Keynote Speakers
 

"Trans-Ludic Communities in Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds" by Professor Celia Pearce, Director of the Experimental Game Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Abstract

In 2004, the massively multiplayer game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, based on the classic hit CD-ROM Myst, closed, creating a diaspora of 10,000 refugeeplayers. Uru players migrated into other games and virtual worlds, creating fictive ethnic communities around their Uru origins. They leveraged the content-creation capabilities of virtual worlds such as Second Life and There.com to create digital artifacts derivative of and inspired by Uru and other Myst games. The largest group, totaling about 400 players at its maximum, migrated into There.com in the spring of 2004. Originally marginalized as outsiders, they built a vibrant community and eventually became highly influential in the There.com culture at-large, participating in the member advisory board, creating new projects such as the University of There, and spearheading world-wide initiatives such as shared neighborhood zones. Dr. Pearce conducted an 18-month ethnography of this group, as well as a secondary study of Uru immigrants in Second Life, and was later asked by Turner Broadcasting to assist in the reopening Uru under its Gametap Game portal. Uru has since closed again, and developer Cyan is
planning to re-release the game with a suite of player-creation tools designed to allow players to add new content directly to the Uru game. In the meanwhile, a whole new generation of Uru immigrants have moved into There.com, Second Life and other online games. Dr. Pearce will present "in situ" as her avatar from inside There.com, giving a guided tour of some of the Uru areas within the virtual world.
 

Bio

Celia Pearce, aka Artemesia, is a game designer, author, researcher, teacher, curator and artist, specializing in multiplayer gaming and virtual worlds, independent, art, and alternative game genres, as well as games and
gender. She began designing interactive attractions and exhibitions in 1983, and has held academic appointments since 1998. She received her Ph.D. in 2006 from SMARTLab Centre, then at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. She currently is Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at Georgia Tech, where she also directs the Experimental Game Lab and the Emergent Game Group. Her game designs include the award-winning virtual reality attraction Virtual Adventures (for Iwerks and Evans & Sutherland) and the Purple Moon Friendship Adventure Cards for Girls. She is the author or co-author of numerous papers and book chapters, as well as The Interactive Book (Macmillan 1997). She has also curated new media, virtual reality, and game exhibitions and is currently Festival Chair for IndieCade, an international independent games festival and showcase series. She is a co-founder of the Ludica women's game collective. www.cpandfriends.com
 

Abstract

The Truth About Marika-project was awarded with an Emmy for best interactive TV service earlier this year. In this lecture Adriana Skarped will walk you through some highlights from the game, question many
commonly-held beliefs about what constitutes the distinction between reality and fiction, and talk about her experience of going undercover as a game character, irl, for four months straight, confronting both
TV-audience and strangers in the street with a tall tale of a strange disapperance, a conspiracy and a hidden society.

Bio

Adriana Skarped is an independent writer, actor and gamedesigner and has been deeply immersed in the nordic participatory arts scene for the last eight years. She has worked for the Interactive Institute, Swedish Institute of Computer Science and Swedish National Television on productions such as Perseverance, Prosopopeia Bardo 1, Momentum, Interference and the Truth about Marika. The latter was awarded with an Emmy for best interactive TV service earlier this year.

Having worked mainly with research institutes has allowed her to explore - and cross - the boundaries of what we consider to be games today, merging methods and techniques from areas as different as ARG, MMORPG, LARP, mobile games, table-top-roleplaying, traditional magic and method acting.

Back