DiGRA 2005
I’ve been sent the catalogue for the DiGRA 2005 conference, which opens on the 16th of June. Of the eight or so fresh gaming ideas on offer in the showcase: in Organum players use their vocal expressions to collaboratively navigate through a model of the human voice tract, while co-operating with each other based on purely visual feedback; in Queer Power one or two players shift sexual roles arbitrarily during a “kind of head-to-head coitus game”; and in BLOWHARD players compete “by breathing into a specially crafted CPR mask, where a breath sensor translates cumulative respiration into the player’s current level of anxiety, players must increase their anxiety level gradually, moving up one stage at a time. As the level increases, the media responds, with the video becoming more intense in an effort to match the player’s state of mind. The first player to get to the top, wins!” I can’t help thinking that these three could be combined together, tweaked and taken in a rather commercial direction by a future teledildonics industry. Maybe they’ll rename the 2007 conference ViaGRA?