BGA Conference 2023

Gen Con Trade Day 2023, August 2, Indianapolis
Virtual Conference, August 2, 2023.

Inaugural Conference

The Board of Board Game Academics (BGA) is holding its first annual academic conference on August 2, 2023, with presentations held virtually and in-person during Gen Con’s Trade Day in Indianapolis, Indiana. Registration is now open for virtual tickets from the link below.

Register for Virtual Conference

Gen Con and Virtual Attendance Options

We are excited to be partnering with Gen Con this year to present our first annual conference during Trade Day on August 2.

If you are planning to attend in person, please register directly with Gen Con for a Trade Day pass, and sign up for a ticket to the event in the Gen Con Event Ticket System (Event ID: TRD23ND229377)

For virtual tickets, click the registration button on the left and follow the directions there. A full agenda will be posted soon.

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.

Board Game Academics conference this year will take place both in-person and virtually, with the live component taking place within Gen Con 2023’s Trade Day. Both features will work in tandem, with two hours of live presentations at Gen Con bookended by virtual presentations, and opportunities for networking and connection. Attendees may choose to be in-person or virtual and will have access to all of the exhibitions and events regardless of attendance modality. Please see instructions above for how to register for virtual attendance vs. in-person attendance. We hope that the research presentations will allow attendees to connect on relevant topics and create opportunities for discussion and collaboration.

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

August 2nd, 2023

2-4 PM: Gen Con Trade Day, In-Person Presentations

Welcome/Keynote

Presentations:

Escape to Fun – A Usability Study of Virtual Escape Rooms for Neurodivergent Gamers, Courtney Tricarichi
‘Remember the Maine!:’ The Spanish–American War Invades the Parlor – Susan Asbury
Finding My Meeple: How Eight Secondary Educators Use Analog Gaming to Engage and Motivate Students – Shawn M. Thorgersen
Playing Without a Future – Timothy J Bryant
Conquest in Plastic: Warhammer 40,000 and the Narrativity of Miniature Game Pieces – Alexander Jacobi

General Q&A

4-4:30 PM: Intermission

Check Out Vendors!
Ask questions in Discord
Play games online

4:30-6:30 PM: Virtual Presentations

The Rules We Break: Why and how to teach game design – Eric Zimmerman
Writer as Character: Creating “One Pager” Tabletop Roleplaying Games in the First Year Composition Classroom – Stephanie Hedge
Analyzing Systemic Sexism in the Post-Pandemic Chess Boom – Matthew Konerth
Critical Analysis through Board Games in Humanities Classrooms – Justin D. Cosner
Too Much Magic? How the Popular Card Game is Oversaturating Their Communities – Marco Rodriguez
Group Activities to Synthesize Understanding – Matthew Olmstead