The communications team for the UCI Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences has drafted this lovely announcement for the Inclusive Streaming Initiative and our streaming research symposium. The symposium includes a public panel, to be held Friday September 6th, on topics in live streaming and moderated by me! Featuring special guests T.L. Taylor, Mia Consalvo, Samantha Blackmon, and Alexandra Orlando.
It’s going to be a great conversation and I hope you can join us!
The Inclusive Streaming Initiative has officially launched!
A collaboration between myself, PhD students Spencer Ruelos and Kat Brewster, and our advisor Dr. Bo Ruberg, the Inclusive Streaming Initiative has been established to investigate and address issues related to diversity and discrimination in and around live streaming.
You can visit the newly launched website for more information about our efforts: Inclusive Streaming Initiative.
San Diego Comic Con is awesome if you’re a nerd, of course, but my favorite part of Comic Con was meeting and talking with these scholars and professionals who are dedicated to fostering community and learning in esports and games culture.
My fellow panelists included:
Cherie Lin, a founding member of the esports program at UC Berkeley and currently co-lead of the Women in Gaming mentorship program there.
Dr. David Surrat, formerly of UC Berkeley where he nurtured the growth of esports. Currently at Oklahoma University where he remains committed to positive change in esports.
Sarah Harker, a collaborator on a project to design a supplement for D&D designed to introduce more diversity to tabletop roleplaying games. Friends, Foes, and Other Fine Folks available now!
I was invited to return to San Diego Comic Con as a panelist this year! I’m looking forward to a great conversation on the power of play with new and familiar peers. Thank you to the organizers of the GeekEd programming, Brian MacDonald of UCLA and Alfred Day of UC Berkeley.
Last week I advanced to candidacy in the UCI Department of Informatics!
I want to thank my advisors, Aaron Trammell and Bonnie Ruberg, as well as the rest of my committee, Paul Dourish, Roderic Crooks, and Tom Boellstorff, for their thoughtful feedback and enthusiasm for my work.
ABD ABD ABD!
In October 2018 I was invited to join a committee established by the UCI Esports Arena to address the need to create more inclusive and comprehensive guidelines and code of conducts for use by the arena. This partnership has been very fruitful. Not only have we begun reshaping of the existing code of conduct and creating guidelines for streaming and social media use associated with the arena, we have also partnered with UCI CARE (Campus Assault Resources and Education) to create bystander intervention training unique to the arena and online gaming situations.
I am also happy to announce that myself and another colleague, Matthew Knutson (PhD candidate in Visual Studies), have been invited to present on the work of the committee as part of the inaugural Esports Day programming at GDC (Game Developers Conference). We look forward to presenting on our process and working with other experts and advocates to continue to create more inclusive spaces in esports.
On December 1st, 2018 myself and another member of the CATS Lab, Kathryn Brewster, hosted an event that we organized which we called the Games @ Play Arcade. We conceived of it as an arcade to introduce the UCI campus to experimental independent games, a domain that often goes overlooked on a campus so focused on esports and partnerships with AAA studios.
We put out a small call online inviting submissions. We received over 60 submissions which we narrowed down to 10 to showcase in the arcade. Thanks to funding from a UCI Illuminations grant we were able to pay an honorarium to every developer whose game was selected! Each developer (7 digital, 3 analog) sent demos of their games and we set them up for play in a one-night only arcade!
We had nearly 80 attendees- pretty good for Saturday night on a college campus- and we look forward to organizing a similar event next year.
[slideshow_deploy id=’114′]
Above is a few choice photos from the arcade and below is a link to a thread on my Twitter where you can read descriptions of all the games featured in the arcade.
The @uci_cats lab indie arcade (Games @ Play) is tonight at 5pm on the UCI campus, located in Donald Bren Hall Rm 6011. Organized by yours truly and @katbamkapow, with support from our mentor @MyOwnVelouria. Here's a thread about the games in the arcade! #CATSLab
— Amanda 💙 (@AmandazonPhD) December 1, 2018
The UCI Diversity and Inclusion in Esports Task Force has published a report in the latest issue of the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations. The task force, of which I am a member, is chaired by Dr. Constance Steinkuehler and includes individuals from several offices and departments on the campus who are committed to ensuring a welcoming and safe environment for all UCI students interested in esports.
Diversity and Inclusion in Esports Programs in Higher Education: Leading by Example at UCI
The report outlines UCI’s plan to ensure diversity and inclusion in esports on campus, addressing topics such as player recruitment and training as well as campus oriented community programming around competitive gaming. The report also addresses several other initiatives we plan to implement in the future. We hope that this document will prove helpful to advocates for collegiate esports on other campuses as well.
I have published a piece of writing in Feminist Media Studies for a special issue on women in sports. My contribution is a thought piece on the pressures of postfeminism and failure on women interested in competing in esports, using Overwatch‘s Geguri as a case study. Geguri is an amazing athlete whose career I have followed with great interest. I enjoyed writing this piece immensely and I hope to both publish on this topic further and incorporate it into my dissertation.
“I Play to Win!”: Geguri as a (Post)Feminist Icon in Esports
Cowritten with my fellow UCI CATS lab member, Spencer Ruelos, I have published a thought piece on the need for increased communication between the disciplines of anthropology and game studies. The piece was published on Platypus, the peer-reviewed blog run by CASTAC (Commitee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing) that is affliated with the American Anthropological Association. I want to thank editor Evan Conaway (PhD Candidate, UC Irvine) for inviting the contribution.
A Ludicrous Relationship? A Conversation Between Anthropology and Game Studies
