Milieux is proud to announce the significant participation of its members, including faculty, PhD candidates, and alumni, at the upcoming Canadian Game Studies Association (CGSA) Annual Conference. For the second year, the event will be held at the Institute in collaboration with the Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) Research Centre. For four days, our researchers will be presenting a diverse range of topics, reflecting the breadth of critical and creative work happening around Game Studies within Milieux.

This year’s theme “Breaks” invites participants to explore disruption, reflection, and new beginnings in games and game culture.

A Pre-Conference event about Serious Games will be held on June 6 at 4TH SPACE:

Here’s a glimpse into the diverse presentations by Milieux members:

• Richy Srirachanikorn will delve into gaming nostalgia with “Let’s Go Bowling, Nostalgia: Grand Theft Auto IV and Nostalgic Disjuncture.”
• Alex Custodio will present “Theseus’s Handheld: The Analogue Pocket and the Game Boy’s Technical Imaginary,” an exploration of the evolution of handheld gaming.
• Michael Iantorno will shed light on historical game systems with “Satellite Archaeologies: Restoring the Stellaview’s Abandoned Software Ecosystem.”
• Hanine El Mir and E. Jules Maier-Zucchino will be co-presenting “Gotta Play Them All: How Nostalgia Mediates our Understanding of Pokémon Remakes.”
• Courtney Blamey will offer insights into the game development process with “Best of Intentions: Unpacking Impacting Factors on Developer Intentionality in Game Production”
• Meg Hutchinson will present “Give Me Time to Grieve.”
• Fulbright Scholar Scott DeJong will talk about serious games with “Breaking Serious Games.”
• Lyne Dwyer and Justin Roberts will present “Do You See Yourself?”: Exploring Queer Affects and Appetites In/Through Tandem Play.”
• Alumnus Hamza Bashandy will contribute “Breaching the System? An Autopoiesis analysis of formalist gamespace studies.”
• Po Ki Chan will discuss “Finding the Turn: Cultural Capital as Protected Space in Chinese Game Development.”
• Jessica Marshall will present “Disruptions in Gameplay: How Game Masters Impact Worldbuilding in The Quiet Year.”
• Taylanumut Doğan explores “Break from History in the Gothic Haunting of Paranormasight.”
• Assistant Professor in Communication Studies, Andrei Zanescu, will present “Filmic Prestige in Games: Ghost of Tsushima & Kurosawa’s Japan.”
• Angelica Calcagnile will be talking about fishing minigames and their impact on game pacing.
• Alumna Sarah Christina Ganzon will present “Evil Blockchain Games: Axie Infinity and the Discourse of Real Games.”
• Rosemary McDonald, Muhammad Shahrom Ali, Quinn Saggio, and Milieux Director Bart Simon will introduce their solar-powered Minecraft explorations “Playing with Power: Energy Infrastructure and Solar Minecraft.”

In addition to individual presentations, Milieux members are also facilitating workshops and participating in key sessions. On Sunday June 8, Kalervo Sinervo and Associate Professor in Design and Computation Arts Rilla Khaled will be facilitating a workshop titled “A Method for Design Materialisation”. On the last day, Dr. Marc Lajeunesse will participate in a roundtable discussion on “Main Hustles & Side Quests: Exploring Alt-Academic Options,” offering insights into diverse career paths.