Events

upcoming events

Monday, November 2nd, 2009, 5 pm to 7 pm
L'Amère à boire, 3rd floor (2049 rue Saint-Denis, Berri-UQAM/Sherbrooke metro )
Montreal

The Ludiciné Research Team from the Université de Montréal is pleased to invite you to the book launch of Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play, edited by Bernard Perron, with a foreword by Clive Barker and essays from Bernard Perron, Martin Picard, Guillaume Roux-Girard and Carl Therrien, from 5 to 7 pm on the third floor of L'Amère à boire.

past events

Thinking After Dark: Welcome to the World of Horror Video Games [Poster] [Website]

Bilingual (French/English) international conference on the study of horror video games organized by Ludiciné.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday, April 23rd-25th, 2009.
Montréal (Québec), Canada

As fear is the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind (Lovecraft), human beings have always taken a malicious pleasure in frightening themselves. If literature and cinema were and still represent good means for the expression of horror, nowadays, the experience of fear is as intense in video games.

While academia has been studying horrific literature and films for a few decades, such an interest for the videoludic side of horror has not, until now, showed up. Yet, since the cinematic staging of fear in Alone in the Dark in 1992, the Survival Horror has become a prolific genre offering a wide selection of significant games such as the Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Fatal Frame series. Because it is at the crossroads of diverse cultural heritages and the latest technological developments, and because it exhibits the ins and outs of the matrix that governs all but a few games (spatial navigation and survival), horror video games require a deeper study.

This international conference wishes to study horror video games (not necessarily labeled survival horror) from an eclectic range of critical and theoretical perspectives. It aims to fill a gap in game studies between general theory and analysis of particular genres and games.

http://conference2009.ludicine.ca

Joint Ludiciné/GameCODE 2009 Symposium

Friday February 20, 1-4PM.
Hexagram Resource Center (EV-11.705), Concordia University
1515 St-Catherine Ouest [Map]

As with previous years, Bernard Perron (Ludicine, UdeM) and Bart Simon (GameCODE/TAG, Concordia) will host some interdisciplinary academic shinny on a game few of us have played, none of us has studied, and on which no one – except the keynote speaker – is exactly sure what to say. As always, the symposium represents a game studies challenge to test our assumptions, methodologies and perspectives against one another on a virtual ice as only Canadians can.

A video game studies symposium from Ludiciné, the HomoLudens research group on communication and socialization in video games (Université du Québec à Montréal), and the CRITIC team (Institut Télécom, Paris), as part of the 76th annual conference of the ACFAS (Association francophone pour le savoir).

Thursday, May 6th and Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), Québec City

Les expériences liées aux jeux vidéo constituent un objet de recherche présentant de multiples dimensions. Elles peuvent être considérés comme un divertissement partagé avec autrui : le jeu apparaîtrait comme étant un média de socialisation qui permet d’être réuni au sein d’univers immersifs. Sans surestimer son originalité, le jeu vidéo constitue ainsi un nouveau média dont les spécificités sémiologiques, matérielles et technologiques semblent ouvrir un nouvel horizon d’expériences et de pratiques sociales. Enfin, les jeux vidéo constituent des artéfacts produits par divers professionnels (game designers, programmeurs, artistes) au sein d’une industrie qui a connu un essor considérable et qui instaure de nouveaux modes de relations avec les joueurs.

Plus généralement, il apparaît porteur de questionner les discours politiques, économiques et sociaux qui nous informent sur les expériences liées aux jeux vidéo au sein de nos sociétés. Les contenus des jeux vidéo sont marqués culturellement et idéologiquement selon les contextes sociohistoriques auxquels ils appartiennent. De plus, le jeu vidéo s'inscrit dans l'histoire des médias et met en place de nouveaux dispositifs narratifs, esthétiques, communicationnels et sociaux dont les effets sont encore peu connus. Ce «nouveau» phénomène social occupe une place dans les histoires des médias, des jeux, des représentations audiovisuelles, des récits, des dispositifs de communication et des médias numériques, mais cette place reste à définir.

L’analyse que nous proposons des multiples dimensions des expériences liées aux jeux vidéo amène à s’interroger sur une pratique sociale signifiante à l’échelle des individus, des groupes et de la société dans son ensemble.

(10 minutes) ...pour faire le point sur l'interactivité [Poster]

Roundtable on interactivity with Gregory Chatonsky, Louis-Claude Paquin, Bernard Perron and Bertrand Gervais presented by NT2, the Laboratoire de recherches sur les ouvres hypermédiatiques, and Figura, the Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire de l'UQAM.

Wednesday, April 11th, 2007, 6pm
Laboratoire NT2 (UQÀM)
405, boul. de Maisonneuve Est, 2nd floor, room B-2300
Montréal

Depuis quelques années, la notion d'interactivité s'est imposée dans le paysage culturel. Pour le créateur artistique, il est devenu essentiel d'inventer un nouveau rapport avec le public et d'échapper au modèle de la consommation passive. Dans quelle mesure l'interactivité peut-elle transformer notre rapport au narratif et au langage? Quelles formes peut-elle prendre dans les arts? Dans le jeu vidéo? Dans les médias?

8 BIT : a documentary about art and videogames [Poster] [Website]

Film screening, discussion with the filmmakers and party with DJs.

Saturday, February 17th, 2007, 7pm
Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT)
1195 Boulevard Saint-Laurent
Montréal

Guitar Hero: Playing at Playing Guitar [Poster] [Tournament bracket] [Feature in the Concordia Journal]

A video game studies symposium from Ludiciné and Montreal GameCODE

Friday, January 26th, 2007, 1pm-5pm
Hall Building, room 1120

Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Montreal

Papers/conférences :
Bart Simon/Bernard Perron (Concordia University/Université de Montréal)
Guitar Hero and Game Studies: Let's Rock!

Jonathan Sterne (McGill University)
The Meaning of Music is in Play

Dominic Arsenault (Université de Montréal)
Simulation et réalisme d'une guitare sans cordes

Ben Curtis/Rob Parungao (Concordia University)
Audience, Performance and Experience

Cindy Poremba (Concordia University)
She Rocks! Destabilizing Mastery in Guitar Hero

A video game does not have to tap a prevailing moral panic to engage scholarly critique. Our case in point this year is Guitar Hero . This immensely popular game combines familiar features of digital game play, music play and fan culture to produce an intriguing new media form that challenges game studies, music studies and digital culture studies scholars to think again about issues of gameplay, interface and embodied play, performance and spectacle, player culture and game audiences, game design and markets, musicality and authenticity, sound simulation, play and the magic circle, cognition and skill, and nostalgia and cultural fantasy.

In our continued effort to develop Montreal game studies around interdisciplinary engagements with shared objects of inquiry. We announce that the Montreal Game Studies Symposium for 2007 will focus on the Guitar Hero franchise. The symposium will be held on Friday January 26th from 1-5 pm. The event will feature head-to-head competition on Guitar Hero 2 and a series of short talks and discussion from invited scholars in the Montreal area.

 

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell : Analysis Is The Only Option
(This Is Not a Post-mortem)

Video game studies symposium by Ludiciné and Montreal GameCODE

Friday, April 1st, 2005, 2pm
Jean-Brillant Building, room B-4315
3200 rue Jean-Brillant, Université de Montréal (Métro Côte-des-Neiges)
Montréal

Papers/conférences :
Sébastien Babeux (Université du Québec À Montréal)
Des murs et des corridors. Espace de jeu et espace d'appropriation dans Splinter Cell.

Carl Therrien (Université de Montréal)
Immersion fictionnelle...immersion médiatique? La posture ambivalente proposée par Splinter Cell.

Bart Simon (Concordia University)
The Solo Game as Oxymoron: A Commentary on the Sociologics of Playing Splinter Cell.

This special digital game studies event features an afternoon of papers and discussion focused on the Ubisoft game "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell" and subsequent sequels (www.splintercell.com). The goal of this symposium is to generate an innovative dialog across disciplines, universities and languages with respect to a shared and local object of analysis. Anyone with an interest in new media theory and design, digital game studies, and/or digital culture is invited to participate and playing knowledge of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is not required. For more information contact Bernard Perron or Bart Simon or consult the website at http://www.gamecode.ca.