upcoming events
eSpaceS
Ludiciné Symposium on the visual treatment of space across media and digital imageries
June 19 and 20, 2013
Université de Montréal
Immediately preceding the History of Games international conference in Montreal, a two-day symposium will be held at the Université de Montréal on the subject of the visual treatment of space across visual media and digital imageries. Throughout the event, participants will present and discuss on techniques, technologies and media that entertain peculiar relationships with spatiality, ranging from perspective and orthographic projection, trompe-l'oeil, landscape painting, maps and scrolls, photography, film, comics, amusement park theme rides, and of course video games. The symposium is organized through Dominic Arsenault's research project "Graphical technologies, aesthetics and innovation in the video game industry: a study of the 2D-3D transition in the 1990s", funded by the FQSRC (Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture), and committed to fostering interdisciplinary examination of visual space in video games.
The first day (Wednesday, June 19th) will feature many presentations on the broad topic of spatiality, entirely in French, from disciplines such as art history, film studies, philosophy, architecture, design, game studies, and media studies. The second day (Thursday, June 20th) will take place entirely in English, with a stronger focus on discussions and a few presentations from scholars working in digital media, cyberspace and cyber-museology. Keynote addresses from Dominic Arsenault's research team and noted game historian Mark J.P. Wolf will explore issues, conceptual models and challenges in theorizing video game spaces. A formal invitation with all details and deadlines will be posted here in the following weeks.
past events
An Afternoon in the Heavy Rain
[
Poster]
Joint Ludiciné/GameCODE 2010 Symposium
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
L'Amère à boire, 3rd floor (2049 rue Saint-Denis, Berri-UQAM/Sherbrooke metro)
Montreal
The research team Ludiciné from Université de Montréal (led by Bernard Perron) and the research center GameCODE/TAG form Concordia University (led by Bart Simon) will once again host some interdisciplinary academic shinny on a single game. As always, the symposium represents a game studies challenge to test our assumptions, methodologies and perspectives. This year, we’ll immerse ourselves in HEAVY RAIN (Quantic Dream, 2010).
14h00: Michaël Cartier (Université de Montréal)
«Comment faire une scène.»/«How to Make a Scene.»
14h30: Guillaume Roux-Girard (Ludiciné, Université de Montréal)
Cinéma interactif dites-vous ?
14h45: William Robinson (TAG, Concordia University)
Critic, Auteur, Player, Guy.
15h15: Pause/Break
15h30: Cyril Jiguet (Université de Montréal)
2010, l’Odyssée d’Heavy Rain.
16h00: Edward Tarabay (TAG, Concordia University)
Adaptive Narratives: Heavy Rain vs. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.
16h30: Débat/Debate
Pour ou contre/For or Against Heavy Rain.
Book Launch: Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play
[
Poster]
Monday, November 2nd, 2009, 5 pm to 7 pm
L'Amère à boire, 3rd floor (2049 rue Saint-Denis, Berri-UQAM/Sherbrooke metro )
Montreal
The Ludiciné Research Team from the Université de Montréal is pleased to invite you to the book launch of Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play, edited by Bernard Perron, with a foreword by Clive Barker and essays from Bernard Perron, Martin Picard, Guillaume Roux-Girard and Carl Therrien, from 5 to 7 pm on the third floor of L'Amère à boire.
Thinking After Dark: Welcome to the World of Horror Video Games [Poster]
[Website]
Bilingual (French/English) international conference on the study of horror video games organized by Ludiciné.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday, April 23rd-25th, 2009.
Montréal (Québec), Canada
As fear is the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind (Lovecraft), human beings have always taken a
malicious pleasure in frightening themselves. If literature and cinema were and still represent good
means for the expression of horror, nowadays, the experience of fear is as intense in video games.
While academia has been studying horrific literature and films for a few decades, such an interest for the
videoludic side of horror has not, until now, showed up. Yet, since the cinematic staging of fear in Alone
in the Dark in 1992, the Survival Horror has become a prolific genre offering a wide selection of
significant games such as the Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Fatal Frame series. Because it is at the
crossroads of diverse cultural heritages and the latest technological developments, and because it
exhibits the ins and outs of the matrix that governs all but a few games (spatial navigation and survival),
horror video games require a deeper study.
This international conference wishes to study horror video games (not necessarily labeled survival
horror) from an eclectic range of critical and theoretical perspectives. It aims to fill a gap in game
studies between general theory and analysis of particular genres and games.
http://conference2009.ludicine.ca
Skating on Thin Ice: A Symposium on NHL2K9 for the Wii [
Programme]
Joint Ludiciné/GameCODE 2009 Symposium
Friday February 20, 1-4PM.
Hexagram Resource Center (EV-11.705), Concordia University
1515 St-Catherine Ouest [Map]
As with previous years, Bernard Perron (Ludicine, UdeM) and Bart Simon (GameCODE/TAG, Concordia) will host some interdisciplinary academic shinny on a game few of us have played, none of us has studied, and on which no one – except the keynote speaker – is exactly sure what to say. As always, the symposium represents a game studies challenge to test our assumptions, methodologies and perspectives against one another on a virtual ice as only Canadians can.
Le jeu vidéo : expériences et pratiques sociales multidimensionnelles
A video game studies symposium from Ludiciné, the HomoLudens research group on communication and socialization in video games (Université du Québec à Montréal), and the CRITIC team (Institut Télécom, Paris), as part of the 76th annual conference of the ACFAS (Association francophone pour le savoir).
Thursday, May 6th and Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), Québec City
Les expériences liées aux jeux vidéo constituent un objet de recherche présentant de
multiples dimensions. Elles peuvent être considérés comme un divertissement partagé
avec autrui : le jeu apparaîtrait comme étant un média de socialisation qui permet d’être
réuni au sein d’univers immersifs. Sans surestimer son originalité, le jeu vidéo constitue
ainsi un nouveau média dont les spécificités sémiologiques, matérielles et
technologiques semblent ouvrir un nouvel horizon d’expériences et de pratiques
sociales. Enfin, les jeux vidéo constituent des artéfacts produits par divers
professionnels (game designers, programmeurs, artistes) au sein d’une industrie qui a
connu un essor considérable et qui instaure de nouveaux modes de relations avec les
joueurs.
Plus généralement, il apparaît porteur de questionner les discours politiques,
économiques et sociaux qui nous informent sur les expériences liées aux jeux vidéo au
sein de nos sociétés. Les contenus des jeux vidéo sont marqués culturellement et
idéologiquement selon les contextes sociohistoriques auxquels ils appartiennent.
De plus, le jeu vidéo s'inscrit dans l'histoire des médias et met en place de nouveaux
dispositifs narratifs, esthétiques, communicationnels et sociaux dont les effets sont
encore peu connus. Ce «nouveau» phénomène social occupe une place dans les
histoires des médias, des jeux, des représentations audiovisuelles, des récits, des
dispositifs de communication et des médias numériques, mais cette place reste à
définir.
L’analyse que nous proposons des multiples dimensions des expériences liées aux jeux
vidéo amène à s’interroger sur une pratique sociale signifiante à l’échelle des individus,
des groupes et de la société dans son ensemble.
(10 minutes) ...pour faire le point sur l'interactivité [Poster]
Roundtable on interactivity with Gregory Chatonsky, Louis-Claude Paquin, Bernard Perron and Bertrand Gervais presented by NT2, the Laboratoire de recherches sur les ouvres hypermédiatiques, and Figura, the Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire de l'UQAM.
Wednesday, April 11th, 2007, 6pm
Laboratoire NT2 (UQÀM)
405, boul. de Maisonneuve Est, 2nd floor, room B-2300
Montréal
Depuis quelques années, la notion d'interactivité s'est imposée dans le paysage culturel. Pour le créateur artistique, il est devenu essentiel d'inventer un nouveau rapport avec le public et d'échapper au modèle de la consommation passive. Dans quelle mesure l'interactivité peut-elle transformer notre rapport au narratif et au langage? Quelles formes peut-elle prendre dans les arts? Dans le jeu vidéo? Dans les médias?
8 BIT : a documentary about art and videogames [Poster] [Website]
Film screening, discussion with the filmmakers and party with DJs.
Saturday, February 17th, 2007, 7pm
Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT)
1195 Boulevard Saint-Laurent
Montréal
Guitar Hero: Playing at Playing Guitar [Poster] [Tournament bracket] [Feature in the Concordia Journal]
A video game studies symposium from Ludiciné and Montreal GameCODE
Friday, January 26th, 2007, 1pm-5pm
Hall Building, room 1120
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Montreal
Papers/conférences :
Bart Simon/Bernard Perron (Concordia University/Université de Montréal)
Guitar Hero and Game Studies: Let's Rock!
Jonathan Sterne (McGill University)
The Meaning of Music is in Play
Dominic Arsenault (Université de Montréal)
Simulation et réalisme d'une guitare sans cordes
Ben Curtis/Rob Parungao (Concordia University)
Audience, Performance and Experience
Cindy Poremba (Concordia University)
She Rocks! Destabilizing Mastery in Guitar Hero
A video game does not have to tap a prevailing moral panic to engage scholarly critique. Our case in point this year is Guitar Hero . This immensely popular game combines familiar features of digital game play, music play and fan culture to produce an intriguing new media form that challenges game studies, music studies and digital culture studies scholars to think again about issues of gameplay, interface and embodied play, performance and spectacle, player culture and game audiences, game design and markets, musicality and authenticity, sound simulation, play and the magic circle, cognition and skill, and nostalgia and cultural fantasy.
In our continued effort to develop Montreal game studies around interdisciplinary engagements with shared objects of inquiry. We announce that the Montreal Game Studies Symposium for 2007 will focus on the Guitar Hero franchise. The symposium will be held on Friday January 26th from 1-5 pm. The event will feature head-to-head competition on Guitar Hero 2 and a series of short talks and discussion from invited scholars in the Montreal area.
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell : Analysis Is The Only Option
(This Is Not a Post-mortem)
Video game studies symposium by Ludiciné and Montreal GameCODE
Friday, April 1st, 2005, 2pm
Jean-Brillant Building, room B-4315
3200 rue Jean-Brillant, Université de Montréal (Métro Côte-des-Neiges)
Montréal
Papers/conférences :
Sébastien Babeux (Université du Québec À Montréal)
Des murs et des corridors. Espace de jeu et espace d'appropriation dans Splinter Cell.
Carl Therrien (Université de Montréal)
Immersion fictionnelle...immersion médiatique? La posture ambivalente proposée par Splinter Cell.
Bart Simon (Concordia University)
The Solo Game as Oxymoron: A Commentary on the Sociologics of Playing Splinter Cell.
This special digital game studies event features an afternoon of papers and discussion focused on the Ubisoft game "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell" and subsequent sequels (
www.splintercell.com). The goal of this symposium is to generate an innovative dialog across disciplines, universities and languages with respect to a shared and local object of analysis. Anyone with an interest in new media theory and design, digital game studies, and/or digital culture is invited to participate and playing knowledge of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is not required. For more information contact Bernard Perron or Bart Simon or consult the website at
http://www.gamecode.ca.
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