The aim of the conference is to bring together academics and practitioners working with interactive technologies to explore and innovate within the areas of Education, Health and Disability. We have a particular focus on the use of gaming hardware and software to implement accessible solutions, interaction design using new input/output devices and the increasing impact of ubiquitous computing on our everyday well being.
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Video games already play a natural role in the daily lives of children and adolescents. At the same time video games rapidly capture the area of teaching and learning. Due to the high demands on their players and their overall complexity, Anglo-Saxon game studies already praise video as being among the most important 21st century education media. This workshop wants to critically scrutinize these optimistic prospects and presumptions and ask whether video games may provide a practical approach for learning and teaching. In this context video games include all kinds of electronic gaming, amongst others augmented reality environments, serious games and Commercial-Off-The-Shelf games which are used for specific learning goals.

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Research on games has grown into a research area of its own. This conference aims to bring together researchers in the Nordic countries that focus on the study of games and gaming, be it on-line, computerised, or in the physical world. Based on the Nordic tradition on user-centered design, the first Nordic DIGRA conference will place a particular focus on studying design for player experience, and research on tools and methods for player-participatory design.

More information can be found at http://www.nordic-digra.org/

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October 28 , 29 and 30, 2010

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

To play is a vital function for the development of individuals. Play is an activity of socialization which enables learning of the
rudiments of social interaction. Since the middle of the twentieth century, our societies have placed more value on the playful practice at all ages. As such, playing is more and more present in numerous spheres of society. Huizinga (1938) and Caillois (1958) assert moreover that any playful activity is social, by definition, and gets its real meaning when it is practised in groups. For Gadamer (1960), the charm of playing lies primarily in the fact that it exercises a fascination in the player. Online videogames gather more and more followers worldwide as this phenomenon becomes more important from day to day. It is no longer necessary to question play as a way to spend time. Through the intervention of videogames, play has also become a way to develop social networks, learn new communication skills and tools, a way to learn a foreign language, a place to keep or develop friendships, an opportunity to participate in an online community, or even a way to be exposed to new cultures. Online videogames have
become a media of socialization, that is to say, devices of mediation and mediatization which allow people to share large-scale information thanks to its network of exchanges and meetings. Such spaces of socialization arouse interactions convenient to the construction of the “self” and to the renewal of the representations of others and the world. Online videogames can facilitate socialization and be a carrier of values which are not necessarily different than those found in
society. Online videogames can also be a place that facilitate values that are not necessarily present in society in general
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28th – 31 st July 2010
Galt House Hotel, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Further Details: http://cgamesusa.com/index.php

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