[DiGRA UK] *updated* BCMCR Game Cultures research seminars on 1, 15 and 29 May 2019

[Nick Webber]

(Now with details for the seminar on 29th May, as promised).

Dear all,

Just drawing your attention to some upcoming seminars and games activity in Birmingham. We have events on 1 May, 15 May and 29 May at Birmingham City University, and the Play/Pause conference is taking place on 22 May at University of Birmingham.

Details of all seminars (and link for 22nd) below.

- Nick

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BCMCR Research Seminar: Game Cultures – Historical Game Studies
1600-1730 Wednesday 1 May 2019
C284, Curzon B, Birmingham City University
Free registration at https://t.co/i0eYxEhJBv

Esther Wright (University of Warwick) - Marketing “Authenticity”, and Rockstar Games as Historian

For two decades, Rockstar Games have been developing and publishing video games that interrogate and (re)mediate aspects of American society and culture, past and present, to critical acclaim and fan dedication. As a multinational developer-publisher with a proclivity for selling ‘Americana’, Rockstar has been afforded the status of cultural historian by critics and fans. Rockstar are, moreover, keen to embody and perform this role of historian, occupying space within promotional paratexts designed to precede and anticipate the release of their most explicitly historical titles.

This paper considers the way certain Rockstar games – particularly the Red Dead franchise (2010-2018) and L.A. Noire (2011) – were promoted, and how references to cultural history and “real” historical detail feature in the Rockstar-generated paratexts surrounding them. What consideration of these promotional materials ultimately reveals is the way Rockstar deliberately crafted a highly particular historical narrative, one specifically designed to manage expectations and encourage fans to view these games as an “authentic” experience of both America’s past, and of notable cultural genres. This paper explores what kind of history of America Rockstar have been telling – both within their games and outside of them.

Adam Chapman (University of Gothenburg) Playing with Historical Interruption: Videogames and/as Deconstructionist History

Videogames with historical themes are increasingly subject to scholarly consideration, particularly concerning their pedagogical possibilities.  However, empirical studies have pointed to the process of information reduction in skill acquisition (Haider and Frensch 1999). This implies that the history in videogames that bears little relation to the game’s challenges is likely to become gradually ignored as players develop expertise.  Whilst this may disturb the pedagogical value of historical games, this talk instead considers the radical potential of this playful information reduction process.  Viewing this process as a form of interruption into conventional receptions of historical representations, this talk argues that these games may make connections to the interruptive techniques advocated within deconstructionist history and Brechtian theatre. However, the problematic limitations of this process as it is found in games in comparison to these other interruptive processes will also be considered. Nonetheless, examples of games that successfully utilise the inherent interruptions of gameplay into historical representation by self-reflexively drawing attention to this very process through the use of a ‘double interruption’, deployed as a means to achieve purposely critical ends, will also be discussed.  Exploring this issue implies that processes of reception must be considered if the epistemological discourses of historical games are to be fully understood. Furthermore, this reinforces the notion that these games can function through multiple, and even competing, epistemologies.


About the speakers:

Esther Wright is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Warwick. Her research considers the representation of American history by Rockstar Games, and the role of promotional discourses and branding in selling historical video games. Her work has been published in Kinephanos: Journal of Media Studies and Popular Culture and Rethinking History, and has appeared in Bullet Points Monthly, History Extra, and the History Respawned podcast.

Adam Chapman is a senior lecturer at the University of Gothenburg. His research focuses on historical games, i.e. those games that in some way represent, or relate to, discourses about the past. He is the author of Digital Games as History: How Videogames Represent the Past and Offer Access to Historical Practice (Routledge, 2016), alongside a number of other publications on the topic of historical games. He is also the founder of the Historical Game Studies Network.

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BCMCR Research Seminars - Game Cultures – Possibilities and Futures: Games and Critique
1600-1730 Wednesday 15 May 2019
C284, Curzon B, Birmingham City University
Free registration at https://t.co/FM30mSQeIK

Alison Harvey (University of Leicester) Dystopian Destinies and Utopian Possibilities: What Games Tell Us About the Future of Labour

From GamerGate to the recent controversy about the removal of a game called Rape Day from the Steam store, digital play has been the sight of ongoing feminist critique and intervention on the one hand, and vitriolic harassment and reactionary backlash on the other. At the same time, the long-standing exploitation for which the games industry is known faces serious challenges with the rise of Game Workers Unite! and a growing labour movement alongside increasing automation and outsourcing of content production. In this talk, Alison Harvey explores the contours of these clashes and tensions, how they coalesce around women’s work, and what they tell us about the future of media and technology.

Ivan Girina (Brunel University London) ‘Another World Is Possible’ in Dignity Village: Alan Butler’s Down and Out in Los Santos and in-game photography as subversive play.

Looking at the work of Alan Butler, and particularly his piece Down and Out in Los Santos, I intend to explore in-game photography as an alternative form of engagement with video games, through which the player can claim agency over these texts, providing new understandings of their algorithmic and simulation logic. Using an in-game phone camera that allows the capture and sharing of virtual photographs from Grand Theft Auto V, Butler’s project claims to document ‘poverty and the lives of the homeless within video game environment’s socio-economic hegemony.’ Building on Miguel Sicart’s (2014) notion of play as appropriative and disruptive, I argue that Down and Out is an example of how in-game photography allows player not only to critically address video games, but even to subvert their logic engaging in alternative forms of gaming. More specifically, I will focus on Butler’s critique of ‘virtual corporate spaces’ through his documentation of Dignity Village: a tent-based homeless camp found at the periphery of the virtual city of Los Santos. I will demonstrate how Dignity Village is, in fact, a symbolic and indexical space that blurs the lines between the “virtual” and the “real,” bridging the fictional world of GTAIV with contemporary neoliberal geopolitics.


About the speakers:

Alison Harvey is Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester, where she leads the MA Media, Gender, and Social Justice. Her research and teaching focuses on issues of inclusivity and accessibility in digital culture, with an emphasis on games. She is the author of Gender, Age, and Digital Games in the Domestic Context published in 2015 by Routledge. Her forthcoming book,Feminist Media Studies, will be published by Polity. Her work has also appeared in a range of interdisciplinary journals, including Games & Culture, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Information, Communication & Society, Social Media & Society, and Studies in Social Justice.

Ivan Girina is a Lecturer in Game Studies at Brunel University London. He holds a PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of Warwick and his research is currently focused on the aesthetic influence between cinema and video games. Ivan is also co-founder and member of the Editorial Board of the international academic journal G|A|M|E – Games as Art, Media and Entertainment. He has published on a variety of topics such as video game aesthetics, film and new media, media literacy and education, and Italian regional cinema.

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BCMCR Research Seminars - Game Cultures – Queer Games and Gothic Themes
Wednesday 29 May 2019
C286, Curzon B, Birmingham City University *please note room change*
Free registration at https://t.co/GGeezxqZ78

Kirsty Fraser (VooFoo Studios / Rainbow Game Jam) Why Queer Game Jams Are Important

A lack of representation in games has been an issue for a while, and especially with a more diverse audience playing these games, why are the characters in the games we play not reflecting this? "Why Queer Game Jams Are Important" looks at the issue of LGBTQ+ representation in games and how queer game jams are a starting point for many people to break this barrier down.

Ewan Kirkland (University of Brighton) The Gothic Gameplay of What Remains of Edith Finch

This talk explores What Remains of Edith Finch as illustrating close proximities between videogames and Gothic media. Videogames have historically drawn on Gothic tropes across a range of genres, from dungeon crawlers to adventure games, from first person shooters to survival horror. Such tropes suit many spatial, temporal and storytelling dimensions affordances, limitations and qualities of the medium. This is exemplified in Edith Finch, a narrative-based game in which a woman investigates her old family home. The house is central to Edith Finch, a familiar labyrinthine videogame space, filled with secrets relating to its long-departed inhabitants. Play involves infiltrating various sealed rooms which, consistent with the videogame trope of environmental storytelling, are filled with artefacts reflecting the lives of each Finch family members. Every room contains a single document, a diary, a poem, a comic book, a letter, which tells of a Finch’s final moments, reproducing the Gothic trope of nested narratives employing different voices, registers and media. In transporting the player into these different doomed characters the game combines the medium’s capacity to re-embodying players with Gothic concerns relating to identity, subjectivity and complicity. In these interactive sequences the player is compelled to lead each Finch to their death. The game’s determining infrastructure thereby produces a sense of forces beyond the player’s control influencing events, effectively ludifying the curse haunting the Finch family.


About the speakers:

Kirsty Fraser works as a programmer at local games studio VooFoo Studios by day, then by night helps run Rainbow Game Jam (@RainbowGameJam) and Birmingham Indie Meetup (@brumindies).

Ewan Kirkland teaches Screen Studies at the University of Brighton. Focussing primarily on Silent Hill, Kirkland has published numerous papers and chapters on horror videogames. These have explored titles such as Resident Evil, Forbidden Siren and Haunting Ground, and have appeared in Games and Culture, Convergence and Camera Obscura. In the area of Gothic and horror culture, Kirkland’s work has been published in Gothic Studies, The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies and The Gothic World. More recently Kirkland’s attention has turned back to the focus of their PhD thesis on children’s culture. Children’s Media and Modernity (2017) explores film, television and digital games, and contains chapters on Little Big Planet, Disney Infinity and the CBeebies website. Kirkland’s research interests also include toy culture, dominant identities and animation, and he has published on My Little Pony, whiteness in vampire culture and The Powerpuff Girls.

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Link to Play/Pause: https://t.co/J4TciJ4YKZ


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