This is the website for a symposium organised by Helen W Kennedy, Patrick Crogan and myself at the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol in 2010. Its ‘reading room’ has links to presentations and subsequent publications.
The body has of course always been central to our playful engagements with games and games technologies. Yet, the embodied player and theories of embodied perception have often been overlooked in the study and analysis of games and their players. Exceptionally, research around bemani games the Eyetoy have challenged this marginality.
Now, however, the Nintendo Wii and the much-trailed Microsoft Project Natal have put the player’s body and player gesture at the heart of gaming technology and the idealised player experience. Taking the ‘Your Body as Controller’ paradigm as our point of departure presenters at this event will consider the challenges and opportunities afforded by this potential shift in perspective.
