Calls

July 9, 2024

Since 2018, our Game In Lab initiative has been doing fantastic work by supporting and funding over 25 board game research projects worldwide, all disciplines are welcome, from social sciences to AI and the arts, or any other relevant field.

Today, we are pleased to announce the opening of the 2024 International Call for Projects, which will be accepting submissions until September 6th.

This year, special attention will be given to projects that investigate the following areas of focus:

➡️ Sustainability and Justice: the role of tabletop games in addressing crises of environmental and social sustainability, and in promoting climate and social justice.

➡️ Fifty Years of Dungeons and Dragons: the function of tabletop roleplaying games in addressing and promoting social inclusion, decolonization, and diverse cultural representations.

➡️ Healthy People and/or Planet: the potential of games to support healthy lives, therapeutic applications, and community health and resilience.

➡️ Cultural Heritage: the preservation and promotion of games as important sites of cultural heritage and history and/or the use of games in heritage research and preservation.

Please feel free to share this call for projects to anyone who may be interested in applying, considering the international scope of the program and the call.

We are hopeful that we can rely on your support to advance this critical project and express our gratitude in advance for your dedication.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us (Audrey and Léa) or use the contact form if you have any questions!

Best regards,
The Game in Lab team

February 21, 2024

CFP: Generation Analog 2024 “HOME”

Analog Game Studies and Game in Lab are proud to announce Generation Analog 2024.  This year’s online conference will take place July 24 and July 25, 2024.  The online event is free and open to the public with registration.  All presentations will be recorded and made available after the event.  Check out the presentations from previous years via AGS’s YouTube channel (like and subscribe!): https://shorturl.at/asKQ9

HOME will be this year’s conference theme.  We will explore games and home, play and home, playing at home, being stuck at home, playing with others, and playing home alone.  We will interrogate playing house, play(ful) rooms, game rooms, gaming tables, home squares, home bases, home teams, home brews, house rules, and play as (sometimes) “safe as houses.”  Finally, we will imagine alternative domesticities, materialities and economies, found families and gaming groups, and even queer(er) and more radical places, spaces, and possibilities of play.  In fact, according to Steven Vider in The Queerness of Home,

Home is not only about shelter and stability but also a sense of personal, cultural, and political connection and recognition, from our communities and a larger public…[and] the many ends that home may serve—the normative and the queer, constraint and liberation, isolation and community…Making a queerer home means recognizing the material, psychological, and cultural meanings embedded in the everyday practice of homemaking—neither to deny nor reify its power and primacy, but to question and expand its limits. (227-228)

These are just some of the provocations and ideas that we hope to address at this year’s conference.  Tabletop games, role-playing games, and even childhood play are all extraordinary spaces of inquiry for these questions as they necessitate a conversation about who is playing, how are they playing, why are they playing, and what is being played.

We invite scholars, teachers, artists, graduate students, and the intellectually curious to submit proposals for Generation Analog 2024.  Designers, educators, and researchers in all stages of their career are encouraged to apply. We seek thoughtful work from authors and speakers at any stage of their academic or professional careers.

Proposals for papers must include:

  1. presentation title,
  2. presenter’s name, email, pronouns, and affiliation (if available),
  3. an abstract no longer than 300 words, and
  4. a short list of 5-7 keywords.

Abstracts should articulate a clear analytical, theoretical, philosophical, or artistic perspective and address how the presentation engages the conference theme.  Presentations might engage (but are not limited to):

  • spaces and home environments
  • game rooms, game tables, and game storage in the home
  • domesticity in analog games
  • coziness
  • slow games
  • the mechanics of “home”
  • home town, home land, belonging, and exile
  • going home, coming home, leaving home in analog games
  • the unhoused or “homeless” in analog games and gaming communities
  • haunted houses, home invasion, and monsters in the closet and analog games
  • “house rules”
  • “home brews”
  • analog games and “lockdown” (i.e. quarantine, imposed time at home, housebound)
  • analog games and family-friendly, suburban, game nights
  • backyard games
  • queer(ing) home, domesticity, family in analog games

Presentations should be no longer than 15-18 minutes in length depending on panel size.  Submit materials to GenerationAnalogConference@gmail.com with “Generation Analog 2024 Submission” in the subject line.

Timeline: 

Abstracts due: March 31, 2024 extended to April 7, 2024 by 11:59 PM EDT

Acceptance by: May 1, 2024

Conference Dates: July 24-25, 2024

Download the CFP in PDF form.

February 14, 2024

Analog Game Studies – Assistant Editor(s)

Analog Game Studies (AGS) is looking for 1-to-2 new Assistant Editors to join the team!  Analog Game Studies is a volunteer-run, open access game studies journal that caters to a combined academic and popular audience, with stakeholders in education, industry, and gaming communities.  AGS also runs Generation Analog, an annual online tabletop games and education conference.  These are volunteer/service positions.  If you are interested in applying,  please send a cover letter that speaks to the desired qualifications, a current CV, and a writing sample (up to 15 pages, published or unpublished) to analoggamestudiesjournal@gmail.com by March 25, 2024 with the desired position in the subject line.

Two positions are available: AGS (Journal) Assistant Editor and Generation Analog (Conference) Assistant Editor.

The Journal Assistant Editor will:

  • Attend editorial board meetings (about once a month, 10-15 hours a month, busier during publication weeks or conference months)
  • Work with Associate and Senior Editors; manage editorial work necessary to bring between one and four articles to press per year
  • Develop, procure, and curate authors to publish; may become the permanent Book Review editor
  • Assist in the copy editing of AGS print volumes

The Conference Assistant Editor will:

  • Attend editorial board meetings (about once a month, 10-15 hours a month, busier during publication weeks or conference months); in the first year, shadow the Editor-in-Chief and Senior Editors regarding conference organization
  • Assist in editorial work as needed to bring between one and four articles to press per year
  • In the first year, assist with planning, organizing, and running Generation Analog; thereafter, assume a leadership role in organizing the conference
  • Assist in the copy editing of Generation Analog Proceedings

In addition to these required tasks, we will work with you on any initiatives that you may be  interested in spearheading.

Desired qualifications:

  • Background in critical cultural studies, e.g. Critical Race Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Critical Media Studies
  • Ph.D. in a related field strongly preferred (or comparable academic, industry, and/or project planning experience)
  • Familiarity with game studies and some key journals within the field
  • For the Journal Assistant Editor, previous editorial experience
  • For the Generation Analog Assistant Editor, previous conference organizing experience