Nia Wearn's Research & Tech for Teaching

When I first got made a Tef I was asked by someone how I was planning to track my contribution – which made me think about mapping my contribution and I’m so glad I did. What I’ve been doing since then is plotting conferences, workshops, projects etc on a google map. I’ve found it a really easy way to keep a track of the different strands of things I do (Social Media workshops, Hidden Object Games, Board games etc) and adding a new pin somewhere is a great way of showing the wide ranging impact of my research.

[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/embed?mid=131eMhpXY4XO5v29dkTYdXTCdb2s&w=640&h=480]

So, I have a Games Studies research that somehow keeps giving as a topic of study – Esther and I have been looking at Hidden Object Games, initially as a way of showing our students ‘how the research’ and then, as well, actual research.

As ever when you start submitting to interesting call for papers, slightly like buses, they all come along at once so I’ve been out at a couple of choice, boutique conferences (my favorite kind) talking about them.

First up – the excellent Gaming the Gothic conference at Sheffield University – organised by the inspiring Sheffield Gothic  study group – held with great care on Friday 13th of April

This talk looked at Gothic literature tropes that turn up in Gothic Romance / Crime Hidden Object Games – one of my favorite things, apart from getting a chance to showcase the stunning art work featured in these games , was talking about my first steps into production studies and the data I’d been gathering on where the companies that make these games were situated – I’ve been collecting this on a Google Map and it’s been a great visual aid. You can see the slides from this one here and there’s a lovely write up of the session here

Secondly I was up in lovely St. Andrews for a few days for another little conference looking at Literature and Gaming – and this time I was talking about slightly trashy crime based hidden object games, and noting their similarity to both crime based serial tv and to genre fiction – that talk is here

In both cases it was wonderful to talk to people after my talk who played these games, or new people that did, and wanted to thank me for shining a light on them. Who knows where else this little research side hustle will take us? You can follow the research here – https://hiddenobjectfiles.tumblr.com/ (on a tech note I can’t tell you how useful having a collaborative tumblr of thoughts and images has been putting together things for conferences)

Sometimes events and requests come my way to do a workshop or a talk that’s a little bit difference – yesterday was one of those times.

Every year the Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service host a conference centered on Women in Communities and I was asked to do a workshop that featured games design – and I was more then happy to oblige because it gave me chance to use one of my favourite resources – ‘Heroic Women to Inspire Game Designers‘ I’ve used it before in classes but never in a workshop and it seemed the perfect match – and it was.

In 45 minutes we designed games based on the stores of these women, specifically thinking about targeting games to the women in the room and thinking about how we could use the aspects of the story to raise donations from the players for worthy causes. It was really inspirational to see both the amazing designs and share the stories of these women – heroic in such different ways. I got some great feedback and it was lovely to host a workshop without tech or computers getting in the way, and dispelling the idea that game design is something other people do, and empowering these groups of mainly women to think about how they design interactive experiences and engage communities.

Also the conference organisers used More than Minutes to take visual minutes, I love it when this happens at conferences and I think it’s the first time I’ve been featured on one of these.

You can see all of the minutes here