Games in Action: interactivity / activation \ activism

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Since the emergence of game arcades in the 1970s, video games have been characterized as inter-active products. Players act upon games, and games act upon them. But what if we saw games as taking action upon the world around us, shaping our interactions with each other, setting the rules of our digitized lives, and helping us imagine our virtual selves?

“Games in action: interactivity / activation \ activism” will be the largest event organized on UBC campus focused on video games and their impacts on our social and political world. This two-day event will ask how interactive media can affect and help better understand structures of power within multiple spaces (across nations, communities, and genders/sexualities) and scales (from the deeply personal to the broadly political, social, and economic).

Keynote speakers include the revered game designer John Romero, Anodyne and Sephonie creators Marina Kittaka and Melos Han-Tai, founder of Silver Spook Games Chris Miller, and more.

A Pop-Up Arcade is also available to participants on both days. The arcade will host artists and games that do not merely reflect or represent marginalization, but that use interactive artwork to express marginalized experiences.

This conference is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Sponsors include the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies, Community Engaged Documentation and Research, Public Humanities Hub, Department of English Language and Literatures, School of Creative Writing, Computer Science, Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies, and the Centre for Asian Canadian Research at the University of British Columbia