What I did this past academic year (2019–2020)

September is here, again. Wait, is it October already? It actually feels like we’re still in March what with one thing and another — or in a new, never-ending month we could call Coviduary. Yet life goes on and a new academic year begins, which means it is time for me to do my traditional (I started it last year, but whatever) revision of everything I did during the past academic year, 2019–2020.

PUBLICATIONS

· My paper Pixelated Nature: Ecocriticism, Animals, Moral Consideration, and Degrowth in Videogames was published in Logos: Comunicação e Universidade.

· Together with Gerald Farca and Alexander Lehner, I published a chapter entitled Regenerative Play and the Experience of the Sublime in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in the book Mythopoeic Narrative in The Legend of Zelda, edited by Anthony Cirilla and Vincent Rone and published by Routledge.

· The report Ludoliteracy. Videojuegos, competencia digital y aprendizajes was published by the GAME research group at UOC, coordinated by Jordi Sánchez-Navarro and Daniel Aranda.

· Beatriz Pérez Zapata and me published the chapter First-Person Refugee Games: Ludonarrative Strategies for Playing the Stories of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the book Videogame Sciences and Arts. 11th International Conference, VJ 2019, Aveiro, Portugal, November 27–29, 2019, Proceedings, edited by Nelson Zagalo, Ana Isabel Veloso, Oscar Mealha, and Liliana Costa and published by Springer.

CONFERENCES AND VISITS

· That last chapter resulted from a presentation with the same title at the Videojogos. 11th International Conference on Videogame Sciences and Arts that took place in Aveiro. We won the Best Paper award!

· I was invited to visit the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies, in Tampere, by my colleague Tom Apperley. There I gave a talk entitled Zen Mode: On Buddhism, McMindfulness, and Orientalism in Games, got to see the excellent work they do there and visit the amazing Finnish Museum of Games with Tom and Niklas Nylund, and had a lovely time.

· I was invited by my colleague Montse Bonet to visit the Media Studies department at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) to teach a seminar for teachers and researchers entitled Fonaments dels Game Studies. Narrativa i gèneres (“Foundations of Game Studies. Narrative and Genres”).

· One more year, I taught the class Crítica lúdica. Periodismo especializado en videojuegos (“Playful Criticism. Games Journalism”) at URV, within the Periodisme i crítica cultural course taught by my colleague Enrique Canovaca.

TRANSFERENCE

· This is the big one, personally: I published a collection (and selection) of my work as a cultural critic during the last decade (2010–2019), including pieces on games, animation, cinema, and digital culture. It is entitled Gaming & Watching. Apuntes sobre videojuegos, cine, animación y cultura digital (2010–2019) and it is the first volume on a collection exclusive to one of my favourite local bookshops in Mallorca, Ínsula Literària.

· Together with Marçal Mora, I wrote on videogames, museums, and preservation for Canino, a digital culture mag that just closed its doors a couple of days ago: «Everything not saved will be lost»: de museos, archivos y preservación de videojuegos.

· Also with Marçal Mora, I wrote a piece for the Spanish edition of RetroGamer on the history of videogames controlled with the feet and legs: Retrojuegos de a pie. ¡Corre, baila, pedalea!

· I went back to slow games with a piece for middle-state publishing site Presura, entitled Introspección y calma jugables. Notas sobre el slow gaming.

· On a similar note, I wrote on gardens (and Zen gardens) and videogames for MundoGamers: Meterse en jardines (Zen) con Nintendo. Zelda, Animal Crossing y naturaleza.

· My colleague Chris Bateman invited me to join his 100 Cyborgs series, a spin-off of his highly recommended book The Virtuous Cyborg. I decided to write on Meditation Apps.

OTHER

· I organized a 4th edition of the Game Studies CESAG Seminar.

· I’ve been a reviewer for DIGRA2020, FDG2020, and some other journals and venues.

WHAT I DIDN’T DO

Last March, as we rushedly went into full lockdown, I had to cancel trips to the Vitruvius Hochschule in Leipzig, to UJI in Castellón, to Donostia, to the History of Games 2020 conference in Kraków… I guess that for many of us, 2020 will be the year of what we couldn’t do, of what we didn’t have the time nor the energy to do, of the things we had to postpone, of the things we almost miraculously managed to do and salvage at the nick of time. And it’s ok: let’s keep in mind we’re living in the midst of a pandemic. I make these lists not to keep track of statistics but to remind myself of how I spent my time as a researcher and think about where I want to go next year. I believe we should all push more for a slow academia, or at least a slower one. I don’t know if this pandemic will help us in that regard (I don’t believe too much in catastrophes-as-opportunies), but I’d like to close on that note: we survived act 1 of the plague. I guess that merits being included in the things we did this past academic year. Let’s hope we can all meet at the end of this, and celebrate.