Games and Culture Journal

[mykevermin]

For all you academic types: http://www.sagepub.com/journal.aspx?pid=11113

Games and Culture
A Journal of Interactive Media


EDITOR:
Douglas Thomas University of Southern California

Description:
Enjoy a FREE TRIAL to the entire first volume of Games and Culture!

CALL FOR PAPERS

Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media is a new, quarterly international journal (first issue due January 2006) that aims to publish innovative theoretical and empirical research about games and culture within the context of interactive media. The journal will serve as a premiere outlet for ground-breaking and germinal work in the field of game studies.

Games and Culture's scope will include the socio-cultural, political, and economic dimensions of gaming from a wide variety of perspectives, including textual analysis; political economy; cultural studies; ethnography; critical race studies; gender studies; media studies; public policy; international relations; and communication studies. Other possible arenas include:

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Issues of gaming culture related to race, class, gender and sexuality
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Issues of game development
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Textual and cultural analysis of games as artifacts
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Issues of political economy and public policy in both US and international contexts

Of primary importance will be the bridging of the gap between games studies scholarship in the United States and in Europe.

One of the primary goals of the journal will be to foster dialogue among the academic, design, development, and research communities that will influence both game design and research about games within various public contexts. A second goal will be to examine how gaming and interactive media are being used in contexts outside of entertainment, including in education contexts, for the purposes of training, for military simulation, and for political action.

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 will be 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) and should not exceed 10,000 words in length. Papers that do not conform to these guidelines will be returned to the author(s).

Submit manuscripts to:

Douglas Thomas, Editor
Games and Culture
Annenberg School for Communication
University of Southern California
3502 Watt Way
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0281
Email: editor@gamesandculture.com

It may be of interest to a few of you; I know that I want to begin doing research on voice chat in online games in the next few months, so this is pretty relevant for me.

[Mike23]

This sounds like a summer project to me. :D

[woobacca]

Wow, I didn't even know that Games Studies is a research field

[mykevermin]

It's a huge part of our culture; if literature, music, and movies are valid fields of study, why not games?

I spoke w/ a friend who is an english professor yesterday, who was telling me about students using "refential texts" for a composition class (basically, it was a book/movie/music that they identified with, and the purpose of the composition was to construct a short biography using the refential text as a tool for explaining its relevance in the context of your development (basically what its importance is and how you relate to it individually).

He receives a lot of requests for games as texts (since movies and music apply); he seemed spontaneously open to allowing games as refential texts.

I don't know how soon you'll see game development majors in universities, but as a study of culture or social being? Ab-so-fucking-lutely.

I'll tell you about my XBL study if you're interested. I have a MMORPG study (well, actually about a dozen, or probably one very boring book's worth) in my head that I was inspired by a very shitty professional presentation on WoW. I might get around to that, but it'll probably be years.

[woobacca]

I'll tell you about my XBL study if you're interested. I have a MMORPG study (well, actually about a dozen, or probably one very boring book's worth) in my head that I was inspired by a very shitty professional presentation on WoW. I might get around to that, but it'll probably be years.
Sure. I'll PM you.

[Apossum]

Thanks for the head's up Myke! Can't wait to get the first issue.

I'm hoping to do some in depth studies on gaming culture when I get to wisconsin. Hope this publication will give me an idea of how I should approach it (which I've been wondering for about a year now, heh)