game studies papers. We welcome submissions from
game scholars, educators, students and creators.
SUBMISSIONS
500 word abstracts should be submitted by June 14 2015 via EasyChair
website of the Conference https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ceegs2015.
If you are having troubles submitting your abstract through Easychair,
or if you have any questions about the submission and review process,
please email the Program Committee at ceegs2015@easychair.org.
IMPORTANT DATES
– submission deadline: June 14, 2015
– notification to authors: August 3, 2015
– registration deadline: October 1, 2015
– conference: October 22-24, 2015
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Jaroslav Švelch, Charles University in Prague (chair); Espen Aarseth, IT
University of Copenhagen; Sabine Harrer, University of Vienna, Austrian
Academy of Sciences; Bjarke Liboriussen, University of Nottingham
Ningbo, China; Jakub Macek, Masaryk University in Brno; Jan Miškov,
Masaryk University in Brno; Anna Nacher, Jagiellonian University in
Kraków; Zsófia Ruttkay, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design
Budapest; Piotr Sitarski, University of Łódź. Other reviewers will be
appointed by the members of the Program Committee.
CONFERENCE FEE
20 euros
CONTACT
For information and updates, please refer to the conference website
ceegs.eu. For any inquiries, do not hesitate to contact us at
contact@ceegs.eu.
