Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media  Technologies Vol 13 no 4
 
Special Issue: Playing with Convergence: Digital games,


The field of Game Studies is maturing beyond the boisterous binary positioning that characterised its early development, with even those in  attendance during the early ‘theory wars’ attempting rapprochements of one kind or another (e.g. Juul 2005, Jenkins 2003).  The process of disciplinary development has shown that the most vociferously held early positions are simply inadequate to the task of accounting for the complex and diverse pleasures of gameplay, and the jostling to define games in general may even have distracted from a proper critical focus on the games themselves.
 
We no longer need to describe our object of study as though to the uninitiated, nor do we need to persuade a resistant audience that games are cultural objects worthy of detailed critical analysis.  This special issue is particularly interested in work which demonstrates a familiarity with the debates that have shaped the emergent field but which show the confidence to develop those earlier debates through  detailed, sustained analysis of particular games.

For this special issue of /Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies /we are seeking original Research into videogames, and we are particularly interested in the following areas: consideration of the work of particular designers or design teams, reflections on the status of authorship in games, and reflections on the relationship between visual design and gameplay in particular games and considerations of the relationship between particular games and broader visual traditions.
 
We seek a variety of approaches that represent the diversity of work in game studies, from textual analysis through to ethnographic studies of players and historical investigations.

 
Authors should submit expressions of interest or papers to 
helen.kennedy@uwe.ac.uk  or 
jason.wilson@luton.ac.uk 

 
Deadline for papers: 17th March 2007

 
convergence@luton.ac.uk 
www.luton.ac.uk/convergence