Research Methods Essay 4
As with all important pieces of knowledge, dissemination is very important. For a graduate student, this is doubly true. As I have expressed before, my primary goal with this thesis project is to further the discussion of videogames as an artistic medium. In order to have the maximum effect on the academic community and the world at large, I must achieve as much exposure of my ideas as possible. However, there are a variety of other advantages to achieving large-scale deployment of my work and information pertaining to it. These benefits would include the establishment of a presence in the academic and online communities, creating a foundation for further bodies of work, and increasing the overall health and breadth of my academic and professional career. How I will go about disseminating my work is a somewhat more complex matter. I am significantly more comfortable with the medium of print (online or otherwise) and will thusly be focusing on applying to journals and hopefully writing other related articles for them. Networking will also be a very important part of disseminating my research and furthering my professional career. Disseminating my own information in the field of videogames may prove more or less difficult than it would in others, but that is simply a challenge I’ll have to face.
My first course of action when disseminating my work will most likely involve both my blog and journal submissions. Firstly, I plan to post all of my work to my blog and reference it via twitter and facebook. This will be a good segway into networking at a later time and will force me to begin making connections via the Internet. I’ve also always envisioned my work being available via some form of major website or blog in which a thriving community could comment on the things I have done or am doing and where critical discourse abounds. Hopefully, if all goes according to plan, my work will be interesting and important enough to eventually be written about by other major online publications. It would be ideal to see my work in places like Wired and Ars Technica. Following this, I will probably seek out several academic and non-academic journals in which to publish or at least leverage my work. Ideally I would like to be published in a journal similar to the Well Played journal out of ETC press (http://www.etc.cmu.edu/etcpress/wellplayed), but that journal deals mainly with higher-end commercial games such as Mass Effect or Limbo. There is also always the celebrated Leonardo journal that has a very diverse pool of topics that it can pull from. Leonardo is also very important in the academic world and thusly would be a huge jumpstart to any further work I would do, provided I was published in it.
Apart from the networking opportunities presented by Leonardo and similar publications, I feel the bulk of said networking will be done via conferences and expositions. Luckily, the videogame community has many different, very public conferences in which game developers or people involved with the creative process of videogames meet to show off their work. These conferences range from incredibly private and exclusive trade shows to more relaxed shows about the craft and the future of the medium. One such show (so I’ve heard) that does a good job of being more laid back while creating an environment that would be fantastic for networking is PAX or the Penny Arcade Expo. There are several different locations for PAX each year and each seems to do a good job of including not only videogames, but all manner of different ludic endeavors such as tabletop gaming and non-traditional videogames. I have been told that this is a very accessible conference to attend, and would be fantastic for networking. Another major conference that attracts a very diverse and important crowd, as well as one that has shining endorsements from others in the program, is GDC or the Game Developers Conference (http://www.gdconf.com/). GDC is billed as, “The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is the world’s largest and longest-running professionals-only game industry event,” and is particularly interesting precisely because it is, “professionals only.” Students have, in the past, been admitted to the conference before, so it may behoove me to ask around and see precisely what is required of entrants. Apparently, the culture around GDC, however, is one of not only acceptance but also excitement about the medium. As per the website,
“This market defining conference features over 400 lectures, panels, tutorials and round-table discussions on a comprehensive selection of game development topics taught by leading industry experts. In addition, the GDC expo showcases all of the most relevant game development tools, platforms and services helping to drive the industry forward. The conference also features the fourteenth annual Independent Games Festival, where new, unpublished games compete for the attention of the publishing community, and the twelfth annual Game Developers Choice Awards, the premier accolades for peer-recognition in the digital games industry.”
This kind of opportunity would be perfect as far as a networking opportunity would be concerned. While I am less interested in having a game that I create picked up by a major publisher, I am highly interested in getting some recognition, and attending the panels and tutorials mentioned above. Yet another conference that comes highly recommended is ISEA. ISEA is the International Symposium on Electronic Art. Initially I was worried that perhaps ISEA wouldn’t be the correct venue for any kind of videogame-based project, however after reading the frequently asked questions section of their site, I found the following,
“As long as computer software, the Internet, databases, wireless devices, electronic components and/or physical computing has played an important role in the creation of the work, the resulting work can be in any media.”
This was quite exciting to me, as other students have been accepted into ISEA and even asked to speak there. Depending on the requirements for entry on the other conferences I mentioned, ISEA might actually be the perfect venue for me, as the games I end up creating will be more about certain concepts and contain a substantial amount of critical content as opposed to simply being games created for fun and salability alone. ISEA would also allow me to reach a different audience from those present at conferences like GDC and PAX. ISEA seems to cater to a more academic audience, and if I hope to get published in academic journals and make a name for myself in the academic world, ISEA would be a very sound venue for me to make connections that would further those endeavors. The last conference that I was interested in submitting work to and/or attending would probably be SIGGRAPH. SIGGRAPH, according to the website, (http://s2013.siggraph.org/)
“… conference attracts the most respected technical and creative people from all over planet Earth. The SIGGRAPH community includes people everywhere who are excited by research, science, art, animation, gaming, interactivity, education, and the web. SIGGRAPH 2013 is sponsored by The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), an educational and scientific society uniting the world’s computing educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges.”
I would, of course, have to do more research into what kinds of videogame-based pieces and bodies of work have been submitted to SIGGRAPH before, and whether or not my work would be at all relevant to the conference. Barring a complete work mismatch, SIGGRAPH would be yet another fantastic avenue for disseminating my work and getting some solid face time in with industry professionals that may be interested in my field of expertise. This conference would also be particularly helpful in helping me develop my computer animation and modeling skills.
Finally, continuing the thread of networking but reducing it slightly to a more local scale, I have been informed of several local independent game designers who meet in Denver. Meeting with these individuals and making their acquaintance would be a fantastic way to not only learn of several opportunities in Denver to disseminate my work, but to make connections with people in other areas as well. And, of course, while on the subject of networking, it is important to note that my colleagues in the program are all preparing bodies of work that overlap with my own in some form or fashion. I would be foolish to overlook the opportunities networking via my fellow EDP graduate classmates could afford me. At the moment, we are incredibly close and all looking for ways to disseminate our work, which will most likely open up unexpected and interesting channels I could use to put my work out into the world and communities at large.