“Cunt Touch This!”, our sixth and final talk is in place

This talk will touch a particularly hot subject: The vulva. And by extension it will let us consider topics like pleasure, shame and embarrassment in gaming.

you never win ‘over’ the Cunt. You win <strong>for</strong> it.
you never win ‘over’ the Cunt. You win for it.

While games fetishise “fun” they still have a problem embracing subjects like intimacy, sex and pleasure as possible variants of it. Using the case of Cunt Touch This, a vulva-based tablet colouring game designed as a tribute to Tee Corinne’s iconic Cunt Coloring Book, Sabine Harrer will introduce the mechanics of the game and explore some of the “cuntroversial” responses it received.

For a quick taste of what’s in store, we highly recommend this interview by Jess Joho over at Kill Screen – A new game aims to reclaim one of our most taboo words – in which both Sabine and the ever amazing Andrea Hasselager reflect on their work in a flurry of cunt puns. 😀

Sabine is presenting Vulvas on the Tablet: Cunt Touch This at 15:00 on Tuesday 29/5. Sign up for a free visitors pass and come listen!

Behind the scenes

A peek behind the curtains on a Saturday; our 1st year students hard at work building their games for the GGC Show Floor. Only 15 days to go!

It might be weekend-work, but it’s not in vain; there are well over 300 people currently signed up to come and playtest! Make sure you have a ticket too. The Visitors Pass is the cheapest option (pay what you want) and is good for the entire conference – play games, listen to lectures, the award show and the party!

See you there!

Educators: don’t forget to register for the Summit

The Higher Education Video Game Alliance is joining us on Gotland at the end of May!

There is still some room in the Game Educators Summit. Are you too pressed for time to attend the full Summit + GGC? We have a suggestion!

Why not attend just the last two days: Tue 30 – Wed 31. That will get you the final day of the GGC show floor, with awards and mingle (= get to know everyone), and the summit working day on 31/5. You can even make the evening flight or ferry back that same day.

So if you are teaching university level game design- och development and haven’t already done so, please:

We – Uppsala University and HEVGA – hope to see you there!

The votes are in, and the fifth talk is…

Bonnie Ruberg at the GGC 2011
Bonnie Ruberg at the GGC 2011

Our fifth speaker presented us with not just one idea, but four(!). We wanted all of them, natch, and the arguing about which one to pick was so fierce we just decided to abdicate our responsibility and let someone else choose. You all voted in our Facebook poll and the result was 40% for a critical examination of so called “empathy games”.

So Bonnie Ruberg – founder of the Queerness and Games Conference, academic overachiever per-excellence and a well known fan-favorite of ours – is coming to GGC to talk about games that allow players to experience the lives of the marginalized. These games, designed to be immersive, impactful, and socially meaningful, run the risk of being appropriative. As Robert Yang recently put it; “If you walk in someone else’s shoes, then you’ve taken their shoes.” So Bonnie will help us look at the problems with game empathy, and methods of solving these problems.

The full abstract has been added to the existing line-up for your perusal.

So let us just gush about Bonnie for a while, because we have been fan-girling over following Bonnie for quite some time! We had her on the island back in 2010 when she ran a full day workshop with our students, about bravely (yet responsibly!) approaching sex and gender representation in their game designs.

From Bonnie Ruberg’s 2010 workshop “Re-Doing Sex/Gender in Games” on campus Gotland

Then we had her back for the keynote at GGC 2011 where she talked about close reading video games – because there is no such as thing as taking your entertainment media too seriously! More recently her work with the Queerness and Games Conference have contributed greatly in helping us make not only our education, but also this conference as inclusive, welcoming and safe as possible!

In short; we like Bonnie quite a lot, and we think you will too. 🙂 We are extremely happy to have her back, and slightly embarrassed it’s been so long!

Thank you Bonnie, and thanks to everyone who participated in the poll! We hope you take the opportunity to see Bonnie deliver the presentation live next month!