Book Description: We are now confronted with a new type of uncanny experience, an uncanny evoked by parallel processing, aggregate data, and cloud-computing. The digital uncanny does not erase the uncanny feeling we experience as déjà vu or when confronted with robots that are too lifelike. Today’s uncanny refers to how non-human devices (surveillance technologies, algorithms, feedback, and data flows)… Read more →
Futurity Factory is a one-day symposium that brings together humanities faculty and graduate students to explore the agency of the arts and cultural production in shaping epistemic, technological and scientific change. This symposium aims to galvanize cutting-edge and interdisciplinary research on the cultural construction of the future. This event is co-sponsored by the Science and Technology Studies, English, and Cinema… Read more →
Colin Milburn’s book Respawn: Gamers, Hackers, and Technogenic Life (2018, Duke University Press) examines the relationships between video games, hackers, and science fiction, showing how games provide models of social and political engagement, critique, and resistance while offering a vital space for players and hacktivists to challenge centralized power and experiment with alternative futures. “Drawing out the tight historical, aesthetic, and… Read more →
Rich connections between gaming and theater stretch back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when England’s first commercial theaters appeared right next door to gaming houses and blood-sport arenas. In the first book-length exploration of gaming in the early modern period, Gina Bloom shows that theaters succeeded in London’s new entertainment marketplace largely because watching a play and playing a… Read more →
Instead of one controller with eight buttons, what if there were eight controllers with one button each? Instead of a single-player experience, what if Tetris was a team sport? The Octopad is an alternative interface for the Nintendo Entertainment System that transforms classic titles like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Tetris (or Yo! Noid, Gremlins 2, and… Read more →
Retrogaming Publication Workshop, UC Davis ModLab September 17-21, 2018 (Pre-Workshop, Sept 13-14) Read more →
The Game Studies Group is playing Superhot VR and Tilt Brush today on June 14th at 4 p.m. in 234 Cruess. We hope to see you there! Read more →
The Games Studies Group will meeting to watch and discuss WarGames (1983), starring Matthew Broderick, on Wednesday, May 2nd at 6 p.m. in 234 Cruess Hall. Everyone is invited — we hope to see you all there! Read more →
The Game Studies Group will hold its first meeting of the quarter on Wednesday, January 24th at 4 p.m. in 234 Cruess Hall. Our topic will be retrogaming and arcade culture and we will be reading excerpts from Game After by Raiford Guins and Coin-Operated Americans by Carly A. Kocurek. Our object of study for this session will be Space… Read more →
The UC Davis Global Game Jam 2018 is coming up on Friday, January 26 to Sunday, January 28 at the Art Annex and you’re invited! WHAT? The Global Game Jam is the world’s largest game jam event that takes place globally over the span of a weekend. A game jam can be thought of as a hackathon, but for the… Read more →
The ModLab is pleased to announce that we will be presenting Teaching Game Design, the third and final Games and Pedagogy workshop, on Tuesday, January 16, from 5-7 p.m. in 234 Cruess Hall. This workshop will focus on incorporating game design lessons into classes in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. We welcome instructors from all disciplinary backgrounds and levels… Read more →
The Steam community has voted for Play the Knave to be released through the Steam platform! Further details forthcoming …. Please keep checking Steam and the ModLab website for information about the official release date. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=874426069 Read more →
The College of Letters and Sciences Magazine recently reported on undergraduate internships at the ModLab. Interns from projects such as Play the Knave spoke about the benefits of collaborating with the lab on game design projects. To read more, go to ModLab: Exploring the Humanities in the Digital World. Read more →
Evan Lauteria, PhD student in sociology and member of the ModLab, has been awarded the Jerome M. Clubb Scholarship to participate in the 2016 ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research in Ann Arbor, MI. The Clubb Scholarship is awarded annually to a handful of graduate students across the historical and social sciences whose research involves quantitative analysis on historical topics or uses historical… Read more →
Recently, the BBC came out to Davis to check out Play the Knave as part of the coverage on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. There is a short video feature, as well as a radio spot in circulation at the moment. Check out the video here: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36076442 In more local news, Dateline UC Davis featured ModLab in its report… Read more →
On Thursday, March 3rd from 12noon to 2pm in Cruess Hall 234, ModLab will host a recruitment event for undergraduates interested in working on projects through our laboratory. ModLab is experimental laboratory for media research and digital humanities. The lab is developing new tools and methods to address the challenges faced by scholars working at the intersection of the humanities,… Read more →
The UC Davis ModLab will host a community discussion panel on “Games Research in the University” at QGCon: The Queerness and Games Conference in Berkeley, CA, on October 17, 2015. Panel speakers: Stephanie Boluk, Evan Lauteria, Patrick LeMieux, Colin Milburn, and Amanda Phillips Home Read more →
“Stratford Festival unveils custom video game to complement Love’s Labour’s Lost” By Laura Cudworth, The Beacon Herald Read more →
