I just got back from the International Japan Game Studies 2013 conference at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto and I’ve been keeping a conference report at, Japanese Game Studies 2013. This is a follow up conference to the Re-playing Japan symposium we had last summer here in Edmonton. The plan is to have another one in August 2014 to continue the dialogue.
The conference was one of the best I’ve been to in a while. The mix of Japanese and North American scholars and designers coming at the issues from different traditions made for a fascinating confrontation of who games can be studied. At the end I was on a panel that talked about where we are going next. I suggested that we need to think about the following:
- How to conduct cross-cultural research so that we avoid the danger of generalizing about Japanese and Western players/designers.
- How the academy can engage the stakeholders including business, but only business. For example we should be engaging the doujin community, the indie developers, the journalists and the fans.
- Figuring out how to archive games and game related materials for future study is a priority.
- Training new researchers should also be a priority.