Appels

Vous retrouverez ici tous les appels à contributions promus ou organisés par le Liège Game Lab.

CONFERENCE – LEISURE ELECTRONICS AND THE EMERGENCE OF VIDEO GAMES: TOWARDS A GENEALOGY OF LUDIC PRACTICES AND COMPUTING ARTIFACTS (2-3 MAY 2024)

This interdisciplinary conference invites abstract and panel propositions on the relationship of early video game history and its material and cultural contexts.

Since the early 1980s, a wide range of objects and activities from different cultural, material, and geographical contexts have been subsumed under the term « video games ». These emerged in and from settings such as universities, electronics clubs, amusement arcades, cafés, restaurants, schools and workplaces. The aim of this conference is to look into the origins of video game culture and encourage research into the ludic practices and artifacts that accompanied this unfolding development. To travel these uncharted areas, we must assemble heterogeneous pieces of knowledge on the history of computers and video games, while also digging for past practices related to programming, tinkering and playing.

This inquiry requires an understanding of local contexts: how did individuals learn to create games? Game development was not a globalised practice as it is presented today, with online tools and tutorials available from almost anywhere in the world. When did we start to see recurring practices, and which ones? How did they spread, and which ones never took off? With this conference, the Confoederatio Ludens project and GameLab UNIL-EPFL invite the scientific community to investigate the emergence of video game cultures, fostering interdisciplinary discussions that encompass aesthetic, material and discursive studies, as well as investigations into the sociology of ludic practices, regional histories, and more.

Proposals for abstracts should be sent to pierre-yves.hurel@unil.ch by 15 January 2024.

More information in the link below.

LEISURE ELECTRONICS AND THE EMERGENCE OF VIDEO GAMES: Intro, axes and practical information