Special Issue

Kakwitene VR

Virtual Reality Endangered Language Revival and Retention with Onkwehonwehneha A.I. (Ancient Intelligence)

MoniGarr

This paper tracks the effectiveness of Endangered Language Learning through VR, observing how participants learn new Kanien’kéha words. To us, “effective” aims to increase memory retention, the speed of learning, and each learners’ confidence to speak Kanien’kéha outside of the VR experience in the physical world. But Kakwitene VR has no intention of assimilating Indigenous dialects into non-Indigenous definitions and languages. It will not translate over to world-views and experiences that are foreign to the specific Indigenous dialect presented. The base communications in Kakwitene VR includes audio and visuals that are experienced without providing non-Indigenous cultural interpretations and literal translations. Continue Reading →

(Re)Coding Survivance: Sovereign Video Games Special Issue

First Person Podcast Episode 37

Michelle Lee Brown, Beth LaPensée, Maru Nihoniho, Meagan Byrne, and betsy brey 1 Comment

Welcome to a special edition of First Person Scholar. Today, we’re introducing a special issue on Indigenous and Sovereign Games, called “(Re)coding Survivance,” edited by Michelle Lee Brown. Our podcast this month features a conversation between four amazing Indigenous game designers, developers, and scholars. Michelle Lee Brown, Beth LaPensée, Maru Nihoniho, and Meagan Byrne discuss game design, Indigenous futurisms, survivance, and so much more. Continue Reading →

(Re)coding Survivance and the Regenerative Narrative

S. Rose O’Leary 1 Comment

The theme of this special issue is “(Re)coding Survivance” and is, as I understand it, supposed to be about how we might envision Indigenous futurisms via video game worlds. One of my Indigenous nations, the Washazhe or “Osage,” call ourselves “Children of the Middle Waters” and have special relationships with rivers. Thus, I turn to the source of much of our story to think about how to envision futures in a decolonial, “(re)coded,” or regenerative way. Continue Reading →

First Person Scholar: Call for Collaborators

Guest Editor: Spring/Summer 2020

First Person Scholar

First Person Scholar is a University of Waterloo Games Institute-affiliated, middle-state, open-access web publication committed to diverse, intersectional, and social-justice-minded games scholarship. We are looking for a Guest Editor to head up the last of our 2019-2020 series of special issues highlighting under-represented and/or marginalized identities and communities in games.

This time around, we are looking to run a special issue specifically highlighting queer and trans people of colour. If you identify yourself as belonging to both of these intersections, we’d like to work with you and give you a platform to highlight critical issues in games that matter to you. Continue Reading →

Nonbinary

A Choose-Your-Own Adventure

Adan Jerreat-Poole

Follow the thread / of twine / to find / your way home / if home ever existed in the first place / We make space / for our breath / for our spines / that are bending / Breaking / the binary / of a binary culture / built on binary code and passcodes / passwords we are hacking / with our
Living, loving bodies Continue Reading →

Possibilities for Queer Community-Building Through LARP

Sharang Biswas
In-game photo by Karin Ryding from a Sweden Run in 2012

More than just trying to present an immersive, believable world, both games attempted to ensure that players were grounded in a sense of history. Moreover, by creating worlds dominated by queer issues, it was queer histories that rose to the forefront. Players were given the opportunity to gain some level of understanding of how being queer here and now directly related to the events then and there. Continue Reading →

Intersexionality and the Undie Game

Sabine Harrer

Fun. When game designers and scholars talk about it, we tend to treat it as the singular, universal product of all successful gameplay scenarios. What’s fun and what isn’t, however, arises from our situated experience as embodied, gendered beings situated within a specific cultural context. In this essay – half game post-mortem, half academic poem – I explore what fun might mean by drawing on queer subjectivity. I call this lens “intersexionality,” invoking Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1989) notion of intersectionality to describe queer gameplay experiences beyond game industry standards. Continue Reading →