The Board of Board Game Academics (BGA) is pleased to announce that we will hold our first annual academic conference and journal launch. BGA is a new journal and conference dedicated to exploring critical issues within the distinct yet overlapping communities of tabletop board and role-playing games.
While these communities are expanding, players, creators, and scholars of tabletop board and role-playing games have traditionally been late to addressing and including diverse representations and perspectives.
For instance, production companies such as Wizards of the Coast (best known for Dungeons & Dragons) have been criticized for their continued celebration of oppressive ideological perspectives, systems, and governments.
Our combined publication and academic conference aim to contextualize, historicize and challenge the harmful ideologies rooted not just within gaming materials but also in their communities.
For our inaugural issue and event, we welcome submissions from all disciplines, fields, academic levels, and affiliations. Works we are interested in publishing are reviews (800 words), commentaries (2000 words), and papers (3000-4000 words).
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- issues related to the history of tabletop games and their play
- tabletop games in the class
- paratextual creation (fan and otherwise) within tabletop gaming communities
- the political economy of tabletop games
- the mediated depictions of race, gender, sexuality, etc., within tabletop games
- Tabletop games for therapeutic purposes
- Usage and context of gaming in developmental processes
Presentations accepted to the conference will also be preliminarily accepted for publication in the first issue of Board Games Academic in December 2023. For those interested in submitting an abstract for the conference, not the journal (or vice versa), please indicate as such in your proposal.
When applying, please supply:
- An abstract of no more than 250 words
- A copy of your CV
- A preliminary works cited page