QUT Gardens Point, Brisbane

Innovations in social gaming

A Digital Child x QUT School of Computer Science seminar

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—for children through older adults—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 for children and across the lifespan —including in casual, esports, and streaming contexts, show how the benefits can be undermined by toxicity and harassment, and discuss innovative game technologies that can better connect players, streamers, and fans.

Register

Our speaker

Professor Regan Mandryk
University of Victoria, Canada
Regan Mandryk is a Canada Research Chair in Digital Gaming and Immersive Social Technologies and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Victoria, Canada. Together with her trainees, she has made foundational and significant contributions in modeling the emotional experience and personality of players, harnessing game motivation for non-game purposes, facilitating social connection through play, combating toxicity within multiplayer games, and harnessing games for the assessment and treatment of mental health.