People of all ages engage in play activities, yet play is still easily associated with children. The rhetorics of play are often tied to ideas of progression; play prepares and teaches children and playing is beneficial for adolescents. Adults, in turn, are expected not to play significantly, their play is often called by other names or goes unrecognized, and the rhetorics attached to it are different. Yet, as games and play are becoming more visible elements in the society, also the alibis that allow play appear to as important for adults, who are also in some contexts expected to play games, to hang on to their toys, and to favour ‘playful’ technologies. Yet, there are also counter-reactions when forms of play are clearly designed for a mature audience.
Call for Papers: Adult Play
Game Studies Spring Seminar
11-12 May, 2015, University of Tampere, FINLAND
The seminar welcomes contributions relating to all types of play adults engage in, whether it is discussed under the banner of games, hobbies, pastimes, collectibles, fitness, fun, or fandom. What is particular about adult play?
The possible list of topics includes but is not limited to:
– Mature themes in games
– Digital games and aging
– Changing play patterns in changing life phases
– Elderly players
– Adult toys
– Player identities in adulthood
– Play and work in adult life
– Designing for adults
– Issues of parenthood and game play
– Cross-generational play
– Adult play industry
– Game industry, a mature industry?
– Hobbies, pastimes, collectibles, fan practices as play
Adult Play is the 11th annual spring seminar organized by University of Tampere Game Research Lab. The seminar emphasises work-in-progress submissions, and we strongly encourage submitting late breaking results, working papers and submissions from graduate students. The purpose of the seminar is to have peer-to-peer discussions and thereby provide support in refining and improving research work in this area.
The papers to be presented will be chosen based on extended abstract review. Full papers are distributed prior the event to all participants, in order to facilitate discussion. The seminar is looking into partnering with a journal so that the best papers would be invited to be further developed for publication in a special journal issue. In the past we have collaborated with Simulation & Gaming, International Journal of Role-Playing and ToDiGRA journals.
The seminar will be chaired by Professor Frans Mäyrä (School of Information Sciences, University of Tampere). There will also be two invited commentators, to be announced later.
The seminar will be held in Tampere, Finland and will be free of charge; the number of participants will be restricted.
Important Dates
– Abstract Deadline: 23 February, 2015
– Notification of Acceptance: 10 March, 2015
– Full Paper deadline: 20 April, 2015
– Seminar dates: 11-12 May, 2015
Submission Guidelines
The papers will be selected for presentation based on extended abstracts of 500-1000 words (plus references). Abstracts should be sent to <gamestudiesseminar {at} gmail.com> as plain text only (no attachments). Full paper guidelines will be provided with the notification of acceptance.
Our aim is that all participants can familiarize themselves with the papers in advance. Therefore, the maximum length for a full paper is 5000 words (plus references). The seminar presentations should encourage discussion, instead of repeating the information presented in the papers. Every paper will be presented for 10 minutes and discussed for 20 minutes.
Seminar website: http://adultplayseminar.wordpress.com/
Organised by: http://gamelab.uta.fi
University of Tampere / SIS / Game Research Lab
