I’d like to apply for an open DiGRA board position. I’m Douglas Brown, a PhD student and part-time lecturer in Games Studies at Brunel University, UK. I started out on an academic career writing about games two years ago, completing my MA in games at Brunel on Tanya Krzywinska’s course and giving a paper at the DiGRA conference in Tokyo, where I was struck by the number of other academics interested in the field. I think the DiGRA board could make use of a voice and perspective from the next generation of games academics. My background is studying English at Oxford University and working on several games for Square-Enix, prior to moving into writing about and teaching games full-time.

Games as an academic field is important to me because it is still so new and vibrant even after its trailblazing phase has passed. It’s great to be involved in an emerging field that keeps on growing and has its share of fresh debates and age-old questions discussed in a new light. As the generations that really grew up with games marketed directly to them as a media pillar starts coming to university, the real breadth of what we study will become apparent while new questions will be asked of old media in light of games research. Students see games more and more as the gateway to powerful storytelling and imaginative spaces previously the preserve of other media. Games are changing and evolving so fast that, while it is impossible for the pace of academia to keep up (the book chapter I recently submitted about World of Warcraft was out of date before it even went to press...), our growing departments and branches of study do need to tag along, chronicling these changes, exploring the new avenues they open up and championing games as a medium worthy of academic study. DiGRA is one of the primary ways to facilitate this and increase both the quality and profile of academic work on this subject.

DiGRA already has a really excellent digital library, and runs a fantastic bi-annual conference. Maintaining this foundation as well as building upon it is what we should aim to do in the near future. The times DiGRA has seemed most apparent and useful to me as a researcher outside the conference is through the games-network mailing list. It’s great when discussion is sparked through the questions people ask, soundings people take, answers that they get and tangents some of us sometimes go off on. The abstract games and ‘ludophile’ debates were two of my favourites this year. It seems natural that we should try and supplement this discussion with an online forum, which is one of the main additions I’d like to see on the website. The current incarnation of the website seems perfect for hosting the library, but awkward in terms of cataloguing and facilitating the community. Separating out these two functions into more distinct separate web presences might help deal with this issue.

I have experience organising small conferences here at Brunel and elsewhere, I was involved in setting up DiGRA 2009 and have helped the Brunel course grow from an experimental MA to a fully fledged BA, MA and PhD programme. I think the steady growth of the organisation and popularity of the recent PhD mentoring scheme at DiGRA 2009 shows that there is an increasing younger presence in games studies, and the concerns and interests of academics at the start of their careers should be taken into account by the DiGRA board.