The more I write about games the less time I have to play them. It's a cruel twist and a mean phenomena of being a games scholar. So the inaugural PAXAustralia is not just an exciting research opportunity, it's a chance to play and be a part of an international games culture. It's an opportunity to celebrate Melbourne as important contributor to a globalised media industry.
The three-day Penny Arcade eXpo, is not without controversy, and the creators of the highly successful webcomic are a part of ‘toxic’ gamer culture, but I’m entering into an ethnographic and participatory frame of mind this weekend, with the goal of ‘mapping’ and surveying the global ‘impact’ of PAXAus.
The 'Enforcers' prepare for their roles at #PAXAus this weekend. Image by Guy Blomberg
Over the past two months, I’ve been collecting tweets with the hashtag #PAXAus and tweets from and directed to the @PAXAus Twitter account. I’ll continue to assemble the archive during the event and in the weeks after expo in order to use social network analysis and visualisation tools, like Gephi, to get an overview of who is talking about PAXAus, where they are from, what they are saying, and what kinds of networks they are a part of.
The purpose of the research is to get a sense of the global reach of PAXAus as an event and a brand, and whether it contributes to goal of raising the international profile of the Australia, specifically the Victorian, games industry. As I mentioned in the lecture and tutes this week, Melbourne is the games production capital of Australia, but not many internationally or nationally are aware of this, even though you may be playing games on your iPhones and Android smart phones that have been made by companies, studios and developers here in Victoria.
I’ll be presenting this research to InvestVictoria who are sponsoring my attendance, and working with PhD student and creative writer Dann Lewis who will be blogging about the event.
Play on!
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