The videogames industry has always been driven forward by technology. Advances in computing, leads to new devices, new connectivity, creating new opportunities for play and experience.
While this was most obvious in the evolution of consoles (8, 16, 32-bit and ever onwards), the industry has also seen some major disruption in the form of ubiquitous broadband, mobile smart devices, open digital platforms, etc.
We’re now at a point where the future seems far harder to predict. The unstoppable rise of the Internet of Things, 5G connectivity, the long-promised Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution, and even the often-ignored field of gamification, all offer very different futures.
The ‘new reality’ of Covid-19 and the fact that the world is now looking for new ways to play, learn, work and interact, will also offer new ways for the games industry to think about its future.
So What?
Now in its 8th year, The Computer Games Journal is pondering the future of gaming and has issued a call for papers, abstracts and expressions of interest, for an issue focusing on the possible future(s) of videogames.
Maintaining it’s open approach to submissions, based upon the idea of GIN – Good, Interesting and Novel work, the journal is looking for submissions that are relevant to the whole videogames ecosystem: developers, researchers, teachers and players alike.
According to the journal:
“Most of us today have spent much of our lives embedded in video gaming, as developers, players, teachers or researchers. You may be a late career video games professional who saw the birth of the digital age, or perhaps you are a classic young digital native that has only seen a world dominated by video gaming, or you may be a researcher from another field fascinated by this massive global phenomenon. Now seems a good time to produce a special issue on new areas of thought for the future of Computer Games.”
New and established researchers, teachers, players and developers are invited to submit proposals/abstracts outlining possible new frontiers for computer games research.
(As in, you don’t have to be an academic researcher to submit something).
A paper can be in the form of a position paper, essay, or review of up to 5,000 words.
The call is open until July 21st 2020 and up to 10 papers are sought.
For more information, for submission guidelines and for previous issues and volumes, visit the journal’s home page.
