Changing Scholarly Altitudes : DiGRA 2014

Early this August, I attended the 2014 DiGRA conference near Salt Lake City, Utah.  It was my first time attending a DiGRA event (I watched the 2013 Atlanta conference deadline pass by with a sigh).  A more personal account of my experience might follow in another post, but this one is about a critical response to DiGRA 2014 and I hope to see more of the conversation by other participants.

The games criticism power duo of Zoya Street of Memory Insufficient and Andrew Grant Wilson of Silverstring Media have been publishing a series of insightful letters in response to the conference on the Silverstring Media blog and while I can't provide the same level of critical eloquence, it's a good reminder that we should respond to our conference experiences and, when needed (and it's pretty much always needed) offer critiques and, when possible, solutions.

I was absolutely thrilled to be accepted to the conference. Six days in Utah meant meeting new colleagues and hearing great ideas. To this day, I remain very happy that I applied. But there are other aspects of my experience beyond my nerdy joy that deserve explanation. I don't blame the organizers and volunteers for some of the problems this year. These folks made huge commitments of their time and energy and did a great job. But I do think we need to speak out about concerns of cost, accessibility, diversity and other areas in which we can improve.

After being accepted, my DiGRA experience began with massive sticker shock, delivered via my credit card, in continuing and frightening instalments. In my situation, the combination of DiGRA membership, early conference registration, air fare, hotel fees and food costs are probably somewhere slightly above $2000, and I write this as someone who largely subsisted on the food offered during breaks and a substantial collection of energy bars, fruit bars, and other foods in bar form, purchased in bulk in Canada. Over six days, I spent money at the in-house restaurants twice, motivated by the really excellent company. And despite leaving my room's garbage cans filled with enough wrappers that I worry the cleaning staff will think I was nesting in them, I spent that minimum $2000, only $300 of which I might be able to get back from my department. In a strange note, I'm actually one of the very lucky ones this time - I won a copy of Unity Pro I might be able to sell to cover the rest of the cost and maybe more. But not everyone is so lucky.

The choice to situate DiGRA at the Snowbird Resort is an understandable one. The location offers conference services and simply staggering views of the surrounding mountains. An included ski-lift ticket took me up the mountain and for a moment I genuinely forget how much money I had spent. But using a resort location drives up prices and raises the obstacles for persons who want to participate, to share their work and energy. It immediately makes it harder for the voices we need the most to join in the conversation. We have an ethical and professional responsibility to mitigate the costs of attending DiGRA in the future.

And accessibility more broadly is an important issue. The Snowbird resort itself had some significant physical accessibility issues and may actually have been designed by M.C. Escher. Anyone with difficulty handling stairs and barriers was immediately, if unintentionally, sent a message that their needs were not a priority. A space being technically navigable does not mean it is truly accessible. We have to fight for welcoming spaces at conferences and similar events. Cost and physical barriers are major factors in whether our events are welcoming, or even accessible period.

Diversity and a plurality of voices and perspectives are key to the success of conferences more generally. But they're also essential for the integrity and ethical responsibility conferences should strive for. That DiGRA is an academic conference in the first place raises barriers for potential participants, that ignore the worth of their work. And we should keep that in mind when we create the conditions of our next conference. And every conference.

At the DiGRA Fishbowl on Diversity in Game Studies, it was noted correctly that 'we can't accept submissions we don't get' but what that leaves out is that we have a responsibility to create the conditions to encourage and enable those missing submissions - from people of colour, from trans and genderqueer people, from women, from activists, from people living and working in poverty. DiGRA needs to solicit and listen to advice and criticism from the people under-represented at its events and recognize that we are responsible for the submissions we don't get.

Another important comment was made by Dr. Gillian Smith during the Diversity Fishbowl, namely that people who point out problems are not the only ones responsible for organizing efforts to deal with them. The people likeliest to notice problems - missing voices, for example, or instances of sexism or racism in an organization - don't always possess the resources that the ones least likely to notice problems do have. So, if we at DiGRA actually value the input of the people pointing out problems, we need to offer help to address that input. Time, effort, money, coverage, encouragement - the people to whom these resources are readily available have an ethical responsibility to share them. Sympathy is not enough. We need resources and help.

DiGRA President Dr. Mia Consalvo said something that resonated with me, that "We are DiGRA," that the people in the room, at the conference are part of the organization with the resources and responsibilities that entails. I am very happy to be a part of DiGRA and I want change. I want to know who else wants change. It's important to talk solutions, but it's also important to share concerns, to express anger, fear, and hope. The more we meaningfully converse with each other, the better.

So here is a starting set of principles I think DiGRA should adopt. (It's only a start and I encourage interested folks to critique it.)
1) A commitment to lowering the monetary barriers to involvement in DiGRA and its events;
2) A commitment to radical inclusivity (similar to the one discussed at the 2014 Canadian Game Studies Association Conference); this includes:
     a) genuine physical accessibility at conference venues
     b) creating the conditions to welcome submissions from under-represented contributors
     c) exploring other areas of improvement in dialogue with members and non-members of DiGRA
3) A commitment to ensuring the acknowledgement by members of DiGRA with access to privilege and power of their ethical responsibility to help with the problems affect fellow participants in games studies and criticism

And I formally suggest that we try out the idea of a Game Studies and Criticism  Camping Trip series, as suggested by Zoya Street here.

Don't Wait, Get Help Now: A Year in Review

Rather than posting a picture of my weaponized adorableness as a child for Throwback Thursday, I thought in light of a recent editorial I got to do for First Person Scholar, it might be useful to take stock of the last year. It's been roughly a year since I finished my dissertation prospectus, fell entirely off the academic (and blogging) wagon, and eventually clawed my way back to productivity. In part, this post is a celebration of the personal and professional difference a year made for me.

Continuing to deal with anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder made this year tough and while I made really important strides, it necessitated a break from my professional and volunteer work this summer. Sadly, the 'official' break came after several months of stalled productivity, but even admitting I needed time off helped enough that said hiatus was remarkably shorter than I expected. My mental health might be the best it has ever been and while there's still progress to make, I am genuinely optimistic about the trajectory of my life for the first time in a long time. I may not be able to leave my house every day yet, but the yet is here heavily emphasized.

My professional life this year feels remarkably shaped by my involvement in First Person Scholar. Though I also backed off slightly from that area of my work for a short period, it's one of the parts of my professional life that's always engaging and energizing. I have to thank the editorial board and other attached folks there from the depths of my pixellated heart container for being amazing, inspiring and understanding.

Since joining the staff in August 2013, I've been involved in the behind the scenes editorial work of FPS and I've put out short publications starting with a commentary on interpellation in Journey in September, one on charmed circles of sexuality in Mass Effect in November, an essay on spectacular mortality in January, an interview with Christine Love in May, a two-part interview with Merritt Kopas in June and most recently the editorial in July that is in some ways the much more professional version of this blog post.

For many reasons, contributing to FPS was easy because it was part of a team effort, frequently operating on a quick turnaround, and yielded positive responses (and Tweets). And sometimes it was the only thing I felt I could get done. Attending to other projects was harder because it was often done solo with an eye on the long-term and rather hounded by my own negativity. But I also had the pleasure of presenting as part of a panel on death in video games at the May 2014 Canadian Games Studies Association Conference. I also successfully applied to the 2014 DiGRA Conference and I am really excited to go this August. (I ordered business cards! Ask me for one if you need a small rectangular thing to write on!) I've made some really exciting connections with other scholars and these connections fundamentally changed how I view my working process.

And if all goes well, in a week I'll be handing in a draft of my first chapter of my dissertation to my supervisor. Basically, this one chapter took a year to produce and I am hoping like hell that the others can be produced in much shorter order because I'm entering my fourth year in my PhD program and I am dead-set on completing it.

In some ways, the stops and starts of my productivity this year are an endorsement of actively taking time (and time off, if necessary) to deal with health problems while in graduate school, rather than floundering. I wasted some of my time and my supervisor's time this year. If I had faced my need for comprehensive treatment earlier, I may have saved a lot of effort and distress. In light of that, I strongly recommend that anyone facing mounting health or personal problems while trying to finish graduate work do their best (within the financial and chronological limits they have to deal with, which can be substantial) to get help. It might feel embarassing or like a show of weakness or just straight-up impossible to take time or time off to seek help, but I can't recommend it enough.

Also, don't blog too much when you have a chapter due in a week.

Lego Heads and Gamer Tales: CGSA 2013

My envy of those attending this year's DiGRA has me thinking back on my first attendance of the Canadian Game Studies Association's conference at the 2013 Congress of the Humanities in Victoria, B.C. CGSA was my first game studies conference and it remains a high point in my time as a game studies nerd.

Because I operate out of an English department, my area of interest sometimes leaves me feeling like a cuckoo in a nest of some other, much less annoying bird. After presenting on Mass Effect at ACCUTE in 2012, even though it was an excellent conference and I was treated very well, I was hungry for a conference in my field.

Going into the CGSA, I was nervous. Presenting on games at an English conference or being the only presenter on games at a multimedia conference is in some ways an easy job. You may feel like the responsibility of representing game studies as a vibrant and, above all, legitimate field rests solely on the shoulders of some chump who happens to be you, but you're also relatively unlikely to get called out by someone who knows game studies better than you do.

A conference in your field, however, has a whole different set of anxieties, embodied by the large number of brilliant peers you suddenly have. I imagine that every specialized conference has this effect to a certain extent, but when game studies is still being debated in some universities, when the legitimacy of the field itself is still part of the argument that has to be made in dissertation proposals, game studies conferences will continue to be more of a haven (or cabal) than ones on Shakespearean Studies, for example. The presenter swag bag in the form of a Lego figurine whose parts you could swap with other attendees certainly helped this feeling.

Blame the trading of Lego heads or the open bar after the AGM if you must, but for me, attending CGSA was like coming home. Being presented with the sheer mass of brain-power present was like being punched in the neck. But gobsmacked or not, being among scholars who assumed the importance of game studies as a base for other thinking was pretty heady stuff.

They key things I took away from this year's CGSA were three: the dual poles of Toronto and Montreal, the many hats of the presenters, and correspondingly, the exciting range of presentations. While we had scholars from all over, there were substantial camps working in Toronto and Montreal. I'm hoping to make connections in both places, likely thanks to my close friendship with the Greyhound company. I also want to know about game communities in other cities: what's going on in Edmonton and Waterloo?

Presenters ranged from game designers to game studies professors and starry-eyed graduate students in a wide range of fields. Even beyond the interdisciplinarity that typifies game studies, part of what's so attractive about the field is that creators, players  and critics so often wear all three hats. It means that conversations aren't limited to the academic perspective and increasingly, it encourages scholastically-inclined game nerds like myself to learn how to create as well as critique (note: my efforts have not yet proved fruitful).

Part of those conversations include presentations like the ones at CGSA this year, which ranged from deeply personal discussions of the relationship between gaming and anxiety (@Forestghost_), MMOs in Russia (Cat Goodfellow, who has the best name in game studies), and the problems presented by gamification (Mark Chen). On a purely selfish level, hearing about such different topics was really invigorating for my own research.

And that, I think, is the most important part of conferences like CGSA. Yes, they make important connections, they encourage cross-pollination and they keep people informed. But they send participants home excited and it's passion and the grim commitment that follows that gets the work done.

After coming home from the CGSA, I finished my dissertation proposal. Coincidence? Mostly not.