For those of you who want to escape family obligations today and tomorrow, tell them that you have to work on a submission for this call for papers! It's for a special issue of the Games and Culture journal, focused on Gaming in the Asia-Pacific region. Read on for details...
Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media Special issue: Gaming in the Asia-Pacific
Adorned with over 20,000 PC bangs (PC rooms) in Seoul
alone and with professional players (Pro-leagues) making over a million US per
year, locations such as South Korea have been lauded as an example of gaming as
a mainstream social activity. In a period marked by convergent technologies,
South Korea and Japan represent two opposing directions for gaming – Korea
emphasizes online MMOs games played on stationary PCs in public spaces (PC
bangs) whilst Japan pioneers the mobile (privatized) convergent devices. These
two distinct examples, with histories embroiled in conflict and imperialism,
clearly demonstrate the importance of locality in the uptake of specific games
and game play.
This issue seeks to explore the politics of game play and
cultural context by focusing on the burgeoning Asia-Pacific region. Housing
sites for global gaming production and consumption such as China, Japan and
South Korea, the region provides a wealth of divergent examples of the role of
gaming as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Drawing from micro ethnographic studies
to macro political economy analysis of techno-nationalisms and trans-cultural
flows of cultural capital, this issue will provide an interdisciplinary model
for thinking through the politics of gaming production, representation and
consumption in the region.
Topics of papers will discuss the region in terms of one of the following areas:
- Case study analysis of specific games and game play
- Is there such thing as a culturally specific aesthetic to the production and consumption of certain games?
- What is the “future” of gaming?
- Emerging and re-occurring productions of techno-nationalism in the region
- New media and experimental gaming in the region
- Convergent technologies and the impact on established modes of game play
- Gendered consumption and production of games
- Government regulations and types of game play
- Pervasive gaming and the role of co-presence
Deadline for this special issue of Games and Culture:
15th March 2007. Authors should submit all inquiries, expressions of interest
and papers to Larissa Hjorth (RMIT University) larissa.hjorth [AT] rmit.edu.au.
Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media invites
academics, designers and developers, and researchers interested in the growing
field of game studies to submit articles, reviews, or special issues proposals
to the editor. Games and Culture is an interdisciplinary
publication, and therefore it welcomes submissions by those working in fields
such as Communication, Anthropology, Computer Science, English, Sociology,
Media Studies, Cinema/Television Studies, Education, Art History, and Visual
Arts.
All submissions are peer reviewed by two or more members of the distinguished, multi-disciplinary editorial board. Games and Culture aims to have all papers go through their initial review within three months of receipt. Manuscripts should be submitted with four paper copies and electronically in Word or Word Perfect format and conform to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Fifth Edition)0,000 words in length. Papers that do not conform to these guidelines will be returned to the author(s).
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