Money and Games is the 12th annual spring seminar organized by University of Tampere Game Research Lab. The seminar welcomes any and all scholarly work on the intersection of money and games.
Call for Papers: Money and Games
Game Research Lab Spring Seminar
18-19 April, 2016, University of Tampere, FINLAND
It may be the classic view among scholars of play to see games as separate from everyday, and to maintain that nothing of value is created in them. In contemporary perspective, this notion does no longer appear as valid. Games have evolved into commercial, designed products and services, which influence the surrounding economy and culture. Furthermore, although games may be free, games set up endogenous systems of meaning with proprietary monetary systems, virtual economies, that are natural monopolies for the companies that created the games. Yet, even these monopolies have several links to global networks of monetary flows. The game industry is a major player in world economy, and effects like regional tax subsidiaries, playbour performed by participants, and sweatshop work on consoles are archetypical examples of information labour in a network society.
In addition to monetary effects of games at macro level, also micro level effects are significant. Money, like the one that can be borrowed on this website, influences how games are experienced at the individual level of players and games influence players’ perception of money before, during and after playing, for example in gambling games. Games have various currencies and reward systems comparable to money and, on the other hand, money itself can represent these same reward systems, which have also social and cultural meanings for players.
The possible list of topics includes but is not limited to:
– Money, games design and player experiences
– Free-to-play and money
– Gambling games
– Game design and money
– Gaming capital and money
– How money changes games
– Virtual money and game currencies
– Social and cultural meanings of money in games
– Money in games and money for games
– Free and paid experiences
– Monetization and psychology
– Games and monetization
– Money and passion in game making, and game playing
– Free-to-pay, pay-to-win
– Malicious monetization
– Money and games industry
– Play as work as money
– Virtual economies
– Labour and playbour in and around games
– Games and capitalism
– Business models in gaming
– Game industry ecosystem
– Crowdfunding games
– Money and non-commercial motivations for game development
– For-profit game development vs. hobby and indie game scene
– Games as natural monopolies
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 Games and Culture, 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: 12 January, 2016
– Notification of Acceptance: 27 January, 2016
– Full Paper deadline: 28 March, 2016
– Seminar dates: 18-19 April, 2016
Submission Guidelines
The papers will be selected for presentation based on extended abstracts of 500-1000 words (plus references). Abstracts should be sent to as plain text only (no attachments). Full paper guidelines will be provided with the notification of acceptance. Submissions should be sent to: gamestudiesseminar@gmail.com.
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: https://gamemoneyseminar.wordpress.com/
Organised by: http://gameresearchlab.uta.fi
University of Tampere / SIS / Game Research Lab
18-19 April, 2016, University of Tampere, FINLAND
