Games Symposium for Oceania and the Asia Pacific

Exploring new perspectives of videogame, boardgame, and tabletop roleplaying culture with game artists, makers, and researchers in the Asia Pacific and Oceania.

The Asia Pacific is remarkably overlooked as the largest region of annual game production and consumption. This omission represents an opportunity to share games and games-adjacent research. Given the enormous diversity and variation in videogame production and engagement practices, this two-day symposium aims to spark emerging new perspectives.

This symposium is jointly organised by DiGRA Australia, Chinese DiGRA, and in partnership with Pride at Play. We especially encourage researchers working in Chinese sectors to submit their work on game culture to share and collaborate with the workshop attendees.

Registration

Registration has closedWe require numbers for catering purposes as well as providing participant links for remote attendees.

The symposium is open for everyone to attend and participate.

GSOAP Audience with Michelle Chen in the front

Curation Panel with Jini Maxwell, Chloe Appleby, and Taylor Hardwick

Full Program

All times are Australia/Melbourne timezone (UTC+10).

(Optional) Welcome Reception: Tuesday 13 June

18:00 - 22:00
Tabletop Roleplaying Night (registration essential)
‍presented by Pause Menu and Pride at Play in partnership with Australian Roleplay Community. In-person only.
Location: 74 Rose St, Fitzroy VIC 3065 (directions)

Day 1: Wednesday 14 June

Remote participation Zoom link will be sent to registered attendees.
The Spot, Level 1 Lecture Theatre, 198 Berkeley St, Carlton VIC 3053 (map)

09:00 - 10:00

Registration

10:00 - 10:10

Remote participation session opens

‍Acknowledgement of Country and Welcome
Mahli-Ann Butt, Hugh Davies, Xavier Ho, GSOAP OC
Chloe Yan Li, International Engagement Adviser-North Asia, Australia Council for the Arts

10:10 - 11:00

Keynote: Tingting Liu, Jinan University
Chair: Hugh Davies

11:00 - 11:30

Morning Tea

11:30 - 12:30

Session 1: Symbolism and Player Affect
Chair: Mahli-Ann Butt

11:30 - 11:40

From videogames to fanfiction: femininity in Gujianqitan 3
Yuhua Wu, University of Nottingham Ningbo China

11:40 - 11:50

恐怖遊戲如何影響玩家? ——以《黑羊》為例
How do horror games affect players? ——Taking "Black Sheep" as an example
劉凡宇（香港中文大學）Liu Fanyu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

11:50 - 12:30

Q&A

12:30 - 13:30

Session 2: Regional Lens I
Chair: Xavier Ho

12:30 - 12:40

Elderly Videogame players in China
Shuyi Chen, Monash University

12:40 - 12:50

Mental Jam: Co-creating video games about the lived experiences of depression and anxiety
Michelle Chen, RMIT University

12:50 - 13:00

Dear dear games, India loves you!
Malay Dhamelia, IDC School of Design, IIT Bombay

13:00 - 13:30

Q&A

13:30 - 14:30

Lunch

14:30 - 15:30

Session 3: Regional Lens II
Chair: Tingting Liu

14:30 - 14:40

Learnings From The Case of Maple Refugees: A Story of Free-To-Play, Probability Disclosures, and Gamer Consumer Activism in South Korea
Solip Park, Aalto University

14:40 - 14:50

Australian Developer’s Marketing Knowledge: Desirable, Rare and Unobtainable?
Jacqueline Burgess, University of the Sunshine Coast

14:50 - 15:00

“But Dungeons and Dragons is so non-Singaporean”: Tabletop roleplaying games as a site of playful identity-making
Kellynn Wee, University College London

15:00 - 15:30

Q&A

15:30 - 16:00

Afternoon Tea

16:00 - 16:50

Keynote: Jini Maxwell, ACMI
Chair: Mahli-Ann Butt

16:50 - 17:50

Cheese & Wine Hour

17:50 - 18:00

End of Day Announcements
GSOAP Org Committee

18:00 - 19:00

Book Launch - Cooperative Gaming: Diversity in the Games Industry and How to Cultivate Inclusion (registration included)
Alayna Cole, Jessica Zammit
Moderator: Cameron Honey-Swain

19:00 - 19:30

Remote participation session closes.

‍Walk 11 min to Lygon St, catch 200 bus to Brunswick St, short walk to venue (Pause Menu)

19:30 - 22:00

Dinner & Drinks @ Pause Menu
74 Rose St, Fitzroy VIC 3065 (map)

Day 2: Thursday 15 June

Remote participation Zoom link will be sent to registered attendees.
The Spot, Level 1 Lecture Theatre, 198 Berkeley St, Carlton VIC 3053 (map)

09:00 - 10:00

Registration

10:00 - 10:10

Remote participation session opens

Announcements
GSOAP Org Committee

10:10 - 11:00

Keynote: Jing Yang (Allison), City University of Hong Kong
Chair: Hugh Davies

11:00 - 11:30

Morning Tea

11:30 - 12:30

Session 4: Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums
Chair: Jini Maxwell

11:30 - 11:40

Curation and games
Chloe Appleby, Powerhouse Museum

11:40 - 11:50

Institutionalizing Game Preservation: Game Archive and Its Ecology Niche in Chinese Game Industry
Felania Mengfei Liu, Beijing Normal University

11:50 - 12:00

The possibilities for more inclusive events
Taylor Hardwick

12:00 - 12:30

Q&A

12:30 - 13:30

Session 5: Critical Games and Art
Chair: Jing Yang (Allison)

12:30 - 12:40

Play within Antidisciplinary Artmaking
Lee Shang Lun (Harry), PlayReactive

12:40 - 12:50

Queer Games in Oceania and the Asia Pacific
Xavier Ho, Monash University

12:50 - 13:00

The Inclusivity of Playing Games
Muh Akbar Alamsyah, NFT Esport

13:00 - 13:30

Q&A

13:30 - 14:30

Lunch

14:30 - 15:30

Session 6: The Gaming Business
Chair: Brendan Keogh

14:30 - 14:40

Right Relations in Games Events & Funding
Christy Dena, Norwegian Film School, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences

14:40 - 14:50

Global Mobile Game Cultures
Kyle Moore, Swinburne University of Technology

14:50 - 15:00

成为贯线与界面：落日间的工作与方法 Becoming Transversal and Interface: the works, approaches of Sunset Sway
Zitao YE 叶梓涛，Shengyu Liu 刘圣雨, Sunset-Sway, NExT Studios (Tencent) / Senet

15:00 - 15:30

Q&A

15:30 - 16:00

Afternoon Tea

16:00 - 16:50

Keynote: Brendan Keogh, Queensland University of Technology
Chair: Xavier Ho

16:50 - 17:00

Closing Remarks
GSOAP Org Committee
Adam McGowan, Director of Industry Initiatives, Australia Council for the Arts

17:00 - 17:30

Remote participation session closes.

‍Walk 11 min to Lygon St, catch 200 bus to Brunswick St, short walk to venue (Pause Menu)

17:30 - 22:00

Drinks @ Pause Menu
74 Rose St, Fitzroy VIC 3065 (map)

Keynotes

Tingting Liu

Jinan University

Dr Tingting Liu is an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Jinan University, China. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of Queensland in 2018. Dr. Liu used to serve as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, as well as a part-time lecturer at the University of Sydney. Dr. Liu’s research interests centre on digital media, video games, gender, sexuality, and their intersections. Her pioneering research on Chinese digital games has been published in leading international journals, including Games & Cultures, Information, Communication & Society, and Television & New Media.

Jini Maxwell

ACMI

Jini Maxwell is a playful curator and award-winning videogame critic. They work at ACMI, Australia’s museum of screen culture, where they curated Out of Bounds: Exploring The Limits of Videogames, and work as lead curator on ACMI’s centrepiece exhibition, the Story of the Moving Image. They also work on game-related events including Untitled Goose Game Live in collaboration with Orchestra Victoria, and ACMI X WIP night, a monthly meetup for screen creatives to showcase their works-in-progress. Independently, Jini co-curates Gay24 Films, a monthly film night showcasing rare, radical and archival queer films, and previously worked as a creative producer at Freeplay Festival.

Yang Jing (Allison)

City University of Hong Kong

Yang Jing (Allison) loves playing games and making them too. She works as a curator, designer and writer focusing on humanistic game design and game literacy. Recently, she worked with dslcollection designing and producing an art destruction game Forgetter, curated an exhibition about game production in China in Tank Art Shanghai, curated Game Atlas seminars and museum night with Goethe Institut Hong Kong & M+ Museum. She frequently writes and edits articles on game and gaming as the chief editor of Game On channel in Initium Media. She is also pursuing her doctorate degree in School of Creative Media in the City University of Hong Kong, and writing on the topic of games as an alternative form as a museum

Brendan Keogh

Queensland University of Technology

Dr Brendan Keogh is a senior lecturer in the School of Communication and a Chief Investigator of the Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology. He is the co-author of The Unity Game Engine and The Circuits of Cultural Software (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019; with Benjamin Nicoll), and is the author of The Videogame Industry Doesn’t Exist (MIT Press, 2023) and A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames (MIT Press, 2018). He has written extensively about the cultures and development practices of videogames in journals such as Games and Culture, Creative Industries, and Convergence, and for outlets such as Overland, The Conversation, Polygon, and Vice.

Call for Participation

Submissions to the Games Symposium for Oceania and the Asia Pacific have closed.

We invite short provocation submissions from game makers, scholars, artists, writers, and players exploring how games, and the cultures surrounding them play out in their local contexts within Oceania, Asia Pacific regions, including overseas Chinese and Asian perspectives around the world. Provocation submissions are jury-curated by the symposium organising committee.

Presentations must be contextualised in Oceania or the Asia Pacific and themes may include:

Defining Oceania and Asia Pacific games research
Exploring intersectional identities and influencers in overseas Chinese and Asian cultures
Navigating specific regional characteristics of making and playing games
Highlighting different or shared lived experiences within game culture
Contextualising gender, sexuality, race, and nationality in Oceanic and the Asia Pacific regions
Examining national/transnational game histories and futures
Recollecting post-mortems of game production in identity play
Platforming local and regional aesthetics and concerns in games
Studying gaming counterpublics, political advocacy and resistance
Celebrating and critiquing game fandoms/role-playing/cosplay

Submissions

Provocation submissions should have a short title, be around 75-100 words, and clearly describe its context, main points, and the potential for further conversations at the workshop. As this is a curated symposium, submission should include author names and a brief 50 word biography.

Submissions: 1st May, 2023 (extended to 8th May, 2023)
Acceptance: 14th May, 2023 (delayed to 24th May, 2023)
Two-day Symposium: 14th & 15th June, 2023

Organising Committee

Dr Mahli-Ann Butt, President of DiGRA Australia
Dr Hugh Davies, President of Chinese DiGRA
Dr Xavier Ho, Curator and Researcher of Pride at Play
Mads Mackenzie, Curator of Pride at Play

For all enquiries and questions about the symposium please contact Xavier at xavier.ho@monash.edu.

Acknowledgement

We acknowledge the Bunurong people of the Kulin Nations as the Traditional Owners of the land. It always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

This Games Symposium is part of the Engaging Influencers initiative. The Engaging Influencers initiative is developed by the Australia Council for the Arts and funded by the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations. The Symposium is presented in association with Pride at Play with in-kind support from the City of Port Phillip.