About this Event
Day’s Programme:
10am Panel 1 - Ecogames - Sonia Fizek, TH Köln, Joost Raessens, Utrecht University, Stefan Werning, Utrecht University.
Break
11:30am Panel 2 - Economic and political challenges within the Digital Games Industry - Aleena Chia, Goldsmiths University, Alison Harvey York University, Paolo Ruffino, Liverpool University, Anna Ozimek, Independent Researcher, Poppy Curran Jones, IWGB Game Workers.
Lunch
2pm Keynote - Dr Sara Grimes, University of Toronto: The Politics of Children’s Digital Playgrounds.
Break
3:30pm Panel 3 - Theorising Playful Subjects in Digital Games - Feng Zhu, Kings College London, Stefano Gualeni and Daniel Vella, University of Malta, Rob Gallagher, Manchester Met, Tom Brock, Manchester Met.
Keynote details:
The Politics of Children’s PlayDigital games and online play spaces can provide children with extremely valuable tools and forums for collaborating, assembling, connecting, and having fun. Much like traditional playgrounds, digital games often function as a type of children’s public sphere, where kids can exercise their agency and from which a diversity of ideas and practices can be carved. In many cases, however, this potential is diminished by corporate agendas that prioritize the commercialization of children’s play and the enrollment of children into big data economies. In this talk, I present four key tendencies that dominate and shape the child-specific commercial digital play landscape: a deep disconnect between hegemonic articulations of children’s privacy and children’s need for autonomous spaces and interactions; a lack of support for children’s freedom of expression online and its positioning in opposition to children’s “safety”; unanswered questions about who owns children’s digital content and shared culture; and the problematic application of both traditional and emerging models of corporate control, monetization, and commercialization to artifacts designed and targeted to young children
Speaker details:
Dr Sara M Grimes is Director of the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) and Semaphore Labs, as well as Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Her research and teaching are centred in the areas of children’s digital media culture(s) and critical theories of technology, with a focus on digital games. Her published work explores the commercialization of children’s play culture and creative expression, discussions of intellectual property and fair dealing in child-specific digital environments, as well as the legal and ethical dimensions of marketing to children online. Her new book, Digital Playgrounds: The Hidden Politics of Children’s Online Play Spaces, Virtual Worlds, and Connected Games, was published by the University of Toronto Press in August 2021.
Subjectivity and Being in Virtual Worlds:
Drawing on phenomenology and existential philosophy, this talk introduces the idea of virtual subjectivity, that is, the sense of ‘self’ that relates to one’s being-in-the-virtual-world (Gualeni and Vella 2020). Following on from the existentialist understanding of the interrelation of subject and world, we argue that a virtual subjectivity is inseparable from the virtual environment that it takes up as an experiential world. As such, the virtual subject is defined by its relationship to a virtual world in terms of embodiment, projectuality, and care. In this presentation, we will combine theory and practical examples to offer an actionable understanding of these three defining aspects of being-in-a-virtual-world.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Manchester Metropolitan University, Geoffrey Manton Building (GM230), Rosamond Street West, Manchester, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00