[ecrea] CFP Playing with Feelings: Video Games and Affect (SCMS 2012)

CALL FOR PAPERS
Panel for SCMS 2012, Boston

Playing with Feelings: Video Games and Affect

An assumption often found in game studies and video game industry discourse
is that the main obstacle keeping video games from attaining the cultural
status of film is their limited ability to manipulate a player’s feelings.
Thrilling? Yes. Enraging? Perhaps. Funny? Sometimes. But Google “can a video
game make you cry?” and you get awe-struck accounts of the seemingly rare,
but not non-existent, occasions when video games have moved players to
tears. What are the contours and stakes of the idea that video games possess
less emotional breadth and resonance than film and other media? This panel
seeks papers that analyze the relationship between video games as media
objects and their affective properties and/or aspirations (whatever these
may be).

Paper topics might include, but are not limited to:

--Formal analyses of video games and how they elicit emotional responses (or
fail to)

--Reception studies of video games and their affective intensities

--“Emotional choices” and game design

--Video games and media publics formed through affect (sentimentality,
empathy, etc.)

--Boredom and video games (or rage, agony, happiness, fear, etc.)

--Gender, affect, and games

--The relationship between affect and media effects approaches to video
games

--How cinematic structures of feeling influence game design

--Play Theory and Affect Theory

Please send a 250-300 word abstract, a sample bibliography, and a brief bio
or cv to Aubrey Anable at (aubrey.anable /at/ utoronto.ca) by August 8th.
Participants will be notified by August 15th.

___
Aubrey Anable
Assistant Professor
Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto
Department of Visual Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga
2 Sussex Avenue
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1J5
CANADA

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