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<span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'">Dear friends,</span></p>
<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 254, 254);"><font face="Calibri"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Please take a look at this </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">CFP for a panel
curated by Cassandra Silver and myself. Feel free to share it with anyone you </span></font></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 254, 254);"><font face="Calibri"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">know working on research connecting video games to </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">theatre
and </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">performance</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> studies.</span></font></span></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><span style="background-color: rgb(254, 253, 253);"><font face="Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It would also be wonderful to see some of you in Austria. For more </span></font><span style="font-size: 16px;">information</span><font face="Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> check
out the conference website: </span></font></span></font><span style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204); font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.worlding-sf.com">http://www.worlding-sf.com</a>/</span></p>
<p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">
<font face="Calibri"><span style="font-size: 12pt; background-color: rgb(254, 253, 253);">Best,</span></font></p>
<p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; background-color: rgb(253, 252, 252); font-family: Calibri;">Peter</span></p>
<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Calibri"><span style="font-size: 16px;">—————————————</span></font></p>
<p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'">Call for Papers<br>
Worlding Science Fiction Conference December 6-8, 2018<br>
University of Graz, Austria </span></p>
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<span style="font-size: 14.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'; font-weight: 700">There and Back Again:<br>
The Shared World Building Experiences of Video Gamers and Game Designers </span></p>
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<span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'">Panel curated by Peter Kuling (University of Ottawa) & Cassandra Silver (University of Toronto)
</span></p>
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<span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'">This panel explores how science fiction video game worlds function as spaces built by both game designers and players in tandem, and consequently how these worlds become performance environments where
players’ uses of space, time, and functionality literally alter game worlds through patches, updates, exploits, and unexpected world interactions. The panel will also consider how game worlds are meaningfully extended by supplementary content created by gaming
communities. </span></p>
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<span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'">Although world builders across genres and media have a stake in creating a cohesive space in which to situate their narrative(s), reader response theorists like Fish (1980), Iser (1980), Jauss (1982),
and more recently Gerrig (1993) and Sikora et al (2011), remind us that aesthetic objects exist in relationship with their audiences. From this perspective, created worlds cannot be coherent but are rather produced and negotiated between the fiction and the
person(s) exploring that world. We propose that, in video games, particularly those with varying levels of open world opportunities, the “player response” is intrinsically connected to world-building; we follow Smethurst and Craps in asserting that
</span><span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Gautami'"></span><span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'">“the player identifies [...] with the entire space of the game world, using the controller and/or instrumentalized protagonist
in order to become telepresent in the game” (2015). This complex and mutually defined relationship between game world and gamer is integral to video game storytelling as higher rates of world identification “</span><span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Gautami'">
</span><span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'">correlat[e] with higher levels of [what Csikszentmihalyi called] flow” (Soutter & Hitchens 2016).
</span></p>
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<span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'">Through their exploration of time and space within these virtual environments and their attribution of meaning to world elements and lore, the narrative investment made by gamers often envisions and
directly influences future evolutions of the game worlds in which they participate. Further,
</span><span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Gautami'"></span><span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'">supplementary media platforms like Reddit, YouTube, and Twitch situate games and gamers in a larger discourse about user-generated
digital content (Reißmann et al 2017; Gabriel et al 2015; Harwood & Garry 2014; Cover 2006).
</span><span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Gautami'"></span><span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'">We are interested in reading game worlds through this lens because we believe that players and their characters complicate
earlier models of reader response theory; in this paradigm, </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">players are hybridized spectators, performers, dramaturges, and amateur game designers all at once.</span></p>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">We are seeking papers in our panel that, among other things, explore:</span></p>
<ul style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
<li><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;">Social elements in online video games and how these
might extend into game worlds and include contingent (fictive) realities </span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Gautami;"></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri;">(Cairns et al 2013); </span></span></li><li><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Fan contributions to evolving game worlds (complete
or not) that persist in that game or develop via media beyond the digital text;</span></span></li><li><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Player expertise in certain types of game world (Klevjer
& Hovden 2017), and how that expertise translates (or not) into better navigation of new experiences of similar types of world design;</span></span></li><li><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Game worlds’ character construction tools and how
these delimit the way a player </span><span style="font-family: Gautami; font-size: 12pt;"></span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">can
</span><span style="font-family: Gautami; font-size: 12pt;"></span><font face="Calibri"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">experience that world and simultaneously how these open up possibilities for how a player might invest </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">themselves</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> further;
or</span></font></span></li><li><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;">Games exploiting senses of empathy and responsibility
built by the game world in order to have the player do things, in-game, that are morally questionable (Smethurst & Craps 2015).</span></span></li></ul>
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<p><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri; font-weight: 700;">All proposals need to be submitted online here:
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Gautami;"></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri; font-weight: 700; color: rgb(17, 85, 204);">http://www.worlding-sf.com/</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Gautami; color: rgb(17, 85, 204);">
</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri; font-weight: 700;">. The deadline for submissions is April 15.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'">Please note that the conference is set up to allow for remote presentations via Skype for those scholars who might have difficulty getting to Austria.
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 12.000000pt; font-family: 'Calibri'">If you have questions about this panel, you may write to Peter Kuling at pjk@uottawa.ca and/or Cassandra Silver at cassandra.silver@mail.utoronto.ca. </span></p>
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