Preconference: Just Games? Considering How Digital Games Can be More Than Entertainment

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Driven by Japanese innovation in the early 1980s to its global extensions today, digital gaming has become pervasive not only in our contemporary mediascape, but as part of our broader cultures. Computers, consoles, smart phones, tablets, and other devices bring digital games to increasingly diverse audiences and provide more opportunities to engage in digital play. Within game worlds, people from around the globe engage with one another to produce and influence online and offline digital cultures.

One consequence of the centrality of gaming to the contemporary mediascape has been a rich body of research into the effects of games on individuals and groups. Extant work on the effects of digital games often considers questions with normative slants – Do games cause violence? Can games improve educational programs? Do digital games affect players’ social embeddedness? Questions such as these underscore a central tension for this massively popular medium – that is, is it the responsibility of digital game developers to move beyond pure entertainment and of scholars to explore the deleterious effects of the medium on consumers? The discussion surrounding games seems to indicate that, in order for this medium to achieve respected cultural status, it must offer more than entertainment. Rarely, however, do scholars have the opportunity to focus solely on the positive aspects of gaming when the investigation of problematic phenomena drives so much of the games related scholarship.

Contemporary digital gaming derives much of its legacy from Japanese origins and with Japan hosting this year’s ICA conference, this pre-conference theme asks us to look beyond games merely as a means for entertainment and to consider the positive role of digital gaming in our lives. The goal of this pre-conference is to consider the history, future, ethics, and nature of games as pro-social forces. In order to facilitate discussion surrounding these issues and to explore related areas of research, the pre-conference welcomes submissions with different theoretical backgrounds, methods, and perspectives. Possible pre-conference topics include, but are not restricted to:

Digital games as
• Art
• Historical records
• Social connectors
• Cultural bridges
• Meaningful experiences design
Theory driven ethical/pro-social design
Methods for examining pro-social effects
Industry perspectives on pro-social game
Digital game content and design promoting
• Health
• Social change
• Cultural preservation
• Education
• Social embeddedness
Ethical challenges in game design
• What is pro-social and who decides?
• Should game developers strive to create pro-social content?

Sub Unit

• Sponsored Sessions

Chair

• Teresa Lynch, Indiana University