“Everything I know about this game suggests I should avoid it at all costs”
Digital games are primarily a voluntary leisure activity; however, the voluntary nature of play does not necessarily mean these game worlds are equally open to all. Barriers prevent certain populations from freely accessing gameplay, and yet the personal or structural constraints that may impede access to play remain largely unaddressed in research to date.
In this talk, Dr. Kelly Bergstrom will discuss her research that intervenes in two areas that remain underexplored in the field of game studies, namely:
What are the barriers that prevent those who wish to play from participating fully in their game of choice?
Who are the players who quit and why do they drop out?
Drawing on literature from leisure studies to articulate a framework for exploring barriers to gameplay and theoretically informed by feminist science and technology studies, Dr. Bergstrom discusses her doctoral research on dropping out of and disengagement from the MMOG EVE Online.
Kelly Bergstrom is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Research on Digital Learning at York University. Her work has appeared in Games & Culture andConvergence. She is also co-editor of Internet Spaceships Are Serious Business: An EVE Online Reader recently published by University of Minnesota Press.
Light refreshments will be served. Please R.S.V.P. to irdl@yorku.ca
