DiGRA Conference this week focuses on immersive environments

Whee, our first mailed in post!

DiGRA 2005 is a games research conference happening June 16th-20th at Simon Frasier University in Vancouver, Canada. Assuming you've got an open schedule and an extra $400 to burn ($100 if your a college student, in which case this becomes very worth it), it looks like it might be worth going, as this blogger from D'Log points out...

"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!"

One of the new projects that will be coming up on Slashdong here in a while is similar to these ideas (and may possibly now be a paper idea for this conference next year. Mmmmmmmm publication Homer Simpson Sound). Can't give too much information yet, don't want to ruin the surprise. :)

Via D'Log, thanks again for telling us about this!