[Air-l] 2nd CFP: Playing With the Future

[Jason Rutter]

APOLOGIES FOR CROSS POSTING

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PLAYING WITH THE FUTURE:
DEVELOPMENT AND DIRECTIONS IN COMPUTER GAMING

APRIL 5-7, 2002
Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition,
University of Manchester
Manchester, England

Deadline for submissions: Friday, December 21, 2001.


Computer games have now been taking up room in people's homes for over
twenty-five years. The mid-seventies fad for the black and white block
graphics of Pong has turned into an industry worth over $6 billion in the
USA alone. The new generation of consoles along with the almost frenetic
development in graphic and CPU technologies for PCs demonstrates a time of
great technological innovation for gaming technology and this is reinforced
by the growing importance of new methods of gaming-related retail such as
web-based e-commerce and interactive digital television. Further, gamers are
becoming increasingly organised and professionalised through growing
consumer gaming exhibitions, national and international gaming competitions
and arenas such as LAN parties and online gaming.

At this rapidly moving point in the gaming industry the ESRC Centre for
Research on Innovation and Competition (CRIC) will be hosting a conference
of computer gaming, gamers and the gaming industry on the 5th-7th April 2002
at The University of Manchester.

Bringing together researchers from sociology, psychology, games design,
cultural studies, economics, management and other disciplines, along with
members from various sectors of the gaming industry such as developers,
publishers and retail the central aims of the conference are:

 * To provide an international forum for the exchange of ideas, information
and analysis on the gaming industry and gamer research

 * To foster research links between academic research and the gaming
industry and develop new networks of research activity

 * To offer students a supportive environment for sharing and developing
their idea with more established researchers

 * To facilitate dissemination of work produced for the conference in
printed and electronic format


The organisers welcome submissions from any discipline, as well as work from
those producing games and other leisure-orientated new media or working
within associated industries. Panel presentations which establish
connections across disciplines, institutions and/or continents are
especially encouraged.

We invite paper, presentation, and panel proposals on, but not restricted
to, the following areas:

Gamers:
 Gamers as producers
 Gaming communities
 Ethnographies of gamers
 Gender differences

Gaming Industries:
 Organisational culture
 E-commerce and bricks & mortar retail
 Market values and sectors
 Marketing
 Strategic alliances

Gaming Effects:
 Gaming and health
 Gaming and development
 Games software in education

Gaming technologies:
 Technological convergence
 Avatars and AI
 Console wars
 Gaming via WAP, WED and dTV

Games:
 Textual analysis
 Gender in games
 Constructing gameplay
 Character and narrative
 Gaming history

Legal Aspects:
 Software piracy
 Game certification
 IPR and copyright
 Gamers as a consumer market

Individual paper and presentation proposals should be no more than 500
words. For panel proposals, the session organiser should submit a 250 word
description of the panel topic along with abstracts of up to 500 words for
each paper or presentation in the panel. The organisers are keen to
encourage experimentation with panel formats to enable exchange and
development. A guide for panel submission can be found at:
http://www.cric.ac.uk/cric/gamerz/panelguide.htm

Abstracts and proposals should be submitted electronically to
Jason.Rutter at man.ac.uk in RTF, Word or PDF format or sent to:

Jason Rutter
ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition,
The University of Manchester,
Ground Floor, Devonshire House,
Oxford Road,
Manchester,
M13 9QH
PH: +44 (0) 161 275 6859
http://www.cric.ac.uk/cric/gamerz/cfp.htm


FOR CONFERENCE UPDATES JOIN THE DIGIPLAY LIST AT
http://www.topica.com/lists/digiplay/


Deadline for abstracts: Friday, December 21, 2001.
Accepted authors notified: Friday January 21, 2002