The Digra 2005 conference has come and gone. It was about half the size of the previous one but otherwise similiar in form and scope.
To be sure there were interesting talks but also less exuberance than two years ago. The wild energy seems to have been channeled into more everyday work-life, for good and bad.
In particular I enjoyed Lin and Sun’s grief play paper and the Georgia Tech people’s work on space in games – the latter feeding into something I’m writing for the text-book project.
Also, Janet Murray’s keynote was entertaining and presented ideas for an interesting investigation into the “Why are there games?” question couched in the language of evolutionary biology/psychology. In book form, this would be quite worthwhile.
Of recurrent memes, ye olde ludology/narratology debate would not ease its grip entirely. I have no particular stake in this discussion and I guess I’m torn between finding the whole controversy rather entertaining (sure isn’t much controversy in the field apart from that) and finding the whole meta-ness of it all rather tiring (the discussion is now whether there was ever a discussion etc.).
Here’s Matteo Bittanti frozen in a rare moment of semi-mobility during his interesting speed-talk on Manhunt.
And here’s Celia Pearce taking questions about the alleged non-existence of participants in a debate that never took place.
More pictures? Check out Mirjam’s collection.