Lecture and Workshop: Paratopian Design and Equitable Game Dev Education

[Gerald Voorhees]

Dear friends and colleagues,

Please join us for two upcoming events (online or in-person) hosted by the University of Waterloo Games Institute:

1. On Monday, 23 October from 11AM-12:30PM EDT/UTC+4: "Building Equitable and Sustainable Game Development Education" Workshop led by Kenzie Gordon (University of Alberta), Dr. Sean Gouglas (University of Alberta), Dr. Alison Harvey (York University), Vishal Sooknananl (Western University), Dr. Johanna Weststar (Western University), and Dr. Jennifer Whitson (University of Waterloo).  Register for free using this Eventbrite link<https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/workshopbuilding-equitable-and-sustainable-game-development-education-tickets-728981462177?aff=oddtdtcreator>.

With recent waves of layoffs, high-profile workplace harassment cases, and a notoriously short career length for gender minorities and people of colour, the transition of new workers into the game industry involves navigating a spate of barriers to equity and success that have been understudied in academic research. The First Three Years is an ongoing longitudinal study of graduates of game programs in Canada and the United States, following the journey of 207 students as they move into the game industry. In this workshop, our research team will summarise the primary challenges students have identified in their game programs. This summary includes equity and diversity issues inherent in common curricular practices such as the efficacy of capstone courses and internships, the inclusion of crunch-like practices in the classroom, the systematic failure to inform students of actual workplace conditions, and the mismatch between student preparation and industry hiring practices. Afterwards, participants will address whether/how these problems manifest in their own institutions, and what solutions might improve equity outcomes for students seeking careers in games.?

2. On Tuesday, 31 October from 3-4PM EDT/UTC+4: "The Case for Paratopian Design" lecture by Dr Rilla Khaled (Concordia University). Register for free using this Eventbrite link.<https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/guest-lecture-the-case-for-paratopian-design-tickets-721528760947?aff=oddtdtcreator>

What if we could make complex social and cultural questions playable? And what if we could do so through interactions with familiar digital interfaces set in alternative presents and near futures? The work I will discuss sits at the intersection between the design traditions of speculative and critical design on the one hand, and the philosophies and best practices of game design, playful media and interaction design on the other. It turns out, though, that an arranged marriage between these traditions produces unusual offspring. In this talk, grounded in examples including outsourcing religious tolerance to technological solutions, Indigenous Hawaiians undertaking space travel, matrimonial websites from the near future, and flirtatious AI chatbot therapists, I make the case for paratopian design, which is neither utopian nor dystopian, but proposes paradigm shifts that invite us to reconceptualise and reconsider the building blocks of "here" & "now".


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Gerald Voorhees, Ph.D. (he/him)
Associate Professor
Department of Communication Arts
University of Waterloo
257A ML, Waterloo ON, N2L 3G1
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I acknowledge that I live and work on the traditional territory of the Attawandaron (Neutral), Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee peoples. The University of Waterloo is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land promised to the Six Nations that includes ten kilometers on each side of the Grand River.


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