In July the Gamification Lab had a lecture and workshop by Dr. Thomas Apperley, an ethnographer that specializes in researching digital media technologies, Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales and editor of the open-access peer-reviewed journal “Digital Culture & Education”.
“Gaming Rhythms”, as the session was named, was based on Dr. Apperley´s latest publication. It offered an overview of an ethnographic study about gaming in two different contexts, Venezuela and Australia, and how players interact with players of other cultures and how their idiosyncrasy and even the time zones at which they live influence their gaming habits and styles. While Australian gamers are more concentrated in English Speaking platforms and “dwell” in them without cultural challenges, Venezuelan gamers face the language barrier focusing their play on visual narratives – they tend to leave out texts and audio – but also engaging in interactions with people to whom they could hardly speak to in real life because some of them are not bilingual.
Interesting discussions arose between the Gamification Lab members and Dr. Thomas Apperley regarding the impact of the financial and political situation of Venezuela on the players´ life and the creation and access to digital contents in the country.
The visit of Tom was of big importance to the Gamification Lab, due to our interest in being in contact with researchers from different parts of the world and getting to know about their state-of-the-art projects. Before leaving, Dr. Apperley showed his interest in continuing participating with us in the future, something we really look forward to.