Fixing the advance program

I’m fixing the advance program — reviewed panels are very unstable, paper session is almost fixed, and some entries are waiting for author’s reply about the final paper or funding.

Early Bird Registration is extended.

Early Bird Registration is extended to August 24th. We adjusted it to the registration schedule of CESA Developers Conference, co-located CoFesta event.

Further information: http://www.digra2007.jp/RegAccom.html

Deadline of Abstracts

We have received so many proposals!

Shinji Yamane is sending the notices and review process is started.

Unofficial Tokyo hotel guide for DiGRA2007

Though we have a few international hotels or dormitories near our campus, we’ve prepared some choices on hotel booking.

• Location Map: http://www.digra2007.jp/Access.html
• DiGRA2007 special fee: https://apollon.nta.co.jp/07digra/perl/hotel.pl?

Forest Hongo is the nearest hotel from University of Tokyo, less than ten minutes by walk.

It is an only international hotel we can reach by walk, and other international hotels requires about 10 minutes ride by subway.

If you have a family to visit Japan together, Hotel Metropolitan Edmont is the comfort hotel. It takes two station by subway from University of Tokyo. The banquet will be held at this large hotel (we prepared shuttle buses from our campus before the banquet).

On the other hand, there are some no-so-large hotels such as traditional Ryokan or cyberpunk Capsule hotel or city hotels around the campus. Unfortunately, we don’t offer special discounts for those hotels at this time and you should book by yourself.

1. Capsule Land Yushima (former Kiosk Inn Yushima)
   http://www.capsule-land.com/yushima/ymap.html
   (information is only in Japanese)
2. Edoya Ryokan
   http://www.hoteledoya.com/
3. Homeikan
   http://www.homeikan.com/
4. Tsutaya Ryokan
   http://www.tsutaya-r.com/english.html
5. Hotel Kizankan
   http://www4.ocn.ne.jp/~kizanweb/

Advertisement

Call for Exhibition

We made up the application sheet for DiGRA2007 exhibition. We welcome some game development company, booksellers, and academic faculties.

DiGRA2007 Exhibition Application(Word file)

It will be uploaded to our official website soon at http://www.digra2007.jp/CallforEx.html. We’re going to send a invitation to many companies who have asked about our condition of exhibition.

And we’re also sending the final call for abstracts (last 1 week!) and call for early registrations (last 10 days!).

New Book from Past DiGRA Conference

A book from the last DiGRA conference (DiGRA2005) was just published.

Worlds in Play: International Perspectives on Digital Games Research, Edited by Suzanne de Castell and Jennifer Jenson.

Our theme “Situated Play” was started from this “Worlds in Play”.

Keynotes update: Masayuki Uemura and Toru Iwatani, two prominent Japanese game developers

Immediate Release: Two prominent Japanese game developers to be appeared in the plenary talks at DiGRA 2007 (DIGITAL GAMES RESEARCH CONFERENCE 2007) held in Tokyo, September 24 to 28, 2007.

Prof. Masayuki Uemura (Ritsumeikan University)

Prof. Toru Iwatani (Tokyo Polytechnic University)

Biography in English is to be appeared.

Symposium on the virtual world, law, and economy (July 21)

A symposium on “virtual world, law, and economy” is held on July 21, Saturday in Tokyo(Information in Japanese). It is a kind of State of Play Conference, as Prof. Yamaguchi, one of the panelist said. Other panalists include a law professor Hideaki Shirata, economy leader Joi Ito, etc.

We will go to the symposium to promoto DiGRA2007 conference. As DiGRA Japan is so small to promote DiGRA2007 conference information but it has many friendship organizations, we have to visit other conference/agencies every week :-p.

Checking Final Paper

We’re checking the final version of accepter papers for publishing the proceedings. One paper is broken and other papers require the bug fix. While our checking, re-uploading is disabled.

Call for Abstracts for additional sessions is opened, finally.

Finally, we started the call for abstracts on the additional sessions!

http://www.digra2007.jp/Callforpaper.html

Unfortunately Kenji Ito could not continue his work to manage the additional sessions. The panic button is pushed and Shinji Yamane continues his work now.

It will close on July 26 (24:00 JST).