Tori McNeely is a second year student in communication studies in the School of Journalism and Communication. She attended the Attallah Lecture, which featured guest speaker Professor Mia Consalvo, a Canada Research Chair in Game Studies and Design at Concordia University.
After a warm welcome from the Director of the School of Journalism and Communication, Josh Greenberg, Mia Consalvo delivered an insightful and very thought-provoking lecture entitled, “Playing (as) a Better Me: Choice, Moral Affordances, and Videogames”.
Over the past few years Professor Consalvo has been investigating game structures and game players at the mLab, a space dedicated to developing innovative methods for studying games and game players. Her goal is to determine why players make the choices they do when playing videogames. A reoccurring theme throughout the lecture was the idea of morality as a having a vital role in players’ choices. Players claimed to project more emotions and feelings because their choices reflected back on them as opposed to the emotions one might feel when reading a book, or watching a film. It seems as though, according to Professor Consalvo, players are pushing back against this ‘magic circle’ where normal rules don’t apply. Where players claim to make their own choices, Professor Consalvo cannot deny that those choices are not completely distinct from the influence of ideological and technical systems.
Professor Consalvo’s lecture truly embodied the mission of the Attallah lecture, which is to provide a stimulating and thought-provoking look into the issues faced by the field of communications today.
Friday, March 11, 2016 in Ambassadors, Communication and Media Studies, FPA Research Series, Media, News
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