Sydney Games and Play Lab 2024 Winter School
The Games and Play Lab Winter School is an opportunity for PhD students and early career researchers studying games to share their work, benefit from in-depth feedback, and learn from established and emerging research leaders in the field of game studies.
The goal of the Winter School is to help emerging scholars navigate the complex interdisciplinary field of game studies, in addition to providing much-needed opportunities for career development and mentorship. Attending will help you build career-long connections with game studies researchers from Australia, and overseas.
Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a series of ‘masterclass’ workshops led by expert speakers, as well as present on their own doctoral work for feedback and constructive critique. The G&PL Winter School will also include an inclusive programme of social events for networking, mentoring, and meeting other researchers in game studies.
Registration is free.
Details
Each year, the Games and Play Lab Winter School will have an invited expert commentator(s) at the forefront of games research.
Our 2024 Winter School Keynote Speakers and Distinguished Scholars are Drs Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux:
Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux are associate professors at the University of California, Davis where they make, play, and think about games together.
Their research and teaching engage media theory and media art, game studies and game design to explore the community practices and material histories of play.
Their first book, Metagaming, is about the games people play in, on, around, and through videogames—from romhacking and speedrunning to esports tournaments and alternative control.
They also have been developing a small series of metagames together like Triforce, a topological transformation of The Legend of Zelda, and the Octopad, an eight-player controller for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Additionally, they are cast members of Every Game in This City, a podcast about playing well together on the Idle Thumbs Network. For more information visit https://stephanieboluk.com and https://patrick-lemieux.com .
The Sydney Games and Play Lab Winter School is hosted with support from the University of Sydney, and the Australian Research Council.
Expert speakers and advisors will include Professor Marcus Carter (USYD, ARC Future Fellow), Dr Ben Egliston (USYD, ARC DECRA Fellow), Dr Mahli-Ann Butt (The University of Melbourne), Dr Brendan Keogh (QUT, former ARC DECRA Fellow).
Must be funny
In the rich man’s world
The theme for the 2024 Games and Play Lab Winter School is Money. We have chosen this topic in the context of the:
increasing public debate about videogame monetisation;
the gamblification of digital games (and the ‘gamification’ of gambling);
the changing financialization of games through models such as ‘cryptogaming’, accompanied by the injection of billions of dollars of venture capital funding into the games industry;
Increasing attention to gender pay gaps, unpaid labour, and the lack of diversity in senior positions in the games industry;
the growth of games-as-a-service (GaaS), subscription gaming (such as GamePass) and changing models of crowdfunding (from Kickstarter to Patreon);
the increasingly consolidated nature of the games industry, through large holding companies like Embracer and Tencent, and massive tech firms like Microsoft (and its acquisition of Activision-Blizzard);
the ongoing impact of rentier platforms – controlling the chokepoints of game distribution (e.g., app stores) and production (e.g., game engines);
and the growing movements towards unionisation in games and related industries in the face of exploitation, and the tens of thousands of layoffs globally in the games industry.
In the face of these rapidly developing, critically significant topics we note a developing ‘Money Turn’ in Game Studies that is increasingly attentive to the influence of money on the production, consumption and critique of games.
The goal of the inaugural G&PL Winter School will be to provide an intellectual overview and introduction to this ‘Money Turn’, alongside a broader career development focus and game studies doctoral consortium.
Attendees’ research does not need to focus on the theme to be accepted. Rather, each year’s theme will indicate the focus of the keynote speakers and some masterclasses; a topic that we believe is relevant to all emerging scholars in the field of game studies.
Other masterclasses are more general in nature, focusing on publishing and mentorship. Attendees will be selected based on the quality of their work in game studies and potential for benefit from the Winter School, not on alignment to the theme.
Attendees are asked to submit a short statement of interest (max 200 words) on what they hope to get out of the winter school, and a research abstract (up to 250 words) describing the topic of their PhD. For recently graduated ECRs, a 250-word research abstract describing their ongoing research interests is suitable.
Submissions can be made at this link: https://forms.gle/awTEgb3B6jLykV5E7
The Winter School will be an in-person event, on campus at The University of Sydney.
14 March – Submissions Due
31 March – Notifications of Acceptance Issued
1 June – Registration Deadline
16 & 17 July – Winter School