The Digital Games Research Association is proud to announce the publication of the inaugural issue of Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDiGRA). ToDiGRA is a refereed, open access, quarterly, international, multidisciplinary journal dedicated to research on, and practice in, all aspects of games. ToDiGRA is published electronically and in print via its partner ETC Press.

ToDiGRA has come about thanks to the hard work of its editorial team, led by Dr. Annika Waern of Uppsala University. DiGRA wanted to create a venue for the publication of high quality research that was consistent with our mission to make that work as widely available as possible. ToDiGRA is planned in part to highlight excellent work coming from DiGRA conferences as well as  research more generally. In a time when institutional paywalls restrict access to many journals and commercial publishers offer little real compensation to academic authors, we feel that ToDiGRA offers a real alternative, providing access to the latest research, peer reviewed by those best placed in the field to do so.

ETC Press began a few years ago as an experiment in evolving and redefining the future of academic publication. It has rapidly established itself as the premier publisher for multi-faceted and interdisciplinary games research. ETC Press also shares DiGRA’s traditional and long-standing commitment to open access publication and empowering authors. It is thus an ideal partner for helping DiGRA continue to play a fundamental role in encouraging and disseminating high quality games research worldwide.

We invite you to read the first issue, which presents updated and extended versions of top picks from the 2011 DIGRA conference:

- Jason Begy: Experiential metaphors in abstract games,
- René Glas: Breaking reality: exploring pervasing cheating in Foursquare
- Ioanna Iacovides, James Aczel, Eileen Scanlon, and Will Woods: Making sense of game-play: How can we examine learning and involvement?
- Jonas Linderoth: Beyond the digital divide: An ecological approach to gameplay
- Gareth Schott and Jasper van Vught: Replacing preconceived accounts of digital games with experience of play: When parents went native in GTA IV.

sincerely,