"Toward a Semiotic Analysis of Toys" in Sofia.

I just uploaded the transcript of my presentation "Toward a Semiotic Analysis of Toys" held in Sofia at New Bulgarian Univeristy for the 12th World Congress of Semiotics.

The paper focuses on the definition of toys as a specific kind of signs and on the semiotic analysis of a toy-language (or many toy-idiolects). In the conlusions a link is drawn between the activity of playing with toys and Lotman's idea of autocommunication.

Read the full article on Academia!

"Playing for Real" in Ankara.

I just uploaded the transcript of my presentation "Playing for Real: between the world of play and the real world" for the "Is it Real?" semiotic conference in Ankara, Turkey.
The paper is about concieving the world of play as an alternative reality and about how the semiotic literacy in the domain of play guides us in interpreting each other playfulness.
The movie "The Game" by Fincher, is used as case study.
Read it on Academia!

12th World Congress of  Semiotics in Sofia.

Just come back from the fair Sofia (Bulgaria) where it has been held the 12th world congress of semiotics.

Between the many presentations I'ld like to mention three of the most relevant for Game Studies:

Maria Katsaridou: Adaptation of videogames into films: the adventures of narrative, an interesting parallel analysis of Resident Evil games and films.

Hiroshi Yoshida: Early Decades of Video Game Culture in Japan, an original insight on Japaneese videogames focusing on digital games' and gadgets' affordances.

Simon Levesque: Semiotics of Play: the origin of 'flights of fancy' according to Henri Labori, a cognitive approach to playfulness linking abstraction and play in the work of the French physician.

As for me, I'll soon upload my presentation on Semiotics of Toys!

Meanwhile, here you can find our big smiotic family!

 click here to full-size.

The (Un)deniable link between Videogames and Violence.

A truth-speaking comic by MercWorks and Andrew Bridgman.