It’s March, and that means spring is almost here! Though, for us in Ontario, it also means we’ll be experiencing “second winter” before summer mysteriously appears. And with a new season comes a new FPS update! We’re very excited to announce and highlight our newest and our upcoming projects geared towards expanding the Games Studies community into other spaces and/or conversations.
Special Issue: Decolonising Queer Games And Play
This project is centred around highlighting work by scholars, designers, makers, artists, and others who make or study games with the perspectives of queer and trans people of colour at the core of their work; either by nature of who they are or by nature of what their work seeks to do. We are dedicated a space for queer and trans people of colour specifically through this issue, and are looking for works that address the notion of how race plays into LGBTQ identities, particularly of queer characters in games, or how they can complement or complicate anti-racist works. It’s something we’re looking forward to working on with our Guest Editor, Khee Hoon Chan. Our CFP can be found here and the deadline is March 8, 2021.
Streaming: When we started our streaming at the beginning of September, we were unsure of what it would evolve into. We’ve now since grown our audiences and are continuing to build a community beyond our written word. We’re continuing with this project, and we can’t wait to see what new areas, perspectives, and avenues we will explore! Our Managing Editor, Patrick, streams on Mondays from 3pm-5pm EST, with a focus on the affective experience of retro-style games, and our Editor-in-Chief, Sabrina, streams on Fridays from 4pm-6pm EST, analyzing how games express narrative. Check us out on www.twitch.tv/firstpersonscholar
Youtube: We’re happy to announce that our podcasts can now be found on our YouTube channel! This is in addition to our SoundCloud, gives you different options for accessing our podcast (our podcast can also be found on Spotify, Stitcher, and most podcast services). We’ll also be looking into other video content in the future, but for now, please enjoy revisiting your favourite episodes on YouTube!
RPG Actual Play: In addition to the regular podcast, the podcast team will be delving into some tabletop RPG goodness on the FPS Twitch channel! We’ll be exploring rules meant to recreate the early days of RPGs, before being formalized into more familiar rules about elves and dwarves and dark places and fire-breathing lizards. This first foray will consist of a 3-4 session mini-campaign in a world we’ll create as we play. We’ll be streaming on Wednesdays starting at 1PM with our first session taking place on Wednesday, March 10th. Sessions will also be uploaded to the FPS YouTube Channel. Stay tuned!
Publishing Schedule: We have been receiving a ton of great submissions, and we hope they keep coming. In an effort to give attention to all of our contributors in a good amount of time, we have found that we are in a state where we have many pieces in editing and few ready to publish. This is all to say that there may be holes in the publishing schedule going forward, but we are working diligently (and happily) to get these thoughtful, interesting, and important works out to you.