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01/23/2007 Archived Entry: "Symposium - Guitar Hero: Playing at Playing Guitar"

Ludiciné and The Montreal GameCODE Project present:

A Montreal Game Studies Symposium:
Guitar Hero: Playing at Playing Guitar

Friday, January 26th 1-5pm
Hall Building rm 1120
Dept of Sociology and Anthropology
Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Montreal, Canada

A video game does not have to tap a prevailing moral panic to engage scholarly critique. Our case in point this year is Guitar Hero (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_Hero). This immensely popular game combines familiar features of digital game play, music play and fan culture to produce an intriguing new media form that challenges game studies, music studies and digital culture studies scholars to think again about issues of gameplay, interface and embodied play, performance and spectacle, player culture and game audiences, game design and markets, musicality and authenticity, sound simulation, play and the magic circle, cognition and skill, and nostalgia and cultural fantasy.

In our continued effort to develop Montreal game studies around interdisciplinary engagements with shared objects of inquiry. We announce that the Montreal Game Studies Symposium for 2007 will focus on the Guitar Hero franchise. The symposium will be held on Friday January 26th from 1-5 pm. The event will feature head-to-head competition on Guitar Hero 2 and a series of short talks and discussion from invited scholars in the Montreal area.

Everyone is invited to attend the event and no prior experience with the game is necessary. If you do play GH or GH2 and would like to participate in the symposium competition then please contact Bernard Perron (perronb@total.net) who will sign you up.

Any other questions can be directed to the organizers, Bart Simon (simonb@alcor.concordia.ca) and/or Bernard Perron (perronb@total.net).

Posted by Jerry McGrath @ 01/23/2007 11:58 PM EST