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We are delighted to share details of several upcoming events and activities that the Bristol Digital Game Lab is organizing and/or involved with. We hope to see many of you there!

September

Come and help us launch the Bristol Digital Game Lab! On Wednesday 7 September at 18:00, we will be hosting a launch/networking event in Clifton Hill House, following a full day workshop on game accessibility. We look forward to sharing our vision with you.

October

On Thursday 27 October at 18:30, the Bristol Digital Game Lab will be sponsoring the Made in Bristol: Games Showcase, organized by the Bristol Games Hub. We will also be sharing the outcomes from University of Bristol game-based and immersive projects at the event, including the AD4Games project and the VR simulation from the Virtual Reality Oracle project. All welcome to come and enjoy some games, pizza, and drinks. Please sign up via Meetup.

November

On Thursday 3 November, the Bristol Digital Game Lab will be helping to judge the University of Bristol GamesJam, which will see up to 100 Computer Science undergraduates take part in a games design challenge. We will also be sponsoring two prizes, including one on accessibility.

Join us on Friday 4 November at 15:30 for the inaugural Bristol Digital Game Lab research seminar, Mario is Missing! – Guest Lecture by Prof. James Newman. This event will be held in the Pervasive Media Studio at the Watershed, Bristol. The lecture is in person only; please register via Eventbrite as there are a limited number of spaces. The seminar will be followed by the First Friday November social at the PM Studio at 17:00, where we can continue to discuss all things game related; everyone is welcome to join us.

December

Come and play some games with us!  

To mark the end of the year, on Wednesday 7 December 18:00-20:00, the Bristol Digital Game Lab will be hosting a social play session. Thanks to the support of special guests and local developers Catastrophic Overload and Play Well for Life, you will have the opportunity to try out some of the latest social games, and playtest others that have not yet been released! 

We will also hear from international special guest Loki, who are visiting from Spain, about their work translating games across languages and cultures. 

The event will be held at the University of Bristol, in the Humanities Research Space (1.H020), 7 Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1TB. We look forward to seeing you there, and to hearing your thoughts on the games. 

Book now to avoid disappointment. 

2023 and beyond…

We have lots of plans in train for 2023, including an early career research showcase in January, a UK Game Lab Summit in February, and a conference on Virtual Realities as Time Travel in May. If you have any ideas for future events that we can help out with, please just let us know!

Back in June, as part of Bristol Data Week, the Bristol Digital Game Lab ran an introductory seminar and gaming/VR workshop.

In the seminar, we looked at using historical data to reconstruct the past virtually, analysing audience data and the impact of games, intellectual property challenges for videogame preservation, using audience feedback to build accessible games, and discussed the aims and vision of the Game Lab.

We also hosted a play session where participants could try out two virtual experiences being developed at the University of Bristol. These included:

• The AD4Games project which investigates how audio description can improve game accessibility by working with professional audio describers, game developers, and visually impaired participants. The project uses the BAFTA nominated game Before I Forget, developed by two of the project partners, to conduct experiments, testing ways audio description can enhance game accessibility.
• The Virtual Reality Oracle, which recreates an immersive, virtual reality experience of visiting the ancient oracle of Zeus at Dodona in the 5th century BCE. The Virtual Reality Oracle is an AHRC-funded research project led by Professor Esther Eidinow at the University of Bristol, with an interdisciplinary team from Bristol, KCL and the University of Bath.

You can catch the recording of the seminar on YouTube.

The Bristol Digital Game Lab was formally launched on Wednesday 7 September 2022 in the beautiful surroundings of Clifton Hill House, following a successful full day workshop on game accessibility. The event was opened by Professor Hilary Carey, the Faculty of Arts Research Director, who spoke about how play is essential to the human condition. Attendees also heard about the vision for the Game Lab, including the focus on networking, partnerships, research, and innovation. Xiaochun and Richard also shared their inspiration for starting up the Lab (hint, they both love games, work in the same Faculty, and happen to have research interests in gaming!). The remainder of the event was given over to networking between local game developers, academic researchers in Bristol and Bath, and industry professionals. Our thanks to all who came.

Article originally posted on LinkedIn on 6 September 2022.

How can we study and contribute to the development of digital games today?

The Bristol Digital Game Lab is a new research group at the University of Bristol launching in September 2022, coordinated by Dr Xiaochun Zhang and Dr Richard Cole. The Lab, which is based in the Faculty of Arts, will bring together researchers and practitioners from a radically diverse range of perspectives. This includes translation and accessibility, history, comparative literature, law, computer science, AI, game design, and beyond.

The aim of the Lab is to chart new possibilities for collaboration, both across disciplines and between Higher Education and the gaming industry, with digital games as a shared object of interest. By exploring crosscutting themes in a collaborative environment, we hope to contribute to ongoing debates about the nature and impact of games, while also co-creating new ways to develop, play, and test ideas using games. To this end, the Lab will offer researchers and practitioners the opportunity to experience a variety of games on the latest hardware, as well as the chance to get involved in generating their own.

Our areas of interest are as follows:

Networking

The Lab will establish a cross-disciplinary network of researchers and industry professionals working on games as well as extended reality more broadly, from early career scholars to creative directors. The network, like the industry itself, will be regional, national, and international. The Lab will support colleagues through brokerage events and themed meetings.

Partnerships

The Lab will connect researchers to a thriving regional, national, and international industry with the aim to facilitate knowledge exchange and explore collaborative outcomes. The Lab will host industry showcases, invite guest speakers, and foster sustainable partnerships with the creative industries.

Research

The Lab will support research in gaming and extended reality through a series of research-sharing events and discussions focused on crosscutting themes. Such themes will include, but are not limited to, game localisation and accessibility, history and cultural heritage in games, VR and immersive technologies, audience experiences and analytics, the Metaverse and gaming ethics, (serious) games and education, games and society, intellectual property, modding, and game design. Building on the University’s investment in state-of-the-art gaming facilities, the Lab will also encourage play-as-research and interactive brainstorming to identify future outputs and areas of interest.

For a taster of our current research, you can hear from Xiaochun, Richard, and Dr Yin Harn Lee in the Bristol Digital Game Lab Seminar that we delivered for Bristol Data Week in June 2022.

Innovation

The Lab will act as an incubator for innovative projects by opening up the University of Bristol’s gaming facilities and expertise, as well as by connecting interested parties. We will deliver skills development workshops, playtest ideas, and co-create new experiences.

How can you get involved?

• Please email us if you would like to join the Game Lab and hear about our research/events. We will be offering both remote and in-person activities.
• Let us know what you are working on and what you would like the Game Lab to do. We particularly welcome enquires from those working in the games industry or at the intersection of gaming and other sectors.

Co-ordinators

Dr Xiaochun Zhang (xiaochun.zhang@bristol.ac.uk) is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies. Her research interests lie primarily in audiovisual translation with a specific interest in video game localisation and accessibility. Currently, she is working on the AD4Games project which applies audio description in video games to enhance accessibility for players with vision loss.

Dr Richard Cole (richard.cole@bristol.ac.uk) is an interdisciplinary scholar working on digital/virtual representations of antiquity. He is currently part of the multi-disciplinary team on the Virtual Reality Oracle project at the University of Bristol, where he holds the role of Research Associate in Ancient Greek History and Virtual Reality. Richard has published on the role of video games and historical fiction more broadly in shaping public perceptions of history.