APOLOGIES FOR CROSS POSTING ================================================= APRIL 5-7, 2002 Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition, University of Manchester Manchester, England Deadline for submissions: Friday, December 21, 2001. Computer games have now been taking up room in people's homes for over twenty-five years. The mid-seventies fad for the black and white block graphics of Pong has turned into an industry worth over $6 billion in the USA alone. The new generation of consoles along with the almost frenetic development in graphic and CPU technologies for PCs demonstrates a time of great technological innovation for gaming technology and this is reinforced by the growing importance of new methods of gaming-related retail such as web-based e-commerce and interactive digital television. Further, gamers are becoming increasingly organised and professionalised through growing consumer gaming exhibitions, national and international gaming competitions and arenas such as LAN parties and online gaming. At this rapidly moving point in the gaming industry the ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition (CRIC) will be hosting a conference of computer gaming, gamers and the gaming industry on the 5th-7th April 2002 at The University of Manchester. Bringing together researchers from sociology, psychology, games design, cultural studies, economics, management and other disciplines, along with members from various sectors of the gaming industry such as developers, publishers and retail the central aims of the conference are: * To provide an international forum for the exchange of ideas, information and analysis on the gaming industry and gamer research * To foster research links between academic research and the gaming industry and develop new networks of research activity * To offer students a supportive environment for sharing and developing their idea with more established researchers * To facilitate dissemination of work produced for the conference in printed and electronic format The organisers welcome submissions from any discipline, as well as work from those producing games and other leisure-orientated new media or working within associated industries. Panel presentations which establish connections across disciplines, institutions and/or continents are especially encouraged. We invite paper, presentation, and panel proposals on, but not restricted to, the following areas: Gamers: Gamers as producers Gaming communities Ethnographies of gamers Gender differences Gaming Industries: Organisational culture E-commerce and bricks & mortar retail Market values and sectors Marketing Strategic alliances Gaming Effects: Gaming and health Gaming and development Games software in education Gaming technologies: Technological convergence Avatars and AI Console wars Gaming via WAP, WED and dTV Games: Textual analysis Gender in games Constructing gameplay Character and narrative Gaming history Legal Aspects: Software piracy Game certification IPR and copyright Gamers as a consumer market Individual paper and presentation proposals should be no more than 500 words. For panel proposals, the session organiser should submit a 250 word description of the panel topic along with abstracts of up to 500 words for each paper or presentation in the panel. Abstracts and proposals should be submitted electronically to Jason.Rutter@man.ac.uk in RTF, Word or PDF format or sent to: Jason Rutter ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition, The University of Manchester, Ground Floor, Devonshire House, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9QH PH: +44 (0) 161 275 6859 Deadline for abstracts: Friday, December 21, 2001. Accepted authors notified: Friday January 21, 2002