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Game Studies Call for Papers - International Communication Association
For ICA 2025, the Game Studies Division (GSD) is looking to showcase research that engages with digital and analog games, virtual environments, and/or playful interactions in the broader field of human communication. This includes not just the effects and experiences of playing games, but also interactions in gaming and virtual spaces as well as the uses, mechanisms, and experiences with augmented, virtual, and mixed reality technologies. This broad scope of gaming is justified under the shared interest in play, interactivity, and the interplay between human cognition, behavior, and culture and technological systems and affordances. Whether it is solitary, cooperative, competitive, or spectatorial play or even when engagement with a virtual experience is purely instrumental or functional, the common denominators of gaming experiences warrant a communal discussion. This is why we are inviting works focusing on experiences from Gather.Town to Baldur’s Gate, platforms from the Metaverse to Reddit, and types of interactivity from autoplay and Twitch to the type of highly focused dexterous digital gameplay like Elden Ring that our division’s vice chair is blaming for his burgeoning back problems.
