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Games, Virtual Technologies, and STS - I

Fri, September 6, 8:00 to 9:30am, Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, Floor: Eight, Proteus

Abstract

Games are flexible epistemic objects, variously constructed as entertainment, military and logistics simulations, communications technologies, scientific apparatuses, cultural artifacts, art, and media. With a few notable exceptions, however, academic analyses of games and game development practices tend to be the domain of media and cultural studies scholars, which produce vibrant—but disciplinary-inflected—research practices, perspectives, and interpretations.

This panel seeks to understand what games and virtual technologies mean from an STS perspective, as well to connect STS’s strengths analyzing knowledge practices, situated knowledges, and the mutual shaping of technology & society to the thriving communities of games studies scholars in media studies, interpretive textual studies, and critical code studies. What does STS have to contribute, and how can STS reconfigure its own boundaries about what “counts” as scientific and technical practice to better address games, media technologies, and virtual spaces?

This panel track welcomes submissions on games and their interrelated virtual technologies, including VR and simulation systems, game development engines, software/hardware interfaces and platforms, graphics technologies, and real-time code. We especially welcome papers that address games and virtual technologies as political knowledge systems and practices, and papers that adopt feminist/decolonial science studies and critical technology studies stances in their analyses.

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