IDG participation in DiGRA 2018 Conference

The IDG had a strong presence at this year's Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Conference. DiGRA 2018 was held at the University of Turin. IDG faculty members Prof. Stefano Gualeni and Dr. Daniel Vella participated, along with Dr. Sebastian Möring from the University of Potsdam and Ida Jørgensen from the IT University of Copenhagen, in a panel discussion on existential and phenomenological approaches to digital game play (which you can see in the picture).

Daniel and Stefano also gave a presentation entitled "Projectuality in Digital Gameworlds," discussing a forthcoming paper of theirs to be published in an upcoming issue of Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology. The paper, which looks at the existential notion of the project as it applies to being in virtual worlds, is part of a larger research project, following on from an earlier paper (published last year) on practices of roling and de-roling in virtual environments.

Daniel additionally presented a paper co-written with frequent IDG guest lecturer Dr. Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone, entited "Cities in Singleplayer Fantasy Role-Playing Games," which draws on urban theory, philosophy of space and Umberto Eco's concept of the neomedieval to examine the representation of urban space in fantasy RPGs.

Finally, IDG alumnus Johnathan Harrington, now pursuing a PhD at the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong, was also present at the conference, delivering a paper entitled "Infra-Ordinary Game Analysis: Animal Crossing Pocket Camp as an Introductory Study," which looks at the mobile version of Animal Crossing through the lens of Georges Perec's concet of the infra-ordinary.