Awards

Game Studies Division

Interest Group Awards

Listed here are awards given by the Interest Group to its members. Interests Groups are smaller communities within NCA's large membership that provide a range of resources including networking opportunities, Annual Convention programming, leadership opportunities, awards, and specialized information dissemination channels, among others.

Read more about this Interest Group.


Top Student Paper Award

Year Award Winner
2023 Top Overall: Robert Tabackman, "In you, all things are possible:" Considering the Affect of Reproductive Slavery and Drone Anxiety within Horizon: Zero Dawn
  David Dockery, "Semiotic Placemaking in Game Design: A Synthesis of De Certeau and Barthes"
  Menglu Lyu, "Overtaking on the Curve? A Political-Economic History of China’s Mobile Game Industry"
  Max Dosser, "Gamers Against ‘Lesbo-Alien Sex’: Reactionary Fans’ Mobilization of Shame against BioWare's Mass Effect Series"
2021 Duy Pham, “Investigating the Role Video Game Player's Supportive Communication Plays in Moderating the Effects of Toxicity in Online Gaming ”
2016 Charles Ecenbarger, “Too Much, Too Soon: A Critical Case Study of Virtuality’s CS1000”
2016 Elizabeth M. Bendix Harper, “An Examination of Impression Management Through Avatars and Usernames in Online Video Games”
2016 Jonathan Carter, “Gaming the Multitude: The Attention Economics of Crowdsourcing Games”

Top Open Paper Award

Year Award Winner
2023 Joe Lasley & Antonio Ruiz-Ezquerro, "Master Matters: Introducing the D8 Model of Facilitation, Psychological Safety, and Creativity in Dungeons & Dragons Groups"
  Sarah Katherine Lingo, "Memorial Chatbot, Ouija Board: Playful Remembrance through the Black-Box"
  Ke M. Huang-Isherwood, Yiqi Li, Eugene Jang, Alexander Bisberg, & Donggyu Kim, "Future Time Perspective and In-Game Social Capital in Three Cultures"
  Sky LaRell Anderson, "Video Game Accessibility Defined through Advocacy: How the Websites AbleGamers.org and CanIPlayThat.com Use the Word Accessibility"
2021 Emory Daniel, Stephanie Orme, & Arienne Ferchaud, "Not Your Therapist: Streamers and Content Creators Perception of Parasocial Relationships and Therapeutic Inquiries on Stream"
2021 Nicholas Bowman, Daniel Bowen, Melissa Mercado, Lindsey Resignato, & Philippe Chauveau, "'I Did it Without Hesitation. Am I the Bad Guy?' Online Conversations in Response to Controversial In-Game Violence"
2021 Nicholas Bowman, Koji Yoshimura, C. Shawn Green, Hanna Klecka, & Zeyu Li, "One of These Things is Just Like the Others: An Application of Machine Learning to Understand Retro and Modern Video Game Genres"
2021 Yansheng Liu, "Why Do People Conduct Toxic Behaviors in Online Games? A Theory-based Explanation"
2019 Sky LaRell
2019 Karen Schrier
2019 Logan Sean Spence
2019 Logan Blizzard
2019 Nicholas David Bowman, Jaime Banks, & Christine E. Rittenour
2018 Sky Anderson, & Mark Johnson, "Toward a Theory of Cultivation Play: Work, Character, Progression, and Video Games as Autonomy, Engagement, and Paxis"
2018 Jamie Banks, & Joe Wasserman, "The Big Screen Treatment: Gratifications Sought in Game-to-film Transmedia Consumption"
2018 Joe Wasserman, Jamie Banks, & Julia Weiss, "Motivations for Playing Boardgames"
2018 Will Partin, "8-bit nostalgia:procedural rhetoric and public memory at the barcade"
2016 Jaime Banks, Nicholas David Bowman, and Joe Wasserman, “A Bard in the Hand: The Role of Materiality in Player-Character Relationships”
2016 Randy Sabourin and Rukhsana Ahmed, “Empathizing with the Criminally Insane: Establishing Good Practices for Patient-Provider Communication at Arkham Asylum”
2016 Qihao Ji, Daniel Possler, and Wen Zhao, “Just Like Watching Sports: Motivations for Watching Video Game Streaming”