Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) is an interdisciplinary centre for research/ creation in game studies and design, digital culture and interactive art

Posts by wbarobinson
(19 results)

Theatre-Games: Two Labs Teach Each Other

Posted by wbarobinson

Written by William Robinson and Eileen Mary Holowka.
In June 2016, Montreal’s Centre for Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) and London’s ZU-UK came together in order to lose their way. Their goal? To work with and against one another to try and find out what makes a perfect lab. Their method? To merge two labs with different objects of interest in the hopes of uncovering and discovering questions and answers regarding Theatre-Games.
Throughout their week together, the …

Two-sided Soccer as False Consciousness

Posted by wbarobinson

This is a second post about DiGRA 2015.
For DiGRA 2015, organizers took the time to set out three nets on the odd numbered edges of a hexagonal field. They asked for participants to re-enact the Situationists’s three-way soccer. Eventually 24 people showed up, with over 100 watching from the sidelines eating catered conference food. It was during this game that I lost faith in humanity, while finding value in experimental sports.
As it turns out, of …

DiGRA Luneburg

Posted by wbarobinson

This year’s DiGRA was quite impressive. It was double the size of DiGRA 2014, with three days and six streams spread across two buildings on the beautiful Leuphana University campus in Luneburg. Concordia was well represented, despite the distance. Professors Mia Consalvo, Jonathan Lessard and David Waddington presented, as well as graduate students Rainforest Scully-Blaker, Emily Sheepy, Tom Fennewald, Leif Penzendorfer (co-authoring with Adam Van Sertima) and former post-doc Rob Gallagher and Jennifer Whitson. I …

DiGRA 2014 Report

Posted by wbarobinson

When I was a child, I heard that the athletes attending the Mexico City Olympics opted to move months earlier to adapt the high altitude’s lack of available oxygen. No one told me about the Olympics in Salt Lake. At DiGRA 2014, in the illustrious Cliff Lodge at Snowbird, approximately 100 game scholars gave talks over three days. Many comically running out of breath while doing so.
The theme of this year’s DiGRA was [active verb] …

Ukrainian Minecraft Black Market

Posted by wbarobinson

A few days ago I received the following email:
“Dear Robinson, I bought your account for minetsraft apparently you do not play this game and someone put up for sale your account. I am a poor student and I live in Ukraine, could you give me your account to play minecraft?” [sic]
This email came after a swell of emails from Minecraft itself, explaining that someone had been trying to merge my Minecraft account to a Microsoft …

Le Solidaire

Posted by wbarobinson

It was Tuesday afternoon and my supervisor, Bart Simon said, “You know what would be topical? A game about the charter.” I told him to give me 7 days and a little bit of money. Before he could say no, I ran out the door. I assembled a crack team of game makers. I promised them money I had not been promised myself. I provided a space and browbeat them into making something amazing.
The following …