Date: 22-24 November 2010 (3 days)

Course Venue: Sandbjerg Gods Conference Centre, Denmark

Organizers: PhD Fellow Rikke Toft Nørgård & PhD Fellow Henrik Smed Nielsen, Department of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Denmark (Adviser: Associate Professor Christian Ulrik Andersen, Department of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Denmark)

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Associate Professor Christian Ulrik Andersen, Department of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Associate Professor Espen Aarseth, Center for Computer Games Research, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Ph.D. Fellow Stine Ejsing Dunn, Center for Playware, The Danish School of Education, Denmark

Professor Charles Ess, Guest Professor at Department of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Senior Lecturer Dr Graeme Kirkpatrick, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, United Kingdom

Senior Lecturer Dr Jonas Linderoth, Department of Education, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Abstract:

This course puts emphasis on the connections between player body and player avatar, materiality and virtuality, interfaces in-game and input-devices in-world; trying neither to privilege the mind over the body nor the body over the mind. The goal is, by calling attention to these relations, to add new perspectives to the established stances in game research, and to explore the complexity of the connection between the game as physical and cultural and the player as a unified mind-body in the world. The body and actions of the player, the tools involved, the gameworld, and the form itself cannot be understood independently of one another; computer games is the coming together of all these elements in the game and in gaming. By seeing games and gaming in this alternative framework, we are maybe able to see ways forward for contemporary games research that involve a richer and more nuanced development of its form.

(For further details see below)

The intended participants are PhD students researching computer games, gaming, and/or gamers. The course will be relevant for PhD students theorizing about the concept/definition of games and/or gaming, analyzing the structure of games and gaming, or doing empirical research on games, gaming, and/or gamers. Contributions relating to any or all of the programs three tracks (see below) are welcome.

Course format: Seminar alternating between talks by senior presenters, paper presentations by PhD students, and feedback sessions from senior lectures and PhD students.

Attendance: 15 participants

ECTS: 3 ECTS (with paper presentations, 1½ ECTS without paper)

Course enrolment and application deadline: The course application, including a 1-page paper outline, should be sent by email no later than 1 September 2010 to the FMKJ office at fmkj@ruc.dk

Participants who want to present a paper (ca. 10 pages) for feedback must submit the paper no later than 1 October 2010. Papers will be made available to other course participants on the course site in the weeks prior to the course, and will then be deleted. Participants who prefer to distribute their paper directly to the other participants should organize this with the FMKJ secretary.

Registration form available at http://www.fmkj.ruc.dk/eng/skemaer/

Costs: Doctoral students from other institutions will have to pay their own travel, accommodation and meals, while participation in the course is free of charge. Accommodation and meals are estimated at app. DKK 3000. Prior to the course an invoice for this amount will be sent to applicants, who must document payment before being fully registered for the course.

Requirements for participation: A course package of required readings will be compiled and circulated to participants 1 month prior to the course. The participants are required to read the full package of scholarly texts and to take active part in the discussions of them.

Each PhD student will furthermore have to present a paper (1½ ECTS without paper) and each PhD student will be asked to comment specifically on the paper submitted by one of the other PhD students.

Provisional program:

·         Day 1: The In-Game and Onscreen

o   The Aesthetic Interface

o   Avatars as Roles, Tools and Props & In-game Action and Experience

o   The (Phenomenology of the) In-game and On-screen

o   5 PhD Students Presentations and Feedback

o   Social Event + Dinner

·         Day 2: The In-World and Offscreen

o   Physical Interfaces, Tools and Bodily Interactions

o   The Kin-Aesthetic of Computer Games

o   Bodily Experience and Computer Games

o   5 PhD Students Presentations and Feedback

o   Social Event: Physical Games and Dinner

·         Day 3: Relations; Bodies In-World and Avatars In-Game; Onscreen Virtuality and Offscreen Materiality

o   Relating Materiality and Virtuality, Offscreen and Onscreen

o   Relating Input: Bodily Action In-World  and Output: Embodied Action In-Game

o   5 PhD Students Presentations and Feedback

o   Conclusions and Wrap Up

Course outline:

In the past decades humanities research has suggested different frameworks for describing computer games and gaming. Computer games have alternately been viewed as being: texts or literature, narratives or dramas, movies, rule-systems, or representations. Overall, these approaches have – whether they have made computer games conform to older, familiar media forms (narratology), or given the phenomena credit as something in its own field (ludology) – certain things in common. Based on the dominant positions within games research, we might outline three general statements regarding games, gaming, and gamers to simplify these common features: 1. Computer games are media objects delineated as either a form of arbitrary representation (texts/rules) or representation (narration/visuals), 2. Computer gaming is a virtual activity taking place inside a virtual world, 3. Computer gamers are cognitive meaning-making subjects, embodying the game through visual perception of the onscreen avatar.

Thus, research on computer games and gaming has had an overweight on the onscreen and in-game, on visual perception and virtual experience, on resemblance, meaning making, and make believe, on sociality and identity construction. In consequence, the prevalent stances within games research have omitted to consider the off-screen, material, bodily, nonfictional, and nonrepresentational elements in games and gaming.

But the experience of playing computer games is equally something founded and savoured as an activity performed with the player’s body. Yet, the body, its actions with input-devices, and the role and functionality of these devices occupy a paradoxical position within games studies. Even though they are central to gameplay they are largely unnoticed in games studies. What a computer game feels like; its tangibility, the kinesthetic intelligence it affords, its required bodily adaptation to its input-devices (e.g. greater precision, pace, new input-patterns), and its kin-aesthetic aspects (e.g. its pace, rhythm, timing, motor skills, muscle memory) is (almost) never a matter for reflection or inquiry. It seems integral to computer game studies that we do not reflect on or refer directly to the input-devices and the actions we do with them; we do not ponder that computer games is a form made with the hands and the body.

This course puts emphasis on the connections between player body and player avatar, materiality and virtuality, interfaces in-game and input-devices in-world; trying neither to privilege the mind over the body nor the body over the mind. The goal is, by calling attention to these relations, to add new perspectives to the established stances in game research, and to explore the complexity of the connection between the game as physical and cultural and the player as a unified mind-body in the world. The body and actions of the player, the tools involved, the gameworld, and the form itself cannot be understood independently of one another; computer games is the coming together of all these elements in the game and in gaming.

Such investigations provide a framework to better understand the new generation of games that emphasise the player’s situated action, offscreen and in the world (e.g. Wii, Guitar Hero, pervasive and alternate reality games), it will also give new perspectives on traditional computer games, and in general point towards a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of computer games and the activity of gaming. Even though the new games can be said to be more physical than the traditional computer games, they are all equally bodily. The players’ relation to the computer game has never been a disengagement from the world. Rather, as acting and perceiving bodies the players’ relation to the game is a constant oscillation between offscreen and onscreen, in-game and in-world; a profound engagement with and in the world. By seeing games and gaming in this alternative framework, we are maybe able to see ways forward for contemporary games research that involve a richer and more nuanced development of its form.