'Innovations in Social Gaming' seminar by Professor Regan Mandryk (UCLIC seminar)
This presentation 'Innovations in Social Gaming' will be given by Professor Regan Mandryk.
Abstract
Games have long been used to support social interaction and create shared experiences that draw us closer together. Digital games are increasingly being used to form and maintain relationships, and in-game friendships have been shown to help satisfy our need to belong and can even combat loneliness, improving our wellbeing. In this talk, Mandryk will present her perspective on the benefits of social gaming—including in casual, esports, and streaming contexts, show how the benefits can be thwarted by toxicity and harassment, and discuss innovative game technologies that can better connect players, streamers, spectators, and fans.
Regan Mandryk
Professor
University of Victoria
Regan Mandryk is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Victoria, Canada. Prior to moving to UVic, she was a professor at the University of Saskatchewan for 15 years and was a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Digital Gaming Technologies and Experiences there. She pioneered the area of affective physiological evaluation for computer games in her Ph.D. research from Simon Fraser University with support from Electronic Arts.
Full bio
Regan Mandryk is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Victoria, Canada and a Canada Research Chair of Digital Gaming and Immersive Social Technologies. Her long-term research objective is to design, develop, and evaluate novel technologies that improve the social, cognitive, and emotional wellbeing of people. Having researched games since her first publications in the early 2000s, she has been at the forefront of legitimizing games research in HCI. Together with her trainees, she has made foundational and significant contributions in modeling the emotional experience and personality of players, harnessing game motivation, facilitating social connection through play, combating toxicity within multiplayer games, and harnessing games for the assessment and treatment of mental health. Regan led Games research in the Canadian GRAND Network, led the first ever Canadian graduate training program on games user research (SWaGUR.ca), and was pivotal in establishing the gaming research community within SIGCHI—particularly in establishing and leading the ACM CHI PLAY conference. She also chaired CHI in 2018 and chaired the CHI Steering Committee from 2019–2022. She was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2014, received the University of Saskatchewan New Researcher Award in 2015, the Canadian Association for Computer Science’s Outstanding Young Canadian Computer Science Researcher Prize in 2016, the prestigious E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship from NSERC in 2018, was inducted into the SIGCHI Academy in 2023, and received the Canadian Human Computer Communications Society’s Achievement Award in 2023.
Getting to the right bit of UCL and finding the right entrance to the Anatomy building, Gower Street.
You want to enter the Anatomy building via the entrance on Gower Street (across the road from 127 Gower Street). This entrance is between the main UCL entrance and the historic main Anatomy building entrance. There is a ramp entrance.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/zZmhPKpYWGo2G8tLA
Getting to G04 Gavin de Beer LT
There is a metal turnstile and wheelchair user entrance at the door. There will be security at the entrance. Room G04 Gavin de Beer LT is just on the right.
Further information
Ticketing
Open
Cost
Free
Open to
All
Availability
Yes