*CFP* "GAMES AND PERSONA", SPECIAL ISSUE, PERSONA STUDIES JOURNAL

Games have provided players with many opportunities to experiment with identity in ways that have fundamentally shaped social media platforms. As Apperley and Clemens (2017) have argued, networked digital media have embraced the avatar as the predominant form for the presentation of the public self online. Games also have a vibrant role in the performance of the self that is affectively charged. Because of this, games and persona interconnect beyond the virtual self of the avatar, through esports, cosplay, wikis, criticism and review and many other mediated forms of expression. 

The interaction between games and persona represent agency in the negotiation of complex personal, public and intimate selves which collapse the remnant distinctions between the online and off. Game developers, for example, from mainstream legends to ‘indie’ heroes and aspiring innovators, like most workers in the creative industries, must maintain online personas as part of their professional lives. The demand for such personas results in complex interactions and micro-publics between peers, colleagues, fans and consumers that are now routine to the firmament of participatory culture, with serious potential for success and controversy.

We are inviting authors and scholars to contribute to this themed issue of Persona Studies on games and persona. The issue is seeking interdisciplinary papers that consider the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of games and persona and the broader phenomenological experiences and ontological implications of games and play for persona studies. The following list is a general, and non-definitive guide to topics that we consider would be a valuable addition to exploring the relations between games and persona:

• Avatars and identity
• Developer and designer persona
• Participatory persona
• Player performances: live streaming, criticism and review, esports, cosplay and beyond
• Player communities and micro-public
• Game platforms and personas: Steam, Itch.io and others
• Persona as celebrity/micro-celebrity
• The persona of game franchises
• Persona in the advertising and marketing of games
• Emerging technologies in games and the performance of the self
• Object/subject relations: virtual and physical personas
• Memorabilia, merchandise, collections - presentation of a passionate persona
• Affect and agency

Key Dates

Eoi: March 29

Abstracts and papers: June 15

Full papers: September 1

Publication: November 30

Please send expressions of interest and abstracts of 150-200 words to: katja.lee@uwa.edu.au or chrism@uow.edu.au