Digital Games Research Association
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| Formation | 2003 |
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| Type | Non profit |
| Headquarters | Finland |
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President
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William Huber |
| Website | www |
Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) is a nonprofit international learned society whose work focuses on game studies and associated activities. DiGRA was formally established in 2003 in Finland. It is a leading academic organization in the field of digital games.
Frans Mäyrä was the Founding President from 2003-2006. DiGRA aims to coordinate activities related to academic research of games in different disciplines, in different parts of the world. For this purpose, several local chapters and special interest groups (SIGs) have been set up within DiGRA. Together with local organisers, DiGRA has so far produced eight conferences. DiGRA has also supported smaller regional conferences and, starting in 2014, DiGRA's conference is run annually. The published papers from these conferences are collected and made available online in the DiGRA digital library. Starting in 2013, DiGRA began publishing, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University's ETC Press, an open access refereed journal called Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDiGRA).
In 2014, DiGRA became a target during the Gamergate controversy when it was alleged that DiGRA was being co-opted by feminists. Inside Higher Ed described these allegations as a conspiracy theory. Dr. Mia Consalvo, president of DiGRA at that time, said that the effort to discredit its members' research demonstrated "hostility to feminism" and a failure to understand academic research in humanities.
One of DiGRA’s primary activities is the organization of its yearly conference. The conference is not conceived as a significant revenue stream for the organization, but rather as a mechanism for encouraging and disseminating interest and scholarship in game studies. While the organization's board determines where the conference will be held each year, it is the result of a process that begins with an open "Call for Hosts". The final decision on who the conference host will be is based on a combination of factors. The primary ones include: how well-known, respected, and trusted the local organizers are; how much support the local team can count on; where the last conference was held (ideally it should move around different continents to allow a broader diversity of attendees); ease of access to the venue/location; and the expected expense of the conference to attendees. To date, DiGRA has hosted, in collaboration with local organizers, the following conferences:
The conference in 2016 was held jointly with the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) series, an annual conference event, organised by the Society for the Advancement of the Science of Digital Games (SASDG) which emerged in 2009 from the Microsoft Academic Days on Game Development in Computer Science Education (GDCSE) which had been running from 2006.
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