|
|
|
| Games are everywhere. On subways, we see people playing Tetris with cell-phones. On the street and in restaurants, kids play with GameBoys and other portable devices. At home, we gather around the console or collaborate with a family member to take out a monster in a multiplayer game. In our offices, we spend stolen moments playing PC games. Our elderly are whiling away free hours playing online games. Games are everywhere, and becoming more deeply embedded in the fabric of our everyday lives. |
As digital games penetrate our life and society, they are increasingly difficult to ignore. Games have created huge industries in some countries, while still others note this success and clamor to build industries of their own. The idea of games as mere entertainment is beginning to fade: the potential of games is now being recognized as they are becoming progressively more employed for education, job training, physical exercise, rehabilitation, psychotherapy and more. Children and adults spend a substantial portion of their life playing games - in many cases, spending more time with games than television or other media. Games are now an integral part of our societies and lives. Games, therefore, deserve serious attention.. |
Yet, we have a problem. A digital game is an extremely complex aesthetic, social and technological phenomenon. Games are not isolated entities that one can effectively study in vitro. Games are situated in culture and society. To truly understand the phenomenon of digital games, it is not enough to merely study the games themselves or short-term impacts as described by laboratory experiments ---these are only part of the story. Their context begins when the games are marketed and circulated, and they reach the hands of players. Context continues to build as potential players satisfy certain prerequisites: resources to obtain a console or a PC, time and motivations to play games, and skills to enjoy sometimes very complex digital games. We need to understand not just narratological and ludological aspects of the games, but also the industrial and economic contexts that produce them, and the socio-cultural backgrounds that produce game players and generate gameplay. In short, to understand games, we need to investigate at them from multitude of different perspectives.. |
To make the case even more complex, while games are ubiquitous, they are geographically diverse, and game play is local. Games are produced and consumed differently in Japan and in North America. Online games have different meanings and functions in Korea and in Europe. When we look at the situatedness of games, we see greater cultural diversity in games, even beyond the superficiality of geo-political boundaries into myriad sub-cultures that might find unifying interests across traditional cultural lines. Gameplay is messy. Yet we must strive to understand it, even if that means pulling together many small pieces of the overall puzzle together in the hope that the whole might reveal itself over time.. |
We, therefore, need to unite. We need to mobilize all those who can provide any insights about digital games, from academia to industry, across a wide range of disciplines and expertise. In particular, we need to gather voices from around the world to better reflect the wide range of experiences and perspectives that games solicit. Tokyo is a very appropriate city for game researchers from around the world to meet, and an excellent place for game studies scholars to talk with practitioners from game industry. We propose that this conference be an opportunity to act as a bridge between West and East, Industry and Academia, the result being a greater holistic understanding of games, their impacts, and potential in our world. |
|
|
OVERVIEW