Colleagues, As a representative of ICA's Game Studies Interest Group, I wanted to let you know about a few upcoming opportunities for game studies scholarship. If you have any questions, please contact me directly at Nicholas.Bowman@mail.wvu.edu and I'll be eager to help you find some answers. All of these announcements are regarding our 2014 Seattle conference (May 22 to 26, 2014) so I hope you might be able to make it? Regardless, there are plenty of ways in which you can help us as we work towards a common goal of games research. =) It's a longer note, but please don't tl;dr us? Apologies in advance for any cross-postings if you're a member of other groups. CALL FOR PAPER SUBMISSIONS AND REVIEWERS As the vice chair and paper review competition coordinator for the International Communication Association's Game Studies interest group, I want to remind all of you that you are invited to submit papers to the Game Studies paper competition for the upcoming ICA 2014 annual conference to be held 22 to 26 May, 2014 in Seattle. Papers must be submitted online using the ICA online submission system (http://www.icahdq.org/cfp) by 11 p.m. Eastern U.S. time on 4 November 2013. We welcome papers from a variety of disciplinary approaches on a broad range of topics dealing with the study of games and the game experience. More details about our paper competition and the general ICA call for papers guidelines can be found at the group's web site, http://icagames.org. Whether you are submitting a paper or not, we are also seeking reviewers to help us with this year's paper competition and we hope that you’ll consider volunteering. We recognize that your time is valuable and as a result, we work to limit the number of papers assigned to any given reviewer. To volunteer to review: 1) go to the ICA paper submission site at http://www.icahdq.org/cfp/index.asp 2) log in and choose the "Continue to Paper Management" link 3) choose "Volunteer to be a Reviewer" and include Game Studies in your selected groups. Our reviewers are what make our paper competition possible, and I am very proud of the generous service that great scholars from all over the world has provided to make our paper competition a good one. I hope you will help us succeed again this year. While you are working on those papers and signing up to review, you can review our paper call and other information at http://icagames.org and get the conversation started early with our Facebook community at https://www.facebook.com/icagames. CALL FOR PRE-CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS Beyond the Pixels: A Look at Digital Games Pre-Conference to the 64th International Communication Association (ICA) Annual Conference Seattle, WA, USA Wednesday 22 May, 2014 Digital games are an integral aspect of many lives – they’re in social networks, they’re on mobile phones, and they are, as ever, on television and computer screens. Their influence is not limited to the screens or the devices in which they exist, but can be experienced well beyond their original digital footprint. The goal of the 2014 pre-conference, “Beyond the Pixels,” is to take it one step further and encourage scholars to think outside the box. This pre-conference will be a space to think about the marks that digital games are making on our world. Submissions should look within the game, outside the game, and around the game for their inspiration. Careful consideration of the influence of specific elements of the game design itself, such as avatars, sound, user interfaces, types of game play, are welcome. We encourage innovative challenges to the notion of digital games as having a singular influence on the user, and the implications for that influence as it relates to broader society. Considerations for the infrastructures that have developed around games and continue to influence games, as well as explorations of the communities that develop around, within, and beyond games, are also encouraged. Potential pre-conference topics include but are not restricted to: · Game content · Game design choices and their implications · Game elements such as avatar, sound, and user interface · Solo vs. social game play experience · Cross modal games · Game analysis from critical to analytics · Innovative methods for studying uses and applications of games · Impact of designing games for educational, health, moral, or commercial gain · Academic vs. industry game research · Game research methods Push the boundaries. Go beyond the pixels. Further information on the pre-conference can be found at: http://icagames.org ( http://game.icahdq.org/ohana/website/?p=56927916 ), and on the ICA main conference at www.icahdq.org. Extended Abstracts Anyone interested in presenting at the pre-conference is invited to submit an extended abstract between 1000-1500 words in APA 6th style to the pre-conference organization committee before 23:59 EST, December 1, 2013. The abstracts will be subject to a double blind peer review process; therefore all identifying author information should be removed from the abstract. Notification of acceptance will be sent by February 1, 2014. To submit, please e-mail a PDF version of your extended abstract with title as an attachment to preconference@icagames.org. When submitting the abstract, please also include a separate cover page including the title of your extended abstract, along with your name, title, department/organization, address and e-mail information. Submission of work in progress is also welcome as long as the work can be completed by the month of the pre-conference. The extended abstracts submitted for the pre-conference should not have been submitted to any other competitions in the ICA's main conference or any other venue. The pre-conference submissions will be refereed and programmed separately from ICA’s main conference. All those who are accepted to present their extended abstract should register for the ICA pre-conference by April 3, 2014. Please note that accepted extended abstracts may be published in the on-line pre-conference proceedings. Those who wish to be considered for publication should let the pre-conference organization committee know in their e-mail submission whether or not they want to be included in the proceedings. Thanks in advance, and I look forward to seeing you in Seattle. =) ~nick Nicholas David Bowman, Ph.D. Vice Chair, ICA Game Studies West Virginia University Nicholas.Bowman@mai.wvu.edu