CFP: The Analog Origins of Digital Games @ FDG 2019 – 26 – 30 August 2019 – San Luis Obispo, California

The analog game revolution is upon us! This workshop calls for an exploration of the analog origins of digital game mechanics. We welcome research of all kinds for an interdisciplinary discussion of how analog and digital game design cross-pollenate. Of particular interest are oral histories, critical cultural analyses, and technical perspectives that get under the hood and reveal the algorithmic likenesses of digital and analog games. This workshop aims to foster a conversation that reveals the complex cultural and technical intersections of games and society, and in doing so recovers a lost history of authorship that has been obscured by the vogue of the digital. Digital games have long been inspired by analog games, and vice versa. The first step in this project of recovery is to identify overlaps between these two fields of design. By working together in this workshop, we can begin the process of recuperation tying digital games to a sometimes inspirational and sometimes problematic cultural landscape that has always been at play.

We are interested in any approaches to comparing analog and digital games that help fill our gap in scholarly knowledge on this topic. One submission to this workshop might show how the design biases of Magic: The Gathering developer Richard Garfield have fueled the highly competitive economic landscape of eSports. A separate submission might offer an archeology of random number generation, excavating forgotten methods of uncertain play. A technical analysis could compare the statistical makeup of bodies in tabletop role-playing games to the statistical systems which compose the body in popular JRPGs such as Dragon Quest.

Not only have analog game mechanics inspired digital mechanics like Civilization 6’s hex map and card upgrades, Super Mario Party’s modular dice, and Divinity 2’s RPG inspired world, they have also become the core mechanic—if not totality—of games like Hearthstone, and Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales. Queer and indie game designers like Avery Alder and Naomi Clark (amongst many others) have produced amazingly thoughtful designs as well that set the pace for how games can speak to the emotional depth of the human experience with their games The Quiet Year (2013) and Consentacle (2014) respectively. Finally, movements like Actual Play—epitomized by the program Critical Role and the Maze Arcana community—have put a spotlight on how digital distribution networks like YouTube allow for traditionally analog games like Dungeons & Dragons can facilitate new forms of play within digital communities.

FDG 2019 “The Analog Origins of Digital Games” will be held in San Luis Obispo, California from 26-30 August, 2019. The Analog Origins of Digital Games workshop will be a part of the conference and will bring together a unique panel of analog game experts. Those submitting to this workshop should feel free to submit different, additional proposals to the main conference. All attendees will register for – and have access to – the entirety of FDG 2019.

We will consider extended abstracts although full 5-10 page papers will be expected by the June 7th deadline for publication. Please format using the ACM SIGCONF template (the first docx link on this page) and submit by April 5th, 2019 to analoggamestudiesjournal@gmail.com with the header
“Analog Origins Submission: TITLE HERE.” If there are at least 20 submissions, the proceedings will be published in the 2019 Foundations of Digital Games proceedings after an open peer review process by the Analog Game Studies editorial team (affiliations listed below). Acceptance notifications will be shared by May 21^st, 2019. We look forward to reading your wonderful contributions!

Submissions Deadlines

Submissions deadline April 5, 2019.
Acceptance/rejection notification May 13, 2019.
Final publishable draft submission deadline June 7, 2019.

For more information and the latest updates regarding the FDG 2019 conference, see http://www.fdg2019.org.