Dear all, we are happy to announce this year's Special Issue of GAMEVIRONMENTS by Derek Fewster and Ylva Grufstedt (Helsinki) on gaming and history! "Gamevironments of the Past", #5 (2016), includes articles, reports on current activities/trends, and interviews - all from the field of gaming and history: Derek Fewster and Ylva Grufstedt: Introduction: Gamevironments of the Past – A Broad Take on Games and History Robert Houghton: Where did you learn that? The self-perceived educational impact of historical computer games on undergraduates. Samir Azrioual: Developing Time: Representing Historical Progression through Level Structures Jayme Dale Mallindine: Ghost in the Cartridge: Nostalgia and the Construction of the JRPG Genre Vinicius Marino Carvalho: History and Human Agency in Videogames Brittany Kuhn: The Architecture of Bioshock as Metaphor for Ayn Rand’s Objectivism Cassone & Thibault: The HGR Framework: A Semiotic Approach to the Representation of History in Digital Games Sarah Zaidan: The Adventures of Ms. Meta: Developing a Historical Superhero Video Game Owen Gottlieb: Who Really Said What? Mobile Historical Situated Documentary as Liminal Learning Space Xenia Zeiler: The Indian Indie Game Development Scene – History and Cultural Heritage as Game Themes Cecilia Trenter: Interview with the Lead Designer Mike Laidlaw and Lead Writer David Gaider (and Lucas Christiansen) at BioWare about the Dragon Age games. All articles are available on http://www.gamevironments.org. Enjoy! _________________________________ In addition, we announce two new CfP: 1) The next regular issue of gamevironments will be published in summer 2017. We invite submissions (articles, reports, interviews, game/book reviews) by: 31.01. Full Chapter Submission 31.03. Review Results Returned 15.05. Revised Chapter Submission summer Online-Publication All submitted articles will be reviewed on a double-blind peer-review basis. Please get in touch with us if you have questions. 2) The next Special Issue of gamevironments, "JEWISH GAMEVIRONMENTS" by Owen Gottlieb, will be published in Dec 2017. The journal invites researchers to submit their work to gamevironments (http://www.gamevironments.uni-bremen.de/) for possible publication in a special issue due for publication December 2017. Whether by console, PC, mobile phone, VR headset, or other interface, video games and modern Jewish expression are now often intertwined. Jews who grew up with video games over the last forty years and who are growing up today are literate in the mechanics, visuals, sound effects, music, tropes, trends, and storylines of these games. That literacy necessarily can frame and bend contemporary Jewish practices. Likewise, those immersed in Jewish cultural and religious expression read video games through sensibilities informed by their Jewish journeys. Educator-researchers now develop video games for the purposes of the acquisition of Jewish cultural practices, such as understanding Jewish history, literature, and ethical reasoning. Players explore religious and cultural through game interfaces. In an effort to collect new research and perspectives on these and related themes, gamevironments seeks paper proposals for an issue with focus on Jewish cultural practices, including religious expression. We wish to collect results as well as theoretical, analytical, methodological, and other social science and humanities approaches to Jewish expression and video games, in a broad sense. Papers may explore any aspect of the relationship between video games and Jewish cultural practices, including religious practices. For example, but not limited to: Video games as Jewish cultural expression or practice Video game practices intersecting with contemporary Jewish cultural and religious practices Jewish studies approaches to video games; video game approaches to Jewish studies Design principles based on data and scholarly theoretical frameworks known in the humanities and the social sciences Interreligious or interfaith studies of video games including Jewish cultural practices Analysis of video game culture through Jewish scholarly lenses Expressions of Jewish life in video games, regardless of genre Video game studies, critical and cultural analysis on Jewish topics Jewish cultural expression or history in the video game industries The use of Jewish sources for creating environments, styles, art, soundscapes, traditions, languages, lore, myths, religions or any sense of adaptation of Jewish sources Space, time, and/or place: the use in video games of Jewish conceptions of time, maps tied to Jewish history, and/or of Jewish locations The use of Jewish tropes, allusions, stereotypes, storylines, literary references, or narrative structures Approaches to creating speculative/fictional religious systems influenced by Judaism Issues of Jewish journeys, beliefs, ideas, ideologies, politics, ethics, morality, and agency in video games Video games as elements, adjusters, or renewers of a collective and narrative memory Video games as history, politics, including e.g. themes of historical traumatization, nationalism, anti-Semitism, emancipation, gender, totalitarianism, heritage, Jewish ethnic identities, Serious games, games for social impact, games for learning related to Jewish life. Studies related to any of the above-mentioned ideas, or other similar topics, are welcome as submission to this issue. Submission deadlines: Title and abstract submission (approx. 500 words plus Harvard style references to be included): 29.03.2017 Full text submission: 12.07.2017 Review results returned: 13.09.2017 Revised text submission: 8.11.2017 Online publication: 31.12.2017 Please consult the gamevironments submission style sheet before submitting your paper, http://www.gamevironments.uni-bremen.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/gv-styles... , as well as the Help Desk http://www.gamevironments.uni-bremen.de/submission-guideline/ for some general principles. Note: All abstracts must include Harvard style references. Please send any queries, texts and articles as RTF files to the issue editor, Owen Gottlieb using the subject header “gamevironments:” _____________________________________________ All the best and a Happy New Year to all! Kerstin Radde-Antweiler and Xenia Zeiler (editors-in-chief) -- Prof. Dr. Xenia Zeiler Associate Professor South Asian Studies P.O. Box 59 (Unioninkatu 38B) 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland +358 50 4482713 http://tuhat.halvi.helsinki.fi/portal/en/person/zeiler