It is our pleasure to announce that Feng Zhu has accepted the invitation to chair the next conference in the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference series.

Feng is a teaching fellow at King’s College in London and has contributed extensively to the programs at earlier conferences in the series.

The new program committee is presently being constituted and a call for papers will follow within a few weeks. More information about the program work and the new conference host will also follow shortly.

The connection between games and language is undeniable. From Wittgenstein’s language games, through Sellars’ rule base theory of meaning to Robert Brandom’s notion of scorekeeping and Jaroslav Peregrin’s analogies between chess and language. What is important, the relationship between games and language goes beyond mere analogies or examples, because both phenomena can be jointly studied as artificial rule systems which govern social behavior. This creates a need for a common platform for researchers of games and language. The aim of the workshop is to bring both academic communities together in order to exchange perspectives and broaden the overlap between both fields.

Applications to present should be made via the PhiLang submission process, with abstracts clearly marked ‘for PhilGame’. Details can be found on the conference home page.

Topics should explore the relation between games and language and could include:

– Games as rule based systems

– Language as rule based system

– Analysis of the concept of a “rule”

– Difference between notions of game “mechanics” and game “rules”

– Wittgenstein’s notion of “language games”

– Conceptual role semantics

– The notion of “rule following”

– Normativity in games and language

Enquiries should be directed to the workshop organiser, Paweł Grabarczyk, IT University of Copenhagen: pagrab(at)gmail.com

The live stream from the Philosophy of Computer Game Conference in Copenhagen 2018 is now active. Michael S. Debus has worked hard to set this up. The stream is active in the embedded Youtube window and available via this link. The link will be updated in this post if there is a need for it.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ0YKpI6jOqQI3wKF55_p1g

15 August – 2018. 13.30 – 17.00

Location: Design Lab, ITU.

Throughout the human history games served as an “explorer” of the culture. In game interactions the patterns of the main social, communicative, interpretative, gender practices were formed and transmitted. Nowadays computer games largely incur this function. They accumulate the technical capacity of culture and convert it into the mythological and ideological forms. Computer games are at the same time media (=guides) and laboratories where the new experience valuable for the contemporary époque is created by the assemblage of the technical, social and playful activities, which overpasses just the sum of the narrative and ludic elements of the game.

The aim of the workshop is to demonstrate how various sets of cultural values emerge within the computer games as the hybrids of technological, social, corporeal experience, how games become the media which transmit the cultural experience in its entity, how they produce and reproduce practices which are necessary not only in games but also in our everyday life. It is worth talking about the technical (medial) component of the value formation not only on the level of the content, but (and even more important) on the level of the form. The computer game is not considered as an object, but as a medial form that influences not only the practices, attitudes or skills, but the rationality (the reason) of the contemporary digital culture.

Program

13.30 – 13.50 – Introduction

Alina Latypova and Konstantin Ocheretyany

13.50 – 14.10 – Apparatuses of Apperception: Hermeneutical Functions of Computer Games

Konstantin Ocheretyany

14.10 – 14.30 – Visual Ecology of Computer Game

Daria Kolesnikova

14.30 – 15.00 – Coffee Break

15.00 – 15.20 – Computer Game as a Media Archive: Chronicles of (Game) Experience

Irina Busurkina

15.20 – 15.40 – Breaks and Loops of Social Practices in Computer Games

Alina Latypova

15.40 – 17.00 – Discussion

List participants

Konstantin Ocheretyany, PhD junior grade, senior lecturer at the Department of Philosophy of Science and Technology at the Institute of Philosophy at St. Petersburg State University, scientific secretary of the Centre for Media Philosophy (the Institute of Philosophy, SPBU) and collaborator of the Laboratory for Computer Games Research;

Daria Kolesnikova, PhD junior grade, scientific researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at St. Petersburg State University and the Centre for Media Philosophy (the Institute of Philosophy, SPBU), master student at the faculty of media at Bauhaus University Weimar;

Alina Latypova, master of sociology and philosophy, junior scientific researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at St. Petersburg State University, collaborator of the Centre for Media Philosophy (the Institute of Philosophy, SPBU) and the Laboratory for Computer Games Research, secretary of the scientific seminar “Visual practices”;

Irina Busurkina, master of cultural studies at Saint Petersburg University, associate researcher in The Research Centre for Cultural Exclusion and Frontier Zones of Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RCCEFZ SI RAS).

The Laboratory for Computer Games Research (or CGRL) was created in 2013 in Saint-Petersburg (Russia) within the Centre for Media Philosophy (the Institute of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University) – one of the leading scientific schools in Russia. The Centre conducts annual conferences, edits book and holds seminars on media. The Laboratory for Computer Games Research has also conducted two international conferences (2013, 2014) on computer games and participated in the conferences of the Centre with the panels / round tables / workshops concerning the problematic of CG research. Among the main topics of the laboratory: corporeality, interfaces, identity, subjectivity in CG, computer game as a medium, language of CG, research of marginal practices as glitch art, masocore, etc. In addition, the Laboratory holds regular scientific seminar of the CGRL (organized by Alexandre Lenkevich) since 2013. In 2014 the CGRL published collective monography “Computer Games: Strategies of the Research”, in 2016 the book “Game or Reality: the Game Studies Experience”.

The Laboratory for Computer Games Research on Facebook: https://facebook.com/lab.liki/

Local coordinator Michael S. Debus is preparing for live streaming from the PCG2018 conference in Copenhagen next week. The unfortunate souls who cannot attend will then still be able catch the lectures and the atmosphere at this conference.

The streaming will be done via Youtube. More info will follow closer to the conference. This is the likely place that the streaming output will appear:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ0YKpI6jOqQI3wKF55_p1g

The Digarec program at Potsdam University is organizing a very interesting workshop on “Ludic Boredom”. The program and more information is found here. It contains contributions from several members of the network. Note that there is limited participation. From the description:

“The workshop will explore the social, cultural, and philosophical implications of boredom in relation to play and work, technology, media, and computer games with the goal of developing an international collaboration that establishes an innovative interdisciplinary research program to examine the undertheorized phenomenon of ludic boredom in depth.

Paradoxically, boredom seems to lie at the heart of the current culture of constant connectivity and productivity enhanced by digital media. Each potential moment of boredom is at the same time a possibility for monetization – advertisements, casual games, social media,and other pushed notifications, all seem to be competing for our attention, which could otherwise be suspended in blissfully prolonged recreational “Langeweile”. Boredom becomes particularly interesting in relation to play and digital games, which are supposed to serve as an antidote.”

The deadline for the next PCG-conference is fast approaching.  Please submit your abstract!

Call for Papers:   Values in Games