[Commlist] CFP: Affecting Game Space

    CALL FOR PAPERS


    Conference: ‘Affecting Game Space: Theory and Practice’

*CFP DEADLINE: 31^st July 2021*

*DATE: 3rd September 2021 *

 From claustrophobic confines to sublime vistas, game spaces have 
conjured affects since the medium’s inception. Whether it be nostalgia 
for the remastered landscape, the vertigo of free diving in VR, or the 
conviviality of gathering around landmarks in Pokémon GO, affect 
reciprocally connects players to physical and virtual spaces. Haptics, 
ray tracing and photogrammetry are allowing us to ‘feel’ game worlds in 
new and increasingly tangible ways. As Nitsche observes: “Video game 
spaces stage our dreams and nightmares and they seem to get better at it 
every year” (2008: 2). How then do we (co-)design, feel, construct and 
play with affect in game spaces?

As the inaugural event of the *‘Game Worlds’ research cluster* 
connecting theory and design at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for 
Data, Culture and Society, the *‘Affecting Game Space’* online 
conference will be built around quickfire presentations followed by 
breakout groups, with the potential for demo/exhibition space. We hope 
to welcome you to a network of like-minded academics and practitioners 
based at The University of Edinburgh virtually through the spatial video 
conferencing platform ‘Gather,’ facilitating free movement, conversation 
and networking.

While Roger Caillois wrote evocatively of Ilinx as a category of games 
predicated on “voluptuous panic” (1961: 23), in recent years scholarly 
interest in affect and sensation in games has gathered pace with Perron 
and Schröter’s edited volume /Video Games and the Mind /(2016), Anable’s 
/Playing with Feelings /(2018) and Keogh’s /A Play of Bodies /(2018). 
Alongside this affective turn in game studies, there has been a renewed 
interdisciplinary interest in atmospherics (Ash, 2012; Böhme, 2013; 
Griffero, 2014) – the way affects, moods and aesthetics accrete in 
architecture and connect bodies in space. New developments in game 
design and technology are facilitating new modes of game space, 
atmosphere and affect from the growing adoption of binaural sound 
(/Hellblade, /2017), untethered VR (/Quest 2, /2020), and virtual worlds 
of increasing complexity and affective intensity (/Horizon: Zero Dawn, 
/2017; /Red Dead Redemption 2, /2018; /The Last of Us Part II /2020).

However, spatial affects are nothing new to cultures of play on the 
sports field or game board; new experiments in the fields of LARP and 
‘audiogames’ do not need novel technologies to engage player minds and 
bodies. Nor should we claim that all areas of development are 
unproblematic when ludic affects appear to be entrapping bodies in new 
economies of attention. Perhaps the time has come to nuance or 
problematise loose concepts such as ‘flow’ and ‘immersion,’ as Calleja 
(2010), Keogh (2018) and Soderman (2021) have argued, and explore what 
kinds of affective space we wish to inhabit.

Building on the momentum of interest in the intersection of space, 
affect and play, *we invite theory and practice-based provocations and 
papers of 10 minutes* on topics such as (but not limited too):

  * Urban space and alienation in play
  * Boredom and mobile games
  * Landscape aesthetics and open worlds
  * Haptics and the multiple senses of touch
  * Interface design and affective attachment
  * Games staging comedy/tragedy
  * Sound design and ambient horror
  * Practices of dwelling in games
  * Space, time and games as historical drama
  * Affective level design
  * Problematising/nuancing ‘flow’ and ‘immersion’
  * Mood management and game environments as respite
  * Environmental narratives and hauntology
  * Material aesthetics in games
  * Social play and anxiety
  * Lighting and virtual architecture
  * AR and memories of place
  * Echoes and audiogames
  * LARPs and emotional ‘bleed’
  * Designing ‘atmosphere’

Proposals of up to 300 words to be sent to (merlin.seller /at/ ed.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(merlin.seller /at/ ed.ac.uk)>or (tom.boylston /at/ ed.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(tom.boylston /at/ ed.ac.uk)>.*Deadline 31^st July 2021*. Please 
provide your title, an abstract concerning your work/topic, and contact 
details. Posters and video submissions are welcome.

Tom Boylston and Merlin Seller

Game Worlds Cluster

Centre for Data, Culture and Society

The University of Edinburgh


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