Supported by:

The Filmworks, Manchester

Computer games have now been taking up room in people's homes for over twenty-five years. The mid-seventies fad for the black and white block graphics of the tennis game Pong has turned into an industry worth over $6 billion in the USA alone. In the in the UK, leisure software is worth approximately $3.5 billion making it the country's biggest entertainment market in front of TV and film. It has been suggested that almost three quarters of people under 30 have played a computer game and half play on a regular basis. It is now not unknown for games to have development costs exceeding £1 million and mainstream advertising for games and product placement within them are increasingly routine.

Against this backdrop The ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition is hosting an international conference at Manchester University taking place over three days between Friday 5th April and Sunday 7th April 2002.

The overarching aim of this conference is to develop a better understanding of computer games, gaming and gamers at this rapidly moving point in the gaming industry. To this end the conference will bring together researchers from cultural studies, economics, sociology, psychology, computation, management and other disciplines, along with members from various sectors of the gaming industry such as developers, publishers and retail.

By bringing industry and academic expertise together, this conference seeks to help stimulate and concretise the development of that network.

The central aims of the conference are:

• To provide an international forum for the exchange of ideas, information and analysis on the gaming industry and gamer research
• To foster links between academic research and training and the gaming industry in order to develop new networks of research activity
• To offer students engage in gaming research a supportive environment for sharing and developing their idea with more established researchers
• To facilitate dissemination of work produced for the conference in printed and electronic format

For further information on the conference contact Jason Rutter (+44 161 275 6859) or for administrative enquiries Sharon Hammond (+44 161 275 7368).