BGA Conference 2024

DexLite 2024, Morristown NJ

Annual Conference

This year’s conference was held in Morristown, NJ as part of DexLite on July 4th, 2024. 

Board Gamers Academics would like to sincerely thank our partners at DexLite for their enthusiastic support of scholars, researchers, practitioners, and gamers in learning more about gaming and its power to go beyond the tabletop.

Attendance Options

We will provide a hybrid format for presenters who cannot join us so they may present online. 

We understand the importance of accessibility, and therefore, the registration fee will be waived for hardship cases, contact BGA for details. 

The presentations will be live-streamed on Discord for the general public to watch, network, and participate with the attendees. For access to the Board Game Academic Discord Channel, please register here.

Venue

Hyatt Regency Morristown
3 Speedwell Ave, Morristown, NJ 07960, USA
Time zone: America/New York (UTC -04:00)

Driving Directions
Web Site

 

About Board Game Academics

We are Board Game Academics, a group of tabletop gamers and academic professionals of various stripes. Our mission is to combine research and gaming in novel ways that benefit academics and gaming. This multi-disciplinary project takes the form of an academic journal and conference to better critically examine the role of gaming across society, education, and beyond. We are mainly focused on the historical, cultural, and systemic exploration of games as they relate to themes of race, gender, nationality, (de)coloniality, ability, sexuality, and class. In bringing these areas closer together, we hope to encourage meaningful discourse between academics, researchers, and gamers. To this end, we welcome participation in our first conference as researchers present their works linking these worlds together. 

The editorial board would especially like to welcome students and those not currently engaged in this research. The world of tabletop gaming is ever-expanding, and the issues discussed in the research being presented affects all sorts of gamers, not just those in academic settings. Scholarship in this field is also relatively new and constantly developing, with ideas from our community of gamers and guiding discussions and research discourse. We encourage gamers and interested parties of all types to come along as we explore how people relate to and experience games together. 

AGENDA

TIMES ARE EDT

  • 8:00 AM – 9:00 AM: Registration and Welcome
  • 9:00 AM – 9:40 AM: Opening Ceremony and Keynote Address – Emerson Matsuuchi
  • 9:40 AM – 10:00 AM: Networking Break 
  • 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Presentations

     

    • 10:00 am – Becca Bennett – “Life has more purpose now”: A Grounded Theory Investigation of the Impact of Table-top Board Games on Wellbeing and Functioning in Autistic Adults.
    • 10:25 am – Stephen Hall – Deep Blue Sea: Board Games as a Framework for Computer Science
    • 10:50 am – Andrew Harrison Volk – Mapping History’s Battles: A Survey of Playable Nations in BoardGameGeek’s Top 100 War Games
    • 11:15 am – Raegan Harvey – You Can Always: Abundance and Scarcity in Unfacilitated Gaming
    • 11:40 am – Tori Smurthwaite – Critical Role’s Candela Obscura: World-Building to Build a Better World
  • 12:00 PM – 1:20 PM: Networking Lunch
  • 1:20 PM – 3:30 PM: Presentations

     

    • 1:20 pm – Archie Fields III – Roll Insight: Teaching Undergraduate Philosophy through TTRPGs
    • 1:45 pm – Maryanne Cullinan – At Forty, We’re Feeling Fine: Looking Back at Fine’s Frame Theory and Its Current Applications in Educational RPGs
    • 2:15 pm – Jeffery Peter Kesselman – Performance, Performativity and Roleplaying Games
    • 2:40 pm – Katherine Dickey/Joshua Coslar – Orientalist misadventures: An examination of cultural history and expression within the monk class of Dungeons and Dragons
    • 3:05 pm – Sean Milligan/Andrew Buchmann/David Runge – A Critical Role: Academic Success Advisors Leveraging Tabletop Gaming and Gamification in the Classroom for Academic Probation Students
  • 3:30 PM – 3:50 PM: Networking Break 
  • 3:50 pm – Designer Insights:
    • Andrew Parks – Adapting “Tales of the Arthurian Knights” for a Modern Audience
  • 4:15 PM – 5:00 PM: Panel Discussion: Outreach, Connection, and Authenticity: Using Tabletop Gaming with a University Population. Dr. Meagan Henry, Dr. William Nation
  • 5:00 PM – 5:10 PM: Closing Ceremony
  • 5:10 PM – onwards: DexLite Gaming Convention
View Speakers