Richard A. Bartle: Conference Papers

Conference Papers

These are papers which I have presented at international conferences on multi-player or online games. All are, in theory, refereed, but it is very rare that changes are ever requested. Although I am usually invited to participate in panel discussions, too, I have not written these up as they are far less formal than full papers (and, more to the point, so are my notes).

	Online Entertainment, November 1995, Olympia 2, London. Organised by Blenheim. The paper which appeared in the conference report.
	Network & Multiplayer Games, December 1996, Hyde Park Hotel, London. Organised by IIR. The paper which appeared in the conference report.
	Online Games, November 1997, Café Royale, London. Organised by Blenheim. This is a composite consisting of my individual slides, interspersed with a transcript of what I said as I showed each one. It's based on an article I wrote for The Cursor. A report appeared in the computer games trade press with regard to the whole conference, with normal people getting a longer article a few months later.
	Online Games and Interactive Sports Summit, November 1998, Marble Arch Marriott, London. Organised by SMi. Slides only.
	Seminar, March 1999, Essex University. Organised by Department of Computer Science Slides only. Not strictly a conference paper, but a talk I delivered for the weekly seminar series. It was an overview the concept of a MUD and what use MUDs are to computer scientists. The reaction was polite, but in practice the overall sentiment hadn't changed a jot in the 11 years that had passed since the fateful day in 1988 that convinced me I wasn't going to get anywhere in academia without dropping MUDs from my research. The line that did it is quoted at the end; interestingly, Ray Turner didn't recall ever having said it.
	Online Games, November 1999, The Hatton, London. Organised by SMi. Slides only.
	Online Games, December 2000, One Whitehall Place, London. Organised by SMi. The paper which appeared in the conference report.
	Online Games, September 2001, The Hatton, London. Organised by SMi. The paper which appeared in the conference report.
	SELFWARE.games, 2003, Thienfeld, Graz, Austria. Organised by SELFWARE. Slides only. Graz was the European City of Culture for 2003, and SELFWARE a series of evening lectures on the politics of identity that ran from mid-May to late June. Two things about their programme particularly impressed me: computer games were considered alongside the likes of fashion and music as having something to say about identity; virtual worlds were recognised as having a special niche of their own, rather than being "just another" kind of computer game.