[Air-L] Lecture and Workshop: Paratopian Design and Equitable Game Dev Education

[Gerald Voorhees]

Dear friends and colleagues,

Please join us for two upcoming events (online or in-person) hosted by the
University of Waterloo Games Institute:

1. On Monday, 23 October from 11AM-12:30PM EDT/UTC+4: "Building Equitable
and Sustainable Game Development Education" Workshop led by Kenzie Gordon
(University of Alberta), Dr. Sean Gouglas (University of Alberta), Dr.
Alison Harvey (York University),
Vishal Sooknananl (Western University), Dr. Johanna Weststar (Western
University), and
Dr. Jennifer Whitson (University of Waterloo).  Register for free using
this Eventbrite link
<https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/workshopbuilding-equitable-and-sustainable-game-development-education-tickets-728981462177?aff=oddtdtcreator>
.

With recent waves of layoffs, high-profile workplace harassment cases, and
a notoriously short career length for gender minorities and people of
colour, the transition of new workers into the game industry involves
navigating a spate of barriers to equity and success that have been
understudied in academic research. The First Three Years is an ongoing
longitudinal study of graduates of game programs in Canada and the United
States, following the journey of 207 students as they move into the game
industry. In this workshop, our research team will summarise the primary
challenges students have identified in their game programs. This summary
includes equity and diversity issues inherent in common curricular
practices such as the efficacy of capstone courses and internships, the
inclusion of crunch-like practices in the classroom, the systematic failure
to inform students of actual workplace conditions, and the mismatch between
student preparation and industry hiring practices. Afterwards, participants
will address whether/how these problems manifest in their own institutions,
and what solutions might improve equity outcomes for students seeking
careers in games.?

2. On Tuesday, 31 October from 3-4PM EDT/UTC+4: "The Case for Paratopian
Design" lecture by Dr Rilla Khaled (Concordia University). Register for
free using this Eventbrite link.
<https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/guest-lecture-the-case-for-paratopian-design-tickets-721528760947?aff=oddtdtcreator>

What if we could make complex social and cultural questions playable? And
what if we could do so through interactions with familiar digital
interfaces set in alternative presents and near futures? The work I will
discuss sits at the intersection between the design traditions of
speculative and critical design on the one hand, and the philosophies and
best practices of game design, playful media and interaction design on the
other. It turns out, though, that an arranged marriage between these
traditions produces unusual offspring. In this talk, grounded in examples
including outsourcing religious tolerance to technological solutions,
Indigenous Hawaiians undertaking space travel, matrimonial websites from
the near future, and flirtatious AI chatbot therapists, I make the case for
paratopian design, which is neither utopian nor dystopian, but proposes
paradigm shifts that invite us to reconceptualise and reconsider the
building blocks of "here" & "now".