TAG
http://tag.hexagram.ca/people/
>Technoculture, Art and Games (TAG) is an interdisciplinary centre for research/ creation in game studies and design, digital culture and interactive art
Directors: Lynn Hughes, Bart Simon.
Faculty: Mia Consalvo.
Students: [for no reason, I'm just quoting this dude] Pierson Browne (@pbrowne88) "#academicANDfeminist Is it bad that I feel left out by not being implicated as a feminist by GamerGate? I want to be both and proudly so!" [sorry I'm late, but there, you just got a mentioned on full chan, all bow before the power of the all mighty student — ooooooh]
They had a "game" selected at IndieCad 2013. I'm pointing this out because the co-founder and Festival Chair of IndieCade (Celia Pearce) appears on the ReFiG staff. I suspect ReFiG to be more of a coordination organism than a proper research group. I expect people from ReFiG to work with their usual team to focus on specific aspects of the propagation of their ideology through video games (ReFiG is 80% self-described postmodern radfems).
Game Code Project
Regarding Bart Simon and the Game CODE project, I've barely found a reference of his name (along with Diane Carr and Mia Consalvo) in a conference paper, which explains a lot of their views (I know their work served as sources to write the conference paper, so it's a reframing of their "researches", but since they all seem to live in the same small box…)
https://books.google.it/books?id=SJ972ia4kZQC&pg=PA305&lpg=PA305&dq=%22Montreal+Game+CODE+project%22&source=bl&ots=bpnNewdHru&sig=DDXRjRmEBbOJc5zi0YNimAGTwRo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjr4YWmq8zKAhWCKg8KHfB9A1QQ6AEIEzAA#v=onepage&q=%22Montreal%20Game%20CODE%20project%22&f=false
References (p305-306):
Carr, Diane (2007): "The Trouble with Civilization", in Videogames, Player, Text, ed. by A. Atkins and T. Krzywinska. Manchester. Manchester UP, 222-236.
Consalvo, Mia (2007): Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames, Cambridge/London, MIT.
Dixon, Shanly (2005): "Where the Boy's Play: Video Games, Nostalgia and So Called Other Spaces of Childhood", (w/Bart Simon) Public Lecture, The Montreal Game CODE project: Cultures of Digital Environments at Concordia University, Canada, 28 October 2005.
p308, 313 and 314 gives an overview of their theory: their compare video games to puppetry in term of subjective experience and objective knowledge.
>The paper aims to bring the experience of playing videogames closer to objective knowledge, where the experience can be assessed and falsified via an operational concept.
>Highlight the similarities it [puppetry] has with videogames, in particular the idea that puppetry is defined in terms of its experience and not of its physicality.
>We argue that the experience of playing videogames is centered on the control and ownership of the player towards the videogame.
>Operationalizing the concept of the gaming experience, and how puppetry takes the first steps towards the operationalization by identifying a clear set of hypothesis grounded in latent and observable variables.
>We do not look at why was the game selected [by the player], or how can the player master the game while becoming immersed, present or in flow. Neither are we interested in the social aspect of playing videogames nor in the design process to produce a good videogame. Our primary interest is to identify, once the player is player, the core elements of that experience, which we are calling the gaming experience.
>[talking about puppetry] the artist is free to act in an unreal world as the consequences are only in that world. However, the object manipulated by the artist only becomes a puppet once the audience gives life to it. The audience recognizes that it is an object performing in front of them, but they suspend their disbelief and bring life to the object so that it becomes a puppet. Tillis calls this effect "double-vision", seeing the object both as an object and as alive.
>We find that in videogames the player performs both the functions of the artist and the audience, while the videogame performs the function of the puppet.
Yeah, except the game is already programmed and the story already written. At best, the player is co-writer with the original artist.