Double Game Philosophy Conference
21-25 October 2019, St. Petersburg
20th October (Pushkinskaya 10 Arts Centre)
19.00 – 22.00 Pre-conference Panel Discussion: Theoretical Approaches to Digital Game Ecologies
Virtual Reality as the Realm of AffordancesPawel Grabarczyck, IT University of Copenhagen
Stare by Default: Visual Ecology Criteria in Digital SpaceAlina Latypova, St Petersburg State University
Ludic Similarity SpacesJohn Richard Sageng, Games Philosophy Network
Game Objects in/as “Intra-ecologies” (video presentation)Conor McKeown, Kings College, London
Common Discussion
21st October (Institute of Philosophy, SPbU, Mendeleevskaya, 5)
Room 24, 2nd floor
10:00 – 10:15 Double Game Philosophy Conference Opening
Valery Savchuk, St Petersburg State University, and Alina Latypova, St Petersburg State University
Feng Zhu, King’s College London
10:15 – 10:30 Philosophy of Computer Games Opening
Feng Zhu, King’s College London
10:30 – 11:30 Philosophy of Computer Games Keynote: Olli Leino
“The tragedy of art games”
11:30 – 11:50 Coffee
11:50 – 13:30 Philosophy of Computer Games Session 1
Chair: Souvik Mukherjee
Transformative Power of Gameplay: Negotiating Textures of PlayJustyna Janik, Jagiellonian University in Krakow
Thrown into the World. Transformative Aesthetics of Avatars’ In-Game AwakeningsStefano Caselli, University of Malta
Aesthetics of Care and Caring for Aesthetics in the Game Play of Walden, a Game and EastshadeSebastian Möring, University of Potsdam
13:30 – 14:30 Lunch
14:30 – 14:45 Interfaces of Media Reality Opening
Konstantin Ocheretyany, St Petersburg State University, and Alexander Lenkevich, Laboratory for Computer Games Research
14:45 – 16:30 Interfaces of Media Reality Session 1 ENG
Konstantin Ocheretyany
Stratifying Digital Games, Ethics, and DigitisationAnders Falk, Blekinge Institute of Technology
Diegetic Interface. Procedural DimensionSergey Buglak, Laboratory for Computer Games Research
Bauhaus-Effect. From Design Utopia to Interface Culture (video presentation)Daria Kolesnikova, Bauhaus University of Weimar
16:30 – 17:00 Coffee
17:00 – 18:30 Double Game Philosophy Joint Panel: Media Philosophy and Game Philosophy ENG
room 108, 3rd floor
Chair: Feng Zhu
Sebastian Möring, University of Potsdam
Konstantin Ocheretyany, St Petersburg State University
Pawel Grabarczyck, IT University of Copenhagen
Margarita Skomorokh, Laboratory for Computer Games Research
19:00 Welcome party
22nd October (Institute of Philosophy, SPbU, Mendeleevskaya, 5)
Room 24, 2nd floor
10:00 – 11:00 Philosophy of Computer Games Keynote: Susanna Paasonen
“Repeat, Repeat, Repeat: Ambiguous Pleasures in Casual Gaming”
11:00 – 11:20 Coffee
11:20 – 13:00 Philosophy of Computer Games Session 2
Chair: Justyna Janik
Matchmaking Games and Art: What’s the Best Fit?David Myers, Loyola University New Orleans USA
Games as Participation — on the Application of Roman Ingarden's Aesthetics to Video GamesPawel Grabarczyck, IT University of Copenhagen
Video games, Art and the Human Condition: An Existentialist perspectiveCharles D. Trahan, École NADJocelyn Benoit, École NAD
Dave Hawey, École NAD
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 16:20 Philosophy of Computer Games Session 3
Chair: Jose Zagal
Queer Aesthesis in Robert Yang’s Marathon (2018)Caroline Bem, University of Turku
Experiencing the Passage of Time in Video GamesFederico Alvarez Igarzabal, Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health
“Here Be Dragons”: Aesthesis, Affect and Ethics in VideogamesSouvik Mukherjee, Presidency University, Kolkata
“New Extremity”: the Affective Aesthetics of Selected Video Games Made in France (video presentation)Filip Jankowski, Jagiellonian University
16:20 – 16:40 Coffee
16:40 – 17:40 Interfaces of Media Reality Workshop by Sergey Buglak ENG
room 108, 3rd floor
“How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Begin Making Games”
17:40 Cultural programme
23rd October (Institute of Philosophy, SPbU, Mendeleevskaya, 5)
Room 24, 2nd floor
10:00 – 11:00 Philosophy of Computer Games Keynote: Daniel Vella
“The Promise of Being Otherwise: Games and the Aesthetics of the Self”
11:00 – 11:20 Coffee
11:20 – 13:00 Philosophy of Computer Games Session 4
Chair: Mathias Fuchs
Immersion as the Experience of World InvolvementJohn Richard Sageng, Games Philosophy Network
A Lattice and a Sneaker. Digital Games as “If-Images”Margarita Skomorokh, Laboratory for Computer Games Research
Haptivism: Formation of Aesthetic Experience in Computer GamesAlina Latypova, St Petersburg State UniversityAlexander Lenkevich, ITMO University
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 16:20 Interfaces of Media Reality Session 2 ENG
Chair: Margarita Skomorokh
Adventure Chronotope in Video Games: the Present and the Past*Alexey Salin, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow Game Center
In-Game InstancesRoman Voronin, Higher School of Economics – Nizhny Novgorod
Game Platforms and Their Monsters: How Do Technologies Determine Images of the Evil?Alexander Vetushinskiy, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow Game Center
Fade to Black Mirror: Video Games Through the Black Mirror(video presentation)Gregory Wanda, University of Washington
16:20 – 16:40 Coffee
16:40 – 18:20 Philosophy of Computer Games Session 5
Chair: David Myers
On the Ultimate Goals of Games: Winning, Finishing, and ProlongingJose Zagal, University of UtahMichael Debus, IT University of Copenhagen
Rogelio Cardona-Rivera, University of Utah
Masculine Text, Feminine Skin: Rules vs AestheticsRenata Ntelia, University of Malta
This Game Is Broken — a Note on Fractures, Glitches and Dysfunctional Rule Systems in Ludic ArtArne Kjell Vikhagen, Valand Academy, University of Gothenburg
18:20 Conference Dinner
24th October (Institute of Philosophy, SPbU, Mendeleevskaya, 5)
Room 24, 2nd floor
10:00 – 11:00 Interfaces of Media Reality Keynote: Konstantin Ocheretyany ENG
“Anthropotechnics of Digital Humanity: From Organon to Agonon”
11:00 – 11:20 Coffee
11:20 – 13:00 Interfaces of Media Reality Session 3 ENG
Chair: Alina Latypova
False Affordances in “Bad” Video GamesAlesja Serada, University of Vaasa
Like Mother, Like EarthBound: Kimo Kawaii as an InterfaceOleg Ushakov, independent researcher
Encyclopedic Games. On Historical Reflection in VideogamesVladislav Kirichenko, St Petersburg State University
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 15:40 Philosophy of Computer Games Session 6
Chair: Anita Leirfall
Computer Games, Image-Consciousness and MagicDaniel O’Shiel, Universidad Diego Portales
Rhythm and Subjectivity in Digital GamesJohan Kalmanlehto, University of JyväskyläPauline von Bonsdorff, University of Jyväskylä
Towards an Aesthetics of Intra-active Videogames(video presentation)Conor McKeown, King’s College London
15:40 – 16:00 Coffee
16:00 – 17:10 Philosophy of Computer Games Session 7
Chair: Renata Ntelia
Becoming an Emotionally Better Player: Virtue Ethics and Guilts in Spec Ops: The LineMaxime Deslongchamps-Gagnon, University of Montreal
The Ethics of First-Person Shooter AestheticsMarkéta Hrehorová, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
17:10 – 18:00 Philosophy of Computer Games Closing
25th October (Institute of Philosophy, SPbU, Mendeleevskaya, 5)
Room 24, 2nd floor
10:00 – 11:00 Interfaces of Media Reality Keynote: Константин Шевцов RUS
“Границы игры”
11:00 – 11:20 Coffee
11:20 – 13:00 Interfaces of Media Reality Session 4 RUS
Chair: Александр Ленкевич
Ориентирование субъекта в пространстве видеоигры: к онтологии картографии вымышленногоФедор Корочкин, РГПУ им. А.И. Герцена
Umwelt и видеоигры о животных: помогают ли интерфейсы познать иную реальность?Иван Кравченко, КФУ им. В.И. Вернадского
Игра в танец: тетрис идеальных фигурОльга Сорокина, СПбГЭУ
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 15:40 Interfaces of Media Reality Session 5 RUS
Chair: Сергей Буглак
Контроверза порядка и свободы: социологический анализ серии игр Assassin’s СreedНаталья Орлова, ФНИСЦ РАН
Опыт roguelike: между чистилищем и событиемНикита Шевченко, СПбГУП
Игры со временемВиктория Лобатюк, СПбПУДарья Быльева, СПбПУ
15:40 – 16:00 Coffee
16:00 – 17:00 Interfaces of Media Reality Closing
17:00 – 17:30 Double Game Philosophy Conference Closing
KEYNOTES
Keynote: Olli Leino
“The tragedy of art games”
In this talk I address the technological specificity of computer games as an artistic medium and its implications to experience and interpretation in computer game play. Describing similarities and differences, I will situate computer games on the art-historical trajectory of interactive art, and discuss them as played both in first person, and, by other people as ‘performances’. I will identify failure as the origin of significance as a characteristic of computer game form, and discuss how this feature sets computer games — or “playable art(ifacts)” — apart from interactive art. Discussing the avenues this explanation opens up for hermeneutics and criticism of ‘art games’, I arrive at the notion of the ‘tragedy of art games’.
Keynote: Susanna Paasonen
“Repeat, Repeat, Repeat: Ambiguous Pleasures in Casual Gaming”
There is a tendency in studies of affect to focus on instances of notable intensity – on events that mark some kind of a gap, impact, or transformation between what has been and what is now possible. There is a sense of drama to such turning points and peak experiences, yet they help to turn attention away from how bodies are constantly being moved from one state to another in much more imperceptible ways in our encounters with the world and the other bodies inhabiting it. This talk focuses on such minor quotidian affective motions, that which Brian Massumi might identify as “microshocks” and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as “microflow experiences”, in the context of casual gaming. Writing on digital gambling machines, Natasha Dow Schüll argues that their pleasures lie in tactile interactions with the machines and their mechanical rhythms allowing for gamblers to enter “machine zones” as affective non-spaces of alternative experience. Extending considerations of such machine zones from the context of compulsive gambling to casual gaming, this talk examines their appeal as an issue of rhythm that is both affective and cognitive, and which involves repetition and affective modulation alike. A game of online solitaire, or a puzzle such as Tetris or 2048, played over and over again, comes with both focus and distractedness, and can be experienced as simultaneously boring, engrossing, relaxing, and frustrating. In exploring such ambiguous pleasures and attractions within mundane registers of feeling, this talk sets out to outline an aesthetics of affective micro-experiences.
Keynote: Daniel Vella
“The Promise of Being Otherwise: Games and the Aesthetics of the Self”
Videogames - and the discourses surrounding them - have often extended, in terms that often verge on the utopian, the promise that they afford us the possibility of becoming someone other than our mundane selves. An extensive body of research on identity exploration through self-representation in MMOs and other multi-user virtual worlds has framed this ‘being otherwise’ primarily in terms of being seen to be otherwise – that is, in terms of the presentation of self in a social context. This presentation aims to extend this understanding of the ‘being otherwise’ that videogames promise, by developing the idea of an aesthetics of subjectivity built upon the foundation of the philosophy of play of Eugen Fink, linked to contemporary work on existential ludology in the field of digital game studies. The argument will be made that this ‘being otherwise’ should be understood, in more existential terms, as the structuring of a particular comportment or way of being for the player in relation to the world of the game. Moreover, the ‘doubling’ of subjectivity that Fink identifies as being inherent to the activity of play – according to which the player is, at one and the same time, occupying her role within the game and her subjectivity as an individual outside the game – makes it possible for the player to stand in an aesthetic relation to her own in-game being. Finally, this will be qualified through a highlighting of the liberal ideologies of subjectivity that, in the first place, underpin the idea of games and play as techniques for ‘being otherwise.’
Keynote: Константин Очеретяный
“Антропотехники цифрового человечества: от органона к агонону”
Доцифровые (аналоговые) игры освобождают человека от сил природы, позволяют осмыслить природный потенциал психики и физиологии, а также использовать его не по назначению в ритуалах, обрядах и т.п., формируя культуру; цифровые игры позволяют осмыслить арсенал культуры — всю сумму антропотехник, которые освободились от своих утилитарных целей и стали открыты современному человеку. В компьютерных играх открывается возможность использования инструментов не для производства чего-либо (прагматическое действие), но для понимания того, что производится (эпистемическое действие). Компьютерные игры таким образом служат инструментами понимания новой онаученной инструментальной реальности — средствами проигрывания/продумывания новой социальной, политической, культурной, экзистенциалной ситуации человечества в мире технических медиа.
Keynote: Константин Шевцов
“Границы игры”
Центральный тезис доклада состоит в том, что игра сама по себе не может быть предметом анализа, потому что в основе ее лежит не полагание смысла или определение структуры, а получение удовольствия. При этом есть возможность указать на границы игры, заданные тем, как проживается и оформляется это специфическое удовольствие. Игра работает с эффектами отражения, рефлексии, которые позволяют игроку осваивать границу своего присутствия и отсутствия, расширять реальное или виртуальное пространства существования. Значимость феномена компьютерных игр определяется как раз тем опытом чувственности и ориентации в современном мире, который не может быть получен никаким иным образом. Если традиционные игры противопоставляют повествовательным жанрам как невербальные жанры вербальным, и это отношение сопоставляют с отношением ритуала и мифа, то в компьютерных играх нарративный элемент становится конструктивным компонентом игрового мира, при этом игра воздействует на рассказываемую историю. В результате мир все больше уходит из собственной истории в пространство игры, а вместе с ним в пространство компьютерных игр перемещается и сама возможность игры как эффективного действия со всем его магизмом и мифологией.
Доклад подготовлен в рамках деятельности ведущей научной школы МГУ имени М.В.Ломоносова «Трансформации культуры, общества и истории: философско-теоретическое осмысление»