If you’re awesome and in Boston, MA from March 26th to 28th, 2010, you’ll obviously be attending Penny Arcade Expo: East!

Today is the deadline for panel submissions, and last night I sent in three presentations that will hopefully make it onto the schedule in a few months. Check them out below!

1) Memes, Microcultures, and 2D Chicks: Our Future in the Otaku Gamer

A singing idol who doesn’t exist. Perverted text adventures boasting dozens of female prizes. And a popular, anime-tized evolution of the classic Space Invaders shooter that has spawned a global fandom. Japan’s subcultural players are obsessed with games that, well, aren’t actually about the gaming. Alex Leavitt (Comparative Media Studies, MIT) explains how a new generation of entertainment is succeeding in a market which chooses to de-emphasize the games in favor of the characters. And as the Japanese fans influence the industry through their own amateur initiatives, what will the future of American gaming hold when online fandoms adopt similar appetites?

2) Exploring International Geek Cultures Through Games

Even in the era of Internet forums and online gaming communities, our understanding of how and why geeks come together through games is pretty pathetic. From Europe to Asia to America, this panel takes a look at the technological environment in which gamers grew up and the transnational space in which geeks play today. Join Alex Leavitt (Comparative Media Studies, MIT) as he moderates a discussion between Philip Tan (Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab), Prof. Mia Consalvo (Visiting Professor, MIT), and Dr. Clara Fernández-Vara (GAMBIT) on the modern convergence and recurrent differences of the national geek factions that make up the global gaming ecosystem.

3) Trolling the Tubes: Culture Hacking Through Online Gaming

Thousands of Internet users cultivate pixelated gardens in Farmville, raise cyber-chickens in Second Life, and earn livings on Mechanical Turk without realizing that they are changing the face of online culture. From FreeRice to OKCupid, from gold miners in China to 4chan-ers in America, Alex Leavitt (Comparative Media Studies, MIT) takes a look at how online communities are redefining our friends, reorganizing our lives, and restructuring our society into a gaming culture. What will the future of the Internet look like when social networking might mean a social battleground of bots, trolls, and colorful flamewars?