From Digital Humanities to Game Studies - Talk by Dr. Yannick Rochat, EPFL

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Event details

Date 04.11.2020
Hour 12:1513:15
Speaker Dr. Yannick Rochat
Location Online
Category Conferences - Seminars
Abstract: Born about sixty years ago in universities, video games have become a cultural phenomenon. Academics from a wide range of disciplines study them today. By exploring the past as well as the current state of this digital native media, we tackle topics as diverse as the development of information technologies, the planned obsolescence of digital media and their archiving, the art of non-linear storytelling, the dynamics of gaming social media platforms, and many other domains.

While doing research in digital humanities, one of its closest fields, game studies captured my interest. As an illustration of video games’ multiple facets, game studies welcomes researchers from all kinds of disciplines (computer science, mathematics, physics, business, humanities, sociology, sport, etc.). In this talk, I will highlight the proximity between game studies and digital humanities by showcasing some research projects I am currently working on:
  • The history of Swiss video games / history of video games in Switzerland
  • The archiving of video games (with Memoriav and Musée Bolo)
  • A middle reading analysis of video games press (with Selim Krichane and LUDOV, University of Montreal)
  • How to study video games source code (with Stéphanie Mader, CNAM)
  • A platform studies approach to the Smaky
Bio : Yannick Rochat is a scientist and a lecturer at the College of Humanities of EPFL. He holds a MSc in Mathematics from EPFL and a PhD in Applied Mathematics for Humanities and Social Sciences from University of Lausanne for a thesis dedicated to the study of character networks. After several years at EPFL's DHLAB, he co-founded in 2016 the UNIL Gamelab, a video game study group. His main research topics are: video game history, platform studies, games for education, and the application of digital humanities methods to the study of video games.

DH Research Seminar
The DH Research Seminar is a series of talks organised by the Digital Humanities Institute given by researchers from a wide range of backgrounds and aiming at presenting the vast array of subjects covered by Digital Humanities.

Due to sanitary restrictions, the DH Research Seminar will be given exclusively on-line during the 2020 Fall semester.

Be sure to join, listen to the talk and participate in the Q&A session at the end of the presentation.

Practical information

  • General public
  • Free

Tags

video games gaming gamelab dh

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