Feature: 'Event Wrap-Up: DiGRA05'

In today's main Gamasutra feature, we present a wrap-up of the Digital Games Researchers Association (DiGRA), was in Vancouver for its second bi-annual gathering last week. Ren Reynolds sums up the meeting and its relevance to the video game professional. Reynolds explains in his introduction to the in-depth wrap: "The four-day event saw academics from around the world gather to present papers on computer games, play computer games, engage in a GPS-enabled pub crawl, and variously drink, eat, dance, and debate in many of British Columbia's fine establishments (one of which actually did turn the music down when I told them that we were academics and all we were there for was the booze and arguing - after all, the real business of any conference occurs in the bar)." He also notes of the concentration on games and learning at the conference: "The most interesting thing about this trend is that we have moved beyond the simple notion that learning is restricted to simulation games like Sim City providing objective lessons in city planning. Today's scholars have expanded the understanding of what games can teach, how they act as learning tools, and are gaining insights into how we learn." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).