Beyond Parasocial Interaction: Speed Dating for Ghosts
with Gabriel Elvery
Zoom Event: Talk & Let’s Play
Have you cared for a virtual pet, mourned a favourite character, or agonised over which video game character to date? If so, this event is for you! This talk, followed by interactive gameplay, will explore our emotional attachments to imaginary characters and consider their implications on our relationship with technology.
Suitable for anyone interested in creative technology, completely new to game design, and experienced game designers with an interest in learning new approaches and critical theories.
Content Warning: Contains frank discussions of death and its consequences, both seriously and with intentional humour.
For ages 15+
This is a talk and interactive Let’s Play, held via a Zoom Call. The audience will be given the opportunity to join in with the Let’s Play via the chat function.
Gabriel Elvery
Gabe is an LKAS PhD funded researcher at the University of Glasgow and Vice Editor of Press Start Journal. Gabe is researching the effects of Fantasy in single-player, narrative-driven video games. Their project will explore whether its effective use facilitates affective engagement with digital fantasy worlds and whether this digital affect has the potential to impact the emotional wellbeing of players in their off-screen lives. Gabe’s research will develop a new kind of reader reception theory by investigating whether literary analysis of video games has practical applications and corresponds with the experiences of players. The end result will make available a fuller understanding of the affordances, implications and impact of the Digital Fantastic.
Join the University of Glasgow Games and Gaming Lab to hear from a range of researchers about current academic studies, what a career in games research looks like, and how these studies can be applied practically for communities both inside and outside of games world.
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PANEL 1 Postgraduate Research Panel
11:30 – 12:15 (GMT)
With Lauren Watson, Francis Butterworth-Parr, William Kavanagh, Kirsty Dunlop, Monica Vazquez
In a panel chaired by Dr Matthew Barr of the University of Glasgow, hear about some of the exciting postgraduate games research that our Lab members are currently undertaking. From the relationship between video games and literature to the question of how video games should be preserved, this panel session will demonstrate the huge range of possibilities for studying video games at university!
Dr Matthew Barr
Dr Matthew Barr is currently Programme Director for the Graduate Apprenticeship in Software Engineering at the University of Glasgow and co-founder of the Ada Scotland Festival. Matt previously convened the University’s first Game Studies course and founded the international student game studies journal, Press Start. He is co-Director of the University’s Games & Gaming Lab, and serves as Vice Chair of British DiGRA and as a Trustee and Director of the Scottish Game Developers Association. Matt also sits on the BAFTA Scotland Committee and currently serves as the Games Jury Chair. His book, Graduate Skills and Game-Based Learning, was published by Palgrave in 2019.
I am an MPhil Research student at the University of Glasgow, following my interest in the field of video game studies that I gained during my undergraduate degree in film and television studies. My masters project on fandom and games preservation came about from years of interest in video game modding, repairing older consoles and game emulation. My love for retro-games and computers themselves probably started as a kid when my dad and I kept having to repair our Windows 95 PC to play 3D Realms games! The enthusiasm in gaming fandoms for preserving even the rarest games of the 1990s and 2000s era has been a great drive for me in my research as I strongly believe even the most niche communities of the internet have great insights into contemporary online culture. Being able to research a subject I have loved for so many years, as well as one that needs so much critical attention and research, is a privilege that I hope to continue working on for many years to come.
Kirsty Dunlop is a DFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, conducting practice-based research on interactive fiction and essaying. She is the poetry and nonfiction editor at SPAM Press (a publisher of post-internet poetry), and co-hosts the podcast URL SONATA. She writes electronic literature, poetry, short stories, collaborative work, and hybrid forms. Creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in Adjacent Pineapple, Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Wet Grain Journal, and other publications. Her most recent work is a broadside collaboration with the poet nicky melville, THE FACT THAT, published by GONG FARM.
Monica Vazquez is a GTA and second-year PhD researcher at the University of Glasgow working on the Technology of Immersion in Fantasy Literature and VR. She’s also a columnist for El Periodico de Catalunya and a published author, as well as the Chief Media Officer at the Center for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow. She directs and manages ‘Wicked Readings’, an academic fantasy horror reading group, and her didactive podcast ‘Trementina’. She’s currently working on her second novel and has started learning sword fighting.
PANEL 2 Game Studies in the Wild: Practical Applications of Games Research Panel chaired by Ruth EJ Booth 13:30 – 14:15 (GMT) With Gabriel Elvery, Charly Harbord, and Arthur Ehlinger
Games research allows us to explore the fascinating design, history and culture of video games. But once outside the University, what can games research do beyond the games industry? This panel will explore the practical applications of Games research in three key areas: live events management, emotional well-being, and uplifting indigenous languages and cultures. Join us to learn what happens when Game Studies breaks out of the academy!
Ruth EJ Booth Ruth EJ Booth is a multiple award-winning writer and SGSAH-funded academic of fantasy based in Glasgow, Scotland. Her poetry and fiction can be found in Black Static, Pseudopod and The Dark magazine, as well as anthologies from NewCon Press and Fox Spirit Books. Winner of the BSFA Award for Best Short Fiction and shortlisted twice for the British Fantasy Award in the same category, in 2018 she received an honorable mention for Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year, Volume 10. In 2019, her quarterly column for Shoreline of Infinity, ‘Noise and Sparks’, received the British Fantasy Award for Best Non-Fiction.
Charly Harbord works at Abertay University as well as doing a PhD on RPGs to enhance second language acquisition focussed on Mandarin and English. She wrote a chapter in ‘Digital Games and Language Learning’ and is an Applied Game Designer in Residence for Women in Games. Charly founded ‘The Kilted Otter Initiative’ a research-based Gaelic Game Jam. She is looking forward to working on creating an app for Indigenous Languages with the members of First Nations.
The Kilted Otter Initiative is a research-based extended Gaelic game jam focusing on exploring Scottish heritage, culture and language and is open to anyone. Created by Abertay University staff from the School of Design and Informatics and supported by MG ALBA and Women in Games, the project aims to create collaborative experiences and make games design and Gaelic accessible to all. It will embed Gaelic within games ensure it is not lost from Scottish culture.
Arthur Ehlinger Currently conducting a PhD in Music at the University of Glasgow, his research investigates the world of live streaming and intends to act as a stimulus for greater scrutiny around this new medium. His latest work which focused on the socialites surrounding live streaming revealed an increasingly collective practice where a complex network of relationships is created between the different active parties. If this research has been conducted within a music paradigm, the findings can be transposed to other use of live streaming, including gaming.
PANEL 3 Paths to Research Panel with William Kavanagh 14:30 – 15:15 (GMT)
William Kavanagh I’m a Computer Science PhD student at Glasgow writing up my thesis on Game Balancing. I have been at the department since starting my undergraduate degree in 2013. In a few months I will be setting out, looking to start a career in development or research. Ideally continuing what I’ve done for the last four years, thinking about games in a basement.
Robin is a Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for BA (Hons) Game Design and Production at Abertay University, who left the games industry in 2007 to pursue a PhD in game character animation and joined Abertay as a Lecturer in 2011.
Dr David Farrell is (at least for the next week) a lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University where he teaches game design and researches the design of Applied Games. He’s interested in just about every aspect of game design practice. David currently leads the a small game dev team at GCU who are making LifeLab+, a gamey / app that has a mixture of playful challenges, self experiments, and games aimed at helping teenagers take charge of their health (trailer here: http://bit.ly/2019LLPT ).
Dr. Romana Ramzan is a Producer at No Code. Having spent over 10 years in academia, she was looking for a fresh challenge and ventured back into industry. Romana was one of the main founders, and organisers, of Scottish Game Jam, she was previously a Director of the Global Game Jam, she has served on the BAFTA Scotland Committee for Games and has been named as one of Develop Magazines ’30 Under 30’. In March 2014, Romana was awarded the Asian Woman of the Future Award at the Scottish Asian Women’s Awards and more recently Romana was named as one of the Top 100 Women in Games in the UK by MCV.
Jane McGonigal Keynote Fireside Conversation & Q&A
We’re delighted to welcome in our first ever Tinderbox PlayAway Festival with a conversation and Q&A with Jane McGonigal. Jane’s book ‘Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World’ was a major inspiration for some of Tinderbox’s work and we are so excited that she’ll be joining us for this event.
Jane McGonigal Jane McGonigal, PhD, is the Director of Game Research + Development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California. She is the author of two New York Times bestselling books: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World and SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully. Her TED talks on how games can make a better world have more than 15 million views. She has advised companies including Disney, Mattel, Nintendo, Riot Games, Activision and EA on how to create games that build real skills and help players develop emotional and social strengths they can use in their everyday lives. She is also the inventor of SuperBetter, a game that has helped more than a million players recover from symptoms of depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and traumatic brain injury.
