“Play can be hard work and serious business,” say the organizers of Extending Play, a conference series that addresses play as more than a leisure activity, considering the factors that shape and influence our notions of both play and playability. Research Associate Professor David Dubin will speak at the third Extending Play conference, which will be held on September 30 and October 1 at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Dubin will deliver a talk, coauthored with doctoral student Jacob Jett, titled, “What game are we really playing?” He will speak during the session, “Alternative Histories of Gamification,” at 10:30 a.m. on September 30. The talk addresses the wider conception of gaming proposed in 1978 by philosopher Bernard Suits; the use of game features or gamification in various contexts; and the application of the Game Ontology (GameOn) model, which offers a framework for proposing answers to the question "exactly what game are we playing?"
Dubin’s research interests include the foundations of information representation and description, and issues of expression and encoding in documents and digital information resources. He is currently teaching courses on information organization and access, and information modeling.
Assistant Professor Emily Knox is a member of the conference review board. Her research interests include information access; intellectual freedom and censorship; information ethics; information policy; and print culture and reading practices.