[csaa-forum] Call for Papers - Games and persona

[Kim Barbour]

Games and Persona - *Persona Studies* Journal Theme Issue

Editors: Christopher Moore and Katja Lee



Games have provided players with many opportunities to experiment with
identity in ways that have fundamentally shaped social media platforms. As
Apperley and Clemens (2017) have argued, networked digital media have
embraced the avatar as the predominant form for the presentation of the
public self online. Games also have a vibrant role in the performance of
the self that is affectively charged. Because of this, games and persona
interconnect beyond the virtual self of the avatar, through esports,
cosplay, wikis, criticism and review and many other mediated forms of
expression. The interaction between games and persona represent agency in
the negotiation of complex personal, public and intimate selves which
collapse the remnant distinctions between the online and off. Game
developers, for example, from mainstream legends to ‘indie’ heroes and
aspiring innovators, like most workers in the creative industries, must
maintain online personas as part of their professional lives. The demand
for such personas results in complex interactions and micro-publics between
peers, colleagues, fans and consumers that are now routine to the firmament
of participatory culture, with serious potential for success and
controversy.



We are inviting authors and scholars to contribute to this themed
issue of *Persona
Studies* on games and persona. The issue is seeking interdisciplinary
papers that consider the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of games and
persona and the broader phenomenological experiences and ontological
implications of games and play for persona studies. The following list is a
general, and non-definitive guide to topics that we consider would be a
valuable addition to exploring the relations between games and persona:



   - Avatars and identity
   - Developer and designer persona
   - Participatory persona
   - Player performances: live streaming, criticism and review, esports,
   cosplay and beyond
   - Player communities and micro-publics
   - Game platforms and personas: Steam, Itch.io and others
   - Persona as celebrity/micro-celebrity
   - The persona of game franchises
   - Persona in the advertising and marketing of games
   - Emerging technologies in games and the performance of the self
   - Object/subject relations: virtual and physical personas
   - Memorabilia, merchandise, collections - presentation of a passionate
   persona
   - Affect and agency



Apperley, Thomas and Clemens, Justin. 2017. ‘Flipping out: avatars and
identity’. Boundaries of self and reality online: implications of digitally
constructed realities. Jayne Gackenbach and Johnathan Bown eds. Elsevier,
London. pp.41-56, doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-804157-4.00003-7.



Key Dates

EOI: March 29

ABSTRACTS AND/PAPERS: June 15

FULL PAPERS: September 1

PUBLICATION: November 30



Please send expressions of interest and abstracts of 150-200 words to:
katja.lee at uwa.edu.au or chrism at uow.edu.au
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