ABSTRACT. The dominant type of action in mythological games relies on mechanics of violence, from sword-slashing to axe-throwing, arrow-firing, spear-stabbing, monster-slaying, and more. In this presentation, we explore how mythological narratives could translate to games in non-violent ways. Drawing from a wide variety of international world mythologies, we explore how mythological games utilize alternative mechanics to retell mythic stories: specifically, we focus on mechanics of metamorphosis, heroism, extraordinary movement, dying and rising, and dynamics between gods and mortals. As such, this presentation contributes to the growing field of mythological game studies by scrutinizing alternatives to dominant forms of mythological storytelling, and by exploring how the contemporary vocabulary of cultural expression in games can be expanded.

ABSTRACT. In this talk I will critically examine some of the dominant methodological approaches to studying videogames in relation to the Anthropocene. I will propose an alternative framework that challenges assumptions about scalability and player reception. Drawing on research collected in various articles and in my upcoming monograph, I argue that game studies must reconsider how we theorize the transformative potential of videogames in times of ecological crisis.

Current scholarship on videogames and the environment tends to coalesce around two primary approaches (see Abraham 2022; Chang 2019; Op de Beke et al. 2024). The instrumental approach treats videogames as educational tools capable of inspiring pro-environmental behaviour through information dissemination, exemplified by titles like Beecarbonize (Charles Games 2023) and Green New Deal Simulator (Molleindustria 2023). The representational approach focuses on how games depict nature, post-human worlds, and ecological relationships, as seen in works like Kara Stone's Ritual of the Moon (2019) and Molleindustria's Lichenia (2019). While both approaches offer valuable insights and have produced compelling games and research, they share a fundamental assumption: that the ecological messaging embedded in videogames will scale up through repeated exposure, eventually influencing player behaviour and consciousness at a population level.

This reliance on scalability presents methodological and ethical challenges. It assumes a predictable trajectory from game content to player interpretation to behavioural change, often overlooking the frictions, misinterpretations, and resistances that characterize actual player engagement. The scalability paradigm risks providing false reassurance that "something is being done" about the climate crisis through videogames, while the Anthropocene's violence and injustice demand more rigorous critical scepticism about our contributions as designers, players, and scholars.

My proposed methodology draws on Anna Tsing's concept of non-scalability (2012; 2015) and her theory of friction (2004), Timothy Morton's theories of hyperobjects and subscendence (2013; 2017), and Joanna Zylinska's minimal ethics of the Anthropocene (2014). Tsing's ethnographic work with matsutake mushrooms demonstrates how valuable knowledge emerges from contaminated diversity and indeterminate encounters that resist incorporation into predetermined frameworks. Similarly, I argue that videogames generate situated encounters whose meaning cannot be scaled up into coherent, unified messages. Morton's hyperobjects help us understand how the Anthropocene—too vast and distributed to be perceived directly—leaks into our entertainment media in unexpected ways. His concept of subscendence suggests that the whole can be less than the sum of its parts, meaning that individual player encounters may contain more complexity and political urgency than aggregate analyses of player populations.

Through empirical examples, I demonstrate how this methodology reveals transformative engagements with videogames that would remain invisible within scalability-focused frameworks. My analysis of player forum discussions about AdVenture Capitalist (Hyper Hippo Entertainment 2014) shows how sporadic, barely-visible comments reveal anxieties about endless accumulation and capitalism's ecological consequences, even though the game itself is not explicitly environmental (AUTHOR). Similarly, YouTube videos attempting to "cure" Arthur Morgan's tuberculosis in Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games 2018) expose players' desires to restore anthropocentric control when confronted with the mortality and diminished agency of the archetypal White male protagonist (AUTHOR).

These paratextual productions and player responses do not scale up to generate movements or coherent political positions. Most receive no replies or engagement. Yet they represent molecular and situated encounters with the Anthropocene as it transpires through our entertainment practices. Following Morton, these are moments when the hyperobject of climate catastrophe leaks into our gameplay experiences, generating affects of fear, anger, disillusionment, or resistance. These non-scalable moments matter precisely because they reveal contradictions and anxieties that shape our current concerns for the ongoing global crisis of the Anthropocene, and bring to the fore the loss of control of the white anthropocentric subject on both real and simulated worlds.

This approach extends work by scholars including Hans-Joachim Backe's (2017) eco-critical readings of mainstream games, Benjamin Nicoll's (2023) psychoanalytic engagement with Donut County, and Lawrence May and Ben Hall's (2023; 2024) analyses of player-created paratexts around Cities: Skylines and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. What unites these studies is attention to the situated, embodied, and often contradictory nature of player engagement with environmental themes.

By attending to non-scalable encounters, I acknowledge the inescapable embeddedness of videogames within the Anthropocene's "viscosity," as Morton describes it. Rather than assuming videogames can educate their way out of crisis or represent solutions, this approach embraces the medium's capacity to reveal our entanglement with ecological catastrophe. It questions the colonial logics of control and mastery embedded in game design while remaining attentive to how players resist to, reimagine, or reinforce anthropocentric worldviews. Ultimately, this talk will argue that videogames in the Anthropocene should be studied through a methodology of careful listening to contaminated diversity and situated encounters. This requires abandoning the false security of scalable solutions and embracing the partial, incomplete, and sometimes ugly revelations that emerge when players engage with games. Such an approach offers no universal solutions but provides ethical guidance for understanding how digital play intersects with the most pressing crisis of our time.

REFERENCES Abraham, B. 2022. Digital Games After Climate Change. Palgrave Macmillan. Backe, H. 2017. “Within the mainstream: An ecocritical framework for digital game history”. Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 8(2), 39–55. Chang, A. Y. 2019. Playing Nature: Ecology in video games. Minneapolis (MN): University of Minnesota Press. May, L. and Hall, B. 2023. “From aesthetics to asymmetry: Contradictions of ecological play in Cities: Skylines”. Games and Culture 20(6): 726–747. May, L. and Hall, B. 2024. “Capitalocene horizons: Producing, exploiting and mourning nature in Animal Crossing: New Horizons”. Proceedings of DiGRA Australia 2024. Morton, T. 2013. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Morton, T. 2017. “Subscendence”. e-flux 85, October. Nicoll, B. 2023. “Enjoyment in the Anthropocene: The extimacy of ecological catastrophe in Donut County”. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 25(1): 37–55. Op de Beke, L., Raessens, J., & Werning, S. 2024. “Ecogames: An introduction.” In L. op de Beke, Joost Raessens, S. Werning, & G. Farca (Eds.), Ecogames: Playful perspectives on the climate crisis. University of Amsterdam Press, pp. 9–70. Tsing, A. L. 2004. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tsing, Anna L. 2012. “On nonscalability: The living world is not amenable to precision-nested scales”. Common Knowledge 18(3): 505–524. Tsing, A. L. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zylinska, J. 2014. Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene. Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores the increased centrality of emotion work to gameplay of The Sims. With a focus on The Sims 4, the latest installment in the main series, the paper reviews how The Sims materializes the supposed "immaterial" labor of emotion work. In doing so, The Sims 4 has the capacity to act as a feminist tool for broadening understandings of emotion work as complex, skilled, required across public, professional, and private spheres, and essential in attaining individual and societal happiness.

ABSTRACT. Introduction This study investigates how players navigate ludo-narrative dissonance, the conflict between a game’s narrative and mechanics, through performative strategies in Identity V (NetEase 2018). While existing research prioritises designer-centric approaches to dissonance (Hocking 2007; Seraphine 2016), this work centres player agency, analysing how players reinterpret narrative-mechanical tensions using performance theory (Gaut 2010) and procedural rhetoric (Bogost 2010; Šisler 2017). Ludo-Narrative Dissonance and Player Agency Ludo-narrative dissonance, coined by Hocking (2007), describes contradictions between a game’s story and rules. Hocking identifies contrasting signals within the game’s ludic and narrative structures, suggesting that such inconsistencies should be avoided. Prior scholarship emphasises designer strategies to avoid, resolve, or leverage dissonance (Seraphine 2016) However, a close examination of current studies (Hocking 2007; Makedonski 2012; Ballantyne 2015; Seraphine 2016; Howe 2017; Grabarczyk and Walther, 2022) reveals a designer-centric focus, with limited exploration of how players cope with dissonance. Grabarczyk and Walther (2022) briefly acknowledge player-driven narratives, but systematic analyses remain scarce. This gap underscores the need to reframe dissonance as a site of player negotiation, where mechanics and narrative are reinterpreted through performance. Performance Theory in Games Building on Butler’s (1997) notion of identity as performative iteration, Huuhka (2024) conceptualises in-game performance as “counterplay”: creative practices that reinterpret rules without altering them. Such performances align with procedural rhetoric, which examines how rules constrain and shape meaning (Bogost 2010; Šisler 2017). Gaut’s (2010) framework categorises performance into compliant and interpretative. Compliant performance refers to actions that must be performed for performance to be recognized as part of the work. Interpretative performance involves generating display that goes beyond the necessary elements in work to “suggest or ground a critical interpretation” (Gaut, 2010: 145). This duality offers a lens to analyse how players negotiate dissonance, either reinforcing mechanical objectives or subverting them to align with narrative. Methodology The study focuses on Identity V, an asymmetrical multiplayer game where ludo-narrative dissonance arises between characters’ backstories and competitive mechanics. The analysis centres on two linked characters: “Gardener” (survivor) and “Hell Ember” (hunter), who share a father-daughter narrative but are adversaries in gameplay. Data was collected from three Chinese platforms: NetEase God, Little Red Book, Bilibili, including videos, images, and text posts with comments, referencing both characters. Discourse analysis examined how players’ actions and interactions reshape narrative-mechanical tensions. Result Preliminary findings demonstrate that players employ both compliant and interpretative performances to navigate dissonance, illustrating dynamic negotiations between procedural rhetoric and agency. Compliant Performance Players engaging in compliant performance align their actions strictly with the competitive game mechanics, prioritising gameplay objectives. For instance, Hell Ember players strategically eliminate survivors, including the Gardener. Similarly, Gardener players focused on survival tactics. This resonates with Šisler’s (2017) argument that procedural rhetoric directs player behaviour toward specific outcomes. However, the presence of ludo-narrative dissonance prompts a subset of players to transcend compliance, engaging in more interpretative forms of play. Interpretative Performance Players exhibiting interpretative performance deviate from strict compliance to align their in-game actions honour the father-daughter narrative. For example, some Hell Ember players deliberately avoid eliminating the Gardener, even in competitive matches, prioritising the preservation of the narrative bond overachieving game objectives. These players often use symbolic gestures, such as the “spin”, “raise a hand” or using the “Family’s Hug” interaction, to communicate affection, while Gardener players reciprocate with similar gestures, creating a shared performative dialogue within the game. These acts, while mechanically non-essential, created narrative coherence, exemplifying Huuhka’s (2024) “counterplay” and Gaut’s (2010) interpretative layer. By integrating narrative-driven actions into their gameplay, players expand the procedural rhetoric of the game, subverting its mechanical objectives to prioritise narrative cohesion. These performances also challenge the prevailing critique of ludo-narrative dissonance as a design flaw (Hocking 2007; Seraphine 2016), demonstrating its potential to inspire emergent play practices and deepen narrative engagement. Interaction outside the game: conflict and negotiation The compliant and interpretative performances are not isolated acts but active interactions within the game community. Discussions on “how to play games directly” reflect conflict and negotiation, creating a dynamic community discourse. When examining conflicts, for example in one post where the Hell Ember player deliberately avoids eliminating the Gardener while the Gardener tries to “win the game” by saving her teammate, players who prioritise the narrative bond criticised the Gardener, commenting that “It’s too greedy to win the game instead of ending in a draw”. Meanwhile, players who prioritise competitive mechanics argued that narrative-driven players were not obeying the rules, saying that “Winning is a normal goal for competitive games, and not rescuing teammates is passive gameplay”. These debates reveal players’ cognitive differences regarding the game’s nature—whether prioritising mechanics or narratives. Despite these differences, players still generate tacit agreements through ongoing negotiation. For example, interpretative performances such as “avoid elimination” gain legitimacy in casual matches but are blamed in ranked ones. These interactions enrich the game’s meaning-making, expanding Šisler’s (2017) notion of procedural rhetoric—where rules promote possible representations—into a collective framework. They further emphasise players as active participants in coping with ludo-narrative dissonance, generating creative meanings through negotiation with the gameplay and the community. Negotiating Dissonance: Player as Co-Creator The findings highlights players as active meaning-makers. While compliant play maintains immersion through rule adherence, interpretative play enriches engagement by embedding narrative logic into mechanics. This duality mirrors procedural rhetoric’s tension between constraint and agency (Šisler 2017), demonstrating how dissonance can inspire emergent storytelling. For instance, symbolic gestures (e.g., Hell Ember guiding Gardener to victory) reinterpreted competitive matches as collaborative dramas, expanding the game’s expressive possibilities. By reframing ludo-narrative dissonance through performance theory, this study challenges designer-centric perspectives, positioning players as co-creators who transform contradictions into generative sites of play. Compliant and interpretative performances coexist, reflecting diverse engagement modes: some players prioritise mechanical mastery, others narrative resonance. This spectrum underscores the need to re-conceptualise dissonance beyond design critiques, recognising its role in fostering player creativity. By embracing dissonance as a dynamic interplay between rules and reinterpretation, scholars, and designers can better understand games as collaborative storytelling spaces.

ABSTRACT. The Beholder series (Warm Lamp Games, 2016–2018) exemplifies recent game-studies interest in dystopian play and the ambivalent pleasures of moral discomfort (Farca, 2018; Boland, 2024). Rather than offering escapist empowerment, these games cultivate feelings of anxiety, guilt, and illicit thrill through what this paper calls compliance play, a form of engagement structured by surveillance and constraint (Jørgensen & Karlsen, 2019). Beholder (2016) centers on apartment searches, hidden cameras, blackmail, and moral triage; Beholder 2 (2018) shifts to bureaucratic espionage and dossier manipulation inside a ministry; Beholder 3 (2022) adds dual employment and informant work involving infiltration and covert audits; and Beholder: The Conductor (2024) transposes surveillance logics onto a train, where monitoring passengers and enforcing state orders turns mobility itself into authoritarian space. As a design paradigm, compliance play allows players to operate as agents within oppressive systems, not as rebels or heroes but as functionaries required to implement the machinery of authority. This form of engagement is shaped by the interplay of surveillance, control, and moral choice (Tanenbaum, 2009). Unlike games that offer players expansive agency or clear moral binaries, compliance play deliberately constrains player action while amplifying the weight of participation. This design choice ensures that the player's limited decisions become deeply meaningful, entangling them affectively and ethically within the system's logic. In this way, compliance play transforms the illusion of choice into a powerful form of complicity where players must negotiate empathy, responsibility, and systemic pressure. The mechanics of compliance play do not merely represent systems of control; they enact them through procedural rhetoric, or rule-based interactions that function as arguments about authoritarian power (Bogost, 2007). In the Beholder series, each surveillance decision, investigation, and routine report becomes a lesson in how disciplinary systems reproduce themselves through the everyday participation of ordinary people. Procedurality ensures that players do not merely understand authoritarianism abstractly; they feel its structural logic through moment-to-moment choices that accumulate into complicity. The game system does more than communicate the norms of a surveillance state. It makes players inhabit them, internalize them, and possibly transgress them through mechanical action. This procedural structure is closely related to the domain of ethical gameplay described by Miguel Sicart. The game continually forces players into morally fraught situations that require them to decide whether to participate in or oppose unjust practices, moments that Sicart (2009, 2013) argues demand moral reasoning and foreground the ethical dimension of play. Beholder's quests, including decisions about whether to report dissident tenants despite knowing the consequences, exemplify this dynamic. The games force players into positions where no moral system exists externally. This is precisely Beholder's design: the game never tells you whether your choices are right or wrong, forcing you to construct your own moral meaning while simultaneously experiencing the material consequences of those choices. This paper argues that compliance play communicates its critique not through narrative exposition but through embodied emotional response, or affect. Anable (2018) demonstrates how game systems produce what she calls "affective entanglement": a layering of emotional registers that makes the experience of oppressive systems personally resonant. These affects do not merely accompany play but are integral to its meaning, forming the medium through which the experience of living under surveillance is communicated. The "affective intensity" (Anable, 2018) of compliance play ensures that procedural rhetoric resonates not as abstract argument but as felt knowledge. Feelings of paranoia, guilt, relief, or defiance become outcomes as significant as formal measures of success within the game. Each decision feels consequential not because the game explicitly assigns moral weight to it, but because players have invested themselves affectively in the protagonist's situation and come to feel complicit in the regime's operations through their own participation. Taken together, procedural rhetoric, ethical gameplay, and affect theory provide a unified analytical framework that moves beyond fragmented or thematic approaches to understanding the series. The Beholder series does not simply represent totalitarian governance or ask players to reflect on surveillance abstractly. Instead, they transform players into active participants in systems of oppression, making complicity not a state imposed by the game but a condition achieved through the player's own constrained choices and affective investment. This model of compliance play opens new possibilities for understanding how video games can convert mechanical participation into moral and political interrogation, revealing that the most potent forms of critical play often emerge not from liberation or empowerment, but from the recognition of one's own implication in unjust systems. This analysis also resonates with a wider body of work on surveillance-centered games, including Papers, Please (Burden & Müller, 2020; Pérez-Latorre & Oliva, 2019), Not For Broadcast (Carter, 2021), Frostpunk (Gekker, 2020), and We. The Revolution (Kowal, 2020), which similarly show how constrained agency and systemic coercion can transform player participation into a site of ethical and affective tension.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates how Genshin Impact, China's most successful global game export, employs cultural hybridisation and localisation to challenge the longstanding US–Japanese dominance of the global games industry. Drawing on a multi-method qualitative framework—including participant observation, textual analysis, and thematic analysis of game reviews and social media discourse—the study examines both the pre-localisation cultural hybridity embedded in the Chinese version and the post-localisation reception of the English-language release. Findings show that miHoYo strategically fuses Chinese cultural motifs with Japanese anime aesthetics, global mythologies, and hybrid monetisation models to support a cultural and economic contra-flow. However, localisation controversies related to race, cultural representation, and translation reveal tensions between commercial ambition and cultural sensitivity. The paper contributes to DiGRA scholarship by offering an empirically grounded account of how transnational game development practices, and their contested receptions, shape emerging digital cultural flows from the Global South.

ABSTRACT. This article examines how game mods and fangames can operate as practices of epistemic disobedience within a global gaming industry marked by coloniality and technological precarity. Drawing on the Brazilian history of cloning, piracy, and gambiarra, it argues that fan productions challenge hegemonic definitions of what counts as a “good” game and who is entitled to create it. The article distinguishes technical and affective dimensions of modding, emphasizing how communities mobilize precarious infrastructures, shared knowledge, and emotional attachments to reconfigure commercial franchises. Through a case study of the fangame Mega Man X8 16-bit and forty reviews posted on Sonic Fan Games HQ, it analyzes how players evaluate the project against Capcom’s original title, revealing tensions between fandom, market expectations, and portfolio-building hope labor. The article concludes that mods and fangames, especially in the Global South, transform material limitations into alternative ways of knowing, designing, inhabiting, and playing digital games today.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines why Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (Troika Games, 2004) continues to deliver a compelling experience of vampiric embodiment while Bloodlines 2 (The Chinese Room, 2025) fails to reproduce this pleasure. Despite its technical flaws, the original Bloodlines achieved an enduring reputation—reflected in high critical and user scores—by tightly integrating vampiric lore, mechanical systems, and player agency. Feeding, Humanity, clan identity, and factional politics operated as both narrative stakes and ludic constraints, generating systemic consequences that shaped how players inhabited a precarious vampire subjectivity.

By contrast, Bloodlines 2 received significantly weaker critical reception. Reviews consistently highlight that, although the game captures the atmospheric qualities of the World of Darkness, it offers minimal character progression, limited mechanical consequence, and quests that lack emergent or reactive depth. Core pillars of the Vampire: The Masquerade ontology—Hunger, Frenzy, clan distinctiveness, and masquerade risk—are treated largely as representational surface rather than as systems that structure play.

Drawing on ludo-narrative analysis, narrative design evaluation, and lore-based comparison, the paper argues that the sequel’s diminished playing pleasure stems from a breakdown in the relationship between lore, mechanics, and agency. Meaningful vampiric embodiment requires not only thematic fidelity but the systemic translation of vampiric ontology into mechanics that constrain, shape, and challenge the player.

ABSTRACT. This paper’s aim is to present the Pokémon (Game Freak 1996-present) franchise as a space of identitarian semantic openness where gender, sexuality, and sex are portrayed as intentionally lacking concreteness in most of the representations of its Pokémon and named human characters such as key trainers, gym leaders, Elite 4 members, and regional champions. To do so, we will analyze Pokémon, focusing primarily on the video games, as a set of cultural texts that have portrayed as disconnected identity traits such as gender, sex, and sexuality which have historically and uncritically been considered irremediably connected (Butler 1990).By building on existing bibliography and analyzing how identities have been historically portrayed in the franchise, this paper will show how Pokémon creates unique identitarian semantic gaps that fans fill in and expand in ways that are specific to these cultural texts. The pokédex of semantic and identitarian gaps and openness that Pokémon has generated over the years will be thoroughly categorized in this paper.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we investigate through the close playing method how the repetitive and laborious rhythms of gameplay produce an embodied sense of Finnishness in Finnish Cottage Simulator.

ABSTRACT. Environmental crisis, climate anxiety, and multispecies vulnerability have become increasingly visible within contemporary game design, especially in ecological or “eco-game” genres (Chang, 2019). Although ecological representation has gained growing scholarly attention, there is still limited research on how players interpret, embrace, or resist the environmental messages embedded in these games particularly within digital publics where meaning is produced and contested (Wu & Li, 2015). This extended abstract presents a comparative reception study of two influential indie ecological games, Terra Nil (Free Lives, 2023) and Endling: Extinction is Forever (Herobeat Studios, 2022), by analyzing player discourse on Steam, Reddit, and YouTube. Combining intersectional ecofeminism with reception theory and digital discourse analysis, the study examines how players make sense of ecological storytelling through affective, relational, and political registers. Theoretical Framework The analysis draws on intersectional ecofeminism, which conceives ecological crisis not simply as an environmental condition but as a multilayered process structured by gendered, racialized, classed, and interspecies hierarchies (Gaard, 2011; Plumwood, 2002). Ecofeminist scholarship centers care, vulnerability, interdependence, and affect as foundations for ecological ethics and political transformation (Sandilands, 1999). This framework allows ecological messages in games to be read not merely as informational but also as affective and political narratives that shape pleasure, empathy, and responsibility (Ahmed, 2014). In this way, emotions, such as grief, guilt, hope, or disengagement, become central to how players interpret environmental themes when encountering digital representations of climate crisis (Anable, 2018). Case Selection Terra Nil and Endling present contrasting ecological imaginaries. Terra Nil offers a meditative systems-oriented reconstruction of ruined landscapes: players detoxify wastelands, create biomes, and eventually withdraw, leaving nature to flourish without human presence. This produces an ecological imaginary grounded in order, repair, and restorative pleasure (Chang, 2019). Endling, by contrast, depicts ecocide through the embodied experience of a mother fox and her cubs navigating a collapsing world. The game emphasizes care, loss, multispecies vulnerability, and the violent consequences of human behavior. Together, these games provide fertile ground for examining how ecological narratives and affective engagement shape player interpretations. Method This research employs qualitative digital discourse analysis, drawing on approximately 1,000 player comments from Steam, Reddit, and YouTube. Data will be coded using both deductive and inductive strategies. Deductive codes derive from ecofeminist concepts such as care, vulnerability, multispecies relations, grief, repair, techno solutionism, responsibility, and pleasure (Gaard, 2011; Plumwood, 2002). Inductive codes will emerge from patterns within player discourse. The study addresses three core questions:

• How do players understand, or struggle to understand, the ecological messages these games attempt to convey? • How do affect and pleasure shape players’ interpretations? • How is ecological meaning negotiated, reframed, or rejected within digital publics?

Preliminary Findings Early findings indicate distinct reception patterns. Terra Nil is commonly described as “relaxing,” “meditative,” or “satisfying,” with many players focusing on mechanics, optimization, and aesthetic pleasure rather than the game’s environmental commentary. Some interpret the game’s ecological vision as optimistic or technocratic, occasionally distancing it from real-world climate politics. In contrast, Endling generates strong emotional responses: players frequently express guilt, sadness, anger, and empathy toward the fox family. Many link the narrative to contemporary ecological destruction, species extinction, and human responsibility, producing more explicitly political reflections (Anable, 2018). However, some players view the game’s emotional framing as "manipulative" or “overly dramatic,” revealing limits to ecological message uptake.

Contribution This study contributes to game studies in three ways. First, it demonstrates that ecological messages do not always align with designers’ intentions; reception is contextual, layered, and often contradictory. Second, it highlights the centrality of affect and pleasure in ecological meaning-making, showing how ecofeminist theory deepens our understanding of emotion, care, and vulnerability in player interpretation (Ahmed, 2014; Gaard, 2011). Third, it situates digital player communities as active sites of ecological discourse, revealing how environmental meaning circulates, transforms, or becomes contested within online cultures (Wu & Li 2015). Ultimately, the study contributes to DiGRA 2026’s theme of “Intersectional Pleasures” by illuminating how pleasure, affect, and multispecies ethics intersect in contemporary eco-games, and how ecological narratives travel across digital publics.

ABSTRACT. This research primarily aims to state the complex stories or narratives related to the gaming culture of the Kingdom of Bhutan, such as the conflict or the interaction between players and non-players, the formation process of the gaming community, and the narrative of a non-player who had enjoyed playing before. Then, the digital gaming history of Bhutan is also introduced for better understanding. Although few researchers have thought much of gaming culture in Bhutan due to a lack of impact on the global gaming market, the narratives by players and non-players are also supposed to be significant for global game studies.

ABSTRACT. This study is focused on Brazilian feminist gaming streamers who express openly feminist views to their audiences. Through a methodological approach combining narrative interviews (Rosenthal, 2018), extended narrative analysis (Webb & Mallon, 2007), and framing analysis (Creed et al., 2002; Goffman, 1974), I have listened to the personal experiences of seven Brazilian female streamers from multiple ethnicities and locations in the country, whose ages range between 20 and 45 years old, and audiences varying between 100 and 50,000 followers. Then, I have identified 24 framings concerning their experiences as content creators and feminist women working in the gaming industry. This categorization shows how multiple levels of vulnerability shape their communication approach to feminism, leading them to individualistic strategic resistance approaches.

ABSTRACT. “Ecomodding”–modifying games to include or strengthen eco and environmental material— can be seen as a means of transforming popular games into sites of ecological conversation and critique (Bohunicky 2017; Werning 2021). This paper explores our use of ecomodding in creating a multiplayer Minecraft (Mojang Studios 2011) game experience, designed to be played on our autonomous solar powered server. Reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of the 10-week public multiplayer server we hosted in the summer of 2025; we embrace the co-creative nature ecomodding and collaborative play as we design a second phase launching in 2026.

(Extended abstract attached)

ABSTRACT. The study examines motivations for analogue trading card game (TCG) play by utilising research on MMORPG players by Yee (2006; 2007) as its basis. While TCG players share some motivations with MMORPG players, they also have unique motivators due factors related to both internal play experience, as well as playing environment. To measure player motivation, an online quantitative survey with over 300 responses was analysed by using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The results show there are five factors for TCG play: competitiveness, escapism, social, manipulation and design. While some of these factors, such as competitiveness, are directly linked to orthogamic gameplay, other factors showed how TCG play is more than the act of playing against other players. Factors such as social and design pointed towards topics outside of the orthogamic gameplay, such as meeting other players and building decks, being essential parts of TCG play.

ABSTRACT. This paper looks at how the pleasure of wargaming changed in the transition to digital form in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and how digital pleasures shaped the games’ relationship to history and the ethics of “playing war”. Through an analysis Tanktics (1978) and Eastern Front (1981), I show how designer Chris Crawford abandoned the ethos of analog American wargaming in favor of immediacy and immersion. By delegating the management of the game’s mechanics to the computer and removing friction, these games shifted their focus from historical simulation toward historical fiction, reducing the player’s role as amateur historian and emphasizing playful engagement. But this approach to remediation also intensified ethical tensions: by locking players in the role of Nazi high command during the invasion of the Soviet Union, Crawford’s games reproduced contemporary myths of a competent-but-outnumbered Germans without offering a resolution to the moral problems of wargaming.

ABSTRACT. The Metal Slug video game series (1996-present), created and developed by Japanese company Nazca Corporation and subsequently by SNK Corporation, occupies a distinctive place in the collective imagination of gamers of all ages, from veterans of 1990s arcades to younger players accustomed to online and portable gaming – sometimes serving as an intergenerational bridge (Bolin, 2017). Initially a leading example of the run-and-gun genre, the series has since evolved into multiple forms and iterations capable of adapting to new gaming modes and devices: from traditional 2D pixel art to attempts at three-dimensional reworkings, and from score-driven arcade experiences to turn-based tactics and tower-defence titles on smartphones. What has remained constant, however, is the series' strong identity and powerful imagery within the gaming community: recognisable and iconic characters, a comic-book/anime-inspired visual design, compelling sound design, ease of access, and a fast-paced and immediately engaging gameplay style. In other words, Metal Slug may be regarded as a ‘mass’ arcade game, capable of surviving in arcade contexts longer than almost any other title of its era. Set in a fictionalised context inspired by the atmosphere of the Second World War, the first game follows its two protagonists, Marco and Tarma, as they fight against the ‘Rebel Army’, a faction of corrupt soldiers engaged in acts of terrorism against society (Weiss, 2016). The game fuses a hardcore shooter attitude with striking visuals and vibrant sound effects, resulting in a distinctive and almost inimitable sense of originality. Subsequent instalments (such as Metal Slug 2, 3, X, 4, and 5), released between 1998 and 2004, introduce new characters – including the female protagonists Fio and Eri – allow players to pilot additional military vehicles such as aircraft and submarines, and enable the protagonists to assume different forms (e.g., mummy, monkey, etc.). Yet, despite these developments, the fundamental narrative remains unchanged (ibid.). The iconic status of the series’ characters is also attributable to the influence of illustrator Hayao Miyazaki (Fantoni, 2018) on the game’s aesthetic: despite its 2D graphics, the visual style – and some of its characters in particular – has repeatedly transcended the original medium. For instance, Fio appears as a playable character in the King of Fighters series, and the production of Funko Pop figures representing Metal Slug protagonists clearly positions the franchise within the realm of pop culture and nostalgia (Zamzamin et al., 2022). The game’s cross-media presence, however, is not confined to the sphere of gaming; it also extends to cosplay communities (e.g., Metal Slug Italian Army), further demonstrating the enduring strength of its fan bases. This work seeks to explore the Metal Slug phenomenon by reconstructing its development and localisation history and by analysing the characteristics that have contributed to its importance within the international gaming landscape. Particular emphasis is placed on the game's geography – that is, the distribution and location of the arcade cabinets that hosted it, especially in Italy (including stationary and mobile arcades, beach resorts, bowling alleys, family restaurants, bars, and even barber shops). This dimension is crucial for identifying the brand as a ‘mass phenomenon’ and for assessing its still remarkably high degree of recognisability within contemporary pop culture. Such an analysis is further informed by the perspectives of those who have played – and continue to play – the series, whether for high-score purposes and/or for cooperative leisure. Retro-arcade gaming communities, which remain highly resilient, are central to understanding the dynamics of use, preservation, and development associated with these games (Costalunga & Varini, 2025). The Italian community, for example, continue to resist cultural and technological transformations not only through its use of contemporary gaming and communication media (YouTube, Twitch, etc.), but also by maintaining physical gathering spaces (annual meet-ups) and by using original hardware (Neo-Geo MVS and AES systems) alongside emulation, as a way of ‘reliving’ a distant and nostalgic past (Niemeyer & Keightley, 2020). In short, the challenges of adapting ‘nostalgia’ to the contemporary world through technological means are mediated through hybrid forms – and, at times, practices still firmly rooted in the past (Wulf, Bowman, Rieger, Velez, & Breuer, 2018; Bowman & Wulf, 2023) – anchored in the physicality of social relationships (Apperley & Jayemane, 2012). Methodologically, this study adopts a qualitative approach that integrates oral testimonies, community artefacts, and an in-depth examination of the mechanisms through which gameplay dynamics and community relations linked to the Metal Slug series are preserved. The participants – experts in Italian arcade game culture – form the empirical basis for semi-structured interviews, which are then thematically coded (Braun & Clarke, 2006) following a grounded theory approach (Corbin & Strauss, 2015). The study also includes an analysis of documentation (gameplay and high-score recordings) produced by the players themselves, as well as a social network analysis focusing on early online gaming forums (Tipaldo, 2014; Schreier, 2012). In addition, a series of interviews with importers, distributors, and rental service providers active between the late 1980s and early 1990s had been planned, in order to obtain an informed and privileged perspective on the key market actors of the period and to reconstruct, as accurately as possible, the distribution networks and the granular scale of the phenomenon. This combined approach enables both historical reconstruction and interpretative analysis, situating the research at the intersection of ethnography and cultural game studies (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2019). Finally, through content analysis (Krippendorff 2004), the study aims to elucidate the saga's processes of adaptation, with the goal of highlighting the transformative limitations inherent in these games.

References

Apperley, T. H., & Jayemane, D. (2012). Game Studies’ Material Turn. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 9(1), 5–25 Bolin, G. (2017). Media Generations: Experience, Identity and Mediatised Social Change. Routledge Bowman, N. D., & Wulf, T. (2023). Nostalgia in video games. Current Opinion in Psychology, 49 Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3(2), 77–101 Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. (2019). Ethnography and the historical imagination. Routledge Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2015). Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (4th ed.). Sage Costalunga, N., & Varini, M. (2025). Underground resistance, resilience and evolutions of analogue competitive videogaming: The case study of Street Fighter 3 and the Italian community, Mediascapes Journal, 25 Fantoni, L. (2018). La Storia di Metal Slug. Nerdcore. https://n3rdcore.it/la-storia-metal-slug-neo-geo-retrogaming-arcade/ Krippendorff, K. (2004). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology (2nd ed.). Sage Niemeyer, K., & Keightley, E. (2020). The commodification of time and memory: Online communities and the dynamics of commercially produced nostalgia. New Media & Society 22(9), 1639–62 Schreier, M. (2012). Qualitative Content Analysis in Practice. Sage Tipaldo, G. (2014). L’analisi del contenuto e i mass media. Il Mulino Weiss, B. (2016). Classic Home Video Games, 1989-1990: A Complete Guide to Sega Genesis, Neo Geo and TurboGrafx-16 Games. McFarland Wulf, T., Bowman, N. D., Rieger, D., Velez, J. A., & Breuer, J. (2018). Video Games as Time Machines: Video Game Nostalgia and the Success of Retro Gaming. Media and Communication 6(2), 60–8 Zamzamin, A. B., & Hoon, L. N. (2022). Funktastic Plastic: Factors that Influence the Purchase of Funko Pops Among Malaysian Toy Collectors. International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research 64(1), 1–19

ABSTRACT. This research examines what “British game development” means to those working in the modern UK sector. Using 17 semi-structured interviews with students, educators, and industry developers, augmented and analysed through reflexive thematic analysis and analytic autoethnography, the study explores how Britishness is something negotiated through practice rather than a specific national identity. Participants described Britishness less as a stable industrial identity and more as an affective texture, citing British dry humour, ambiguity, post-industrial melancholy, or accents and landscapes that are most strongly expressed regionally. They also highlighted how globalised production, UK co-development work, access barriers, and ongoing layoffs contribute to British labour being technical capable but culturally invisible. The findings argue that cultural national identities in games are most likely to survive through smaller studios and regional collectives. Here craft-focused values and local flavour can be celebrated despite broader structural pressures to create homogenised, commercially successful products.

ABSTRACT. not applicable

ABSTRACT. INTRODUCTION

Nostalgia is crucial in modern gaming through shaping fans’ and players’ pleasure and establishing standards for content, controls, practices, and distribution. We analyze the Playdate game system and its associated development strategies to explore the value of intentional nostalgic design and its effects on player/creator communities, promoting a virtual alternative utopia for remembering gaming’s past and future.

A “longing for a home that no longer exists or never existed” (Boym 2008, xiii), Nostalgia is evident in everything from the persistence of the Pokémon franchise to referential genres like metroidvanias and titles like UFO 50 (a fictional 8-bit console; Mossmouth 2024). Scholars of player psychology note the feeling influences satisfaction and perceived success (Bowman et al. 2023) and can enhance well-being (Wulf et al. 2018). Nostalgic design, however, centers on specific ideological choices. For instance, Garda (2014) notes the difference between “restorative” and “reflective” nostalgic game design: the former focuses on reinvigorating the past, while the latter imagines another place and time. Each approach reflects different potential cultural meanings and associated pleasures: Restorative nostalgia establishes gamer capital (Consalvo 2009) and privileges a homogeneous (e.g., white, male) gamer/producer set. Reflective nostalgia aids community building, as seen in modding on platforms like the Game Boy Advance (Custodio 2020).

Nostalgia is also an asset in the game industry’s broader political economy, encouraging new forms of profit, resistance, and creativity; Vanderhoef (2017) suggests that NES homebrewing can preserve technological value outside the console market’s fast-paced innovation cycle. This is echoed in work extolling older hardware as playgrounds for creative work (Wilde 2024) and even in new modes of pleasurable expression like chiptune music (Hermes 2024). Nostalgia, therefore, serves player satisfaction and fosters modes of utopian development beyond traditional cultural production.

The Playdate video game console exemplifies this potential. Conceived by Panic Inc. in 2019, the console markets itself as “familiar but unlike anything you’ve ever seen” (Playdate. Order now! n.d.). The system evokes nostalgia among players familiar with the monochromatic Game Boy and similar handhelds. It also reflects older development norms, using the more deliberate, yet haphazard Lua programming language instead of game engines like Unreal/Unity. Yet, Playdate balances these features with “reflective” and utopian nostalgic attributes It is built on a seasonal content distribution model and featuring a hand crank, while still being a minimally digital, tactile gaming console using limited development parameters (Nikitin 2024).

As a case in how evoking nostalgia can be utilized to promote a utopian vision of independent gaming, we examine Playdate through the conceptual framework of collective memory – specifically how the material of artifacts, objects, and their use create a shared memory of events and subjects within broader culture (Sturken, 2007, 2016). This approach lets us understand Playdate as a memory object that triggers specific ideological concerns about what games are, what is lost, and how nostalgic engagement entices and drives players and creators. Ultimately, exploring how these groups engage with Playdate offers insights into the limits of nostalgia in shaping cultural memory and the intersectional pleasures of this imagined landscape.

Given this background, our work is premised on the following questions: RQ1: How do communities of practice (e.g., developers, designers) take pleasure in nostalgia during the development process? RQ2: How do communities of practice reflect and restore nostalgia in their discourses surrounding Playdate? RQ3: How does nostalgia exist at Playdate’s platform level (e.g., technical apparatus, hardware, material)?

METHODOLOGY

To address these questions, we are taking a multimethod approach: first, analyzing Playdate as a platform (van Dijck 2013); then, familiar discourses regarding nostalgia; and finally, interviewing console and game developers to identify how they experience nostalgia in their creative process. To understand discourses on Playdate, we are analyzing posts in the device’s developer forum “Games” section (https://devforum.play.date/c/games/6), which showcase the conception and marketing of original content. We are taking an inductive approach, coding interview and forum data while meeting frequently to see how themes emerge to reach trustworthy findings (Braun and Clarke, 2021, Nowell et al. 2017). We have begun platform and thematic analysis and will complete interviews (N = 20) in 2026.

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

Our platform analysis (van Dijck, 2013) emphasizes how the combination of Playdate’s technology, users, usage, and content evokes nostalgic gameplay. The design, color schemes, and crank reflect long-lost systems, while the device’s content and technical infrastructure are familiar to those who made or played in the 1990s. Games tend to imitate coin-operated arcade titles, such as Root Bear, modeled after the beer-serving game Tapper. Nostalgic pleasure is promoted as the platform's primary benefit. Ownership, governance, and business models are distinctly more modern, with distribution based on paid “seasons,” their own multisided market, or side-loaded via creator-focused sites like itch.io. These choices represent a revival of pleasurable nostalgia in creative practices, coupled with a focus on decentering game production from modern distribution channels (e.g., Steam, Xbox Game Pass). This is also reflected in background interviews, where developers suggested that part of Playdate’s enjoyability was a return to lost coding and playtesting practices.

Forum discussions also evoked nostalgia for more independent creation. Sometimes this is explicit: “I just recently made a devlog that dives further into the inspirations/origins of the game. You can read it here if you're in the mood for some wild west era internet nostalgia.” Many posts also compare their games to older ones. Most developers thus place their efforts within a larger history of classic games. These are intertwined feelings of niche joy: “[…] I already felt like the [Playdate] is the guilty pleasure that every tech nerd needs,” one post stated before relating the device explicitly to old and dead technologies.

These posts highlight the desire for nostalgic play, development and “indie” creation, which will be expanded upon in future interviews. Individual practices in design, development, coding, and conceptualizing games within the broader production ecosystem rely on the nostalgic pleasure from an audience that subsists at the periphery of mainstream gaming. In this way, Playdate provides a material object that evokes a utopian past, immediately graspable in the present.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents an exploratory analysis of a video game development cluster/ecosystem in a relatively peripheral city in Scotland (Dundee). While clusters or ecosystems in the cultural and creative industries are often studied through economic geography or managerial lenses, focusing on agglomeration and formal processes, this paper adopts concepts from Assemblage Theory to explore the complex socio-material relations that constitute a cluster, including its emergence, stabilisation and transformation. Through the qualitative analysis of a corpus of public documents, the paper begins to trace some of the key components that have assembled to form Dundee’s video game industrial ecosystem. Findings reveal an assemblage characterised by a sort of bottom-up transformation which is in part driven by industrial legacies of the city, and a constant recombination of expressive and material resources and where it is evident the role of actors (like universities) that connect formal and informal actors. The study contributes to the literature in explaining the peripheral innovation ecosystems of video games and challenging top down models of cluster/hub understanding

ABSTRACT. The video game industry is a particularly relevant field for analyzing gender inequalities and gaps in contemporary technological and cultural industries. Its dual affiliation with the cultural and technological sectors makes it a privileged space for studying the configurations of digital work, both creative and technical, under historically masculinized and racialized conditions (Flanagan, 2009; Rodriguez, 2023, Mendez, 2017; Chess, 2017). Despite its sustained growth over the last two decades, the Argentine video game industry largely reproduces the structural gaps observed both globally and in the local software and IT services (SSI) sector. Recent surveys and academic articles (Chicas en tecnología, 2024; Mujeres en tecnología, 2023; OPSSI, 2025; Yansen, 2020) show that the participation of women and sex-gender diversities continues to be in the minority, while career paths are shaped by gender stereotypes that affect the distribution of tasks, stability, security, and opportunities for professional development. A current problem shared with other countries in the region is the lack of official, systematized statistics that would provide reliable information on the size and dynamics of the Argentine video game industry (Gala, Krepki & Cattaneo, 2025). The sector’s inclusion within broader categories, such as digital content or software, along with the lack of specific classifications in legislation and official records, makes it difficult to identify companies and workers, to track the industry’s evolution over time, and to assess its contribution to public accounts. This paper aims to analyze the current state of the sector, with a particular focus on gender gaps, drawing on a mixed methodological approach that combines quantitative and qualitative data. The study is based on the results of the last two surveys conducted by Women in Games Argentina (WIGAr) in 2024 and 2025, the 2025 survey by the Argentine Video Game Industry Observatory (Argentine Video Game Developers Association/National University of Rafaela), and a series of in-depth interviews conducted in December 2024 with women working in different roles in the video game sector. The research focuses on the experiences of cis women, transgender identities, and non-binary people, groups that have historically been underrepresented in video game industry spaces. The study is part of the technofeminism perspective, which conceives technology as a socio-technical framework shaped by power and gender relations. From this point of view, technologies are not neutral: they reproduce the values, hierarchies, and inequalities present in the societies that produce them. Judy Wajcman (2006) highlights that gender inequalities are embedded in the political and economic foundations of the networks that shape and develop technical systems (p. 182). Thus, all technological artifacts, including video games, are permeated by gender relations, their meanings, and practices. The data analyzed shows that, despite the growth of the local ecosystem and the proliferation of independent studios, significant gender inequalities persist in terms of roles held, salaries, and access to leadership positions. Underrepresentation in technical areas and informal employment contribute to the consolidation of more precarious career trajectories for women and sex-gender diverse groups. The interviews provide insight into how these inequalities manifest themselves in everyday practices and how women workers develop individual and collective strategies to address them, particularly through support networks, community spaces, and sectoral organizations. The paper concludes by highlighting the need for sustained data systems, gender-sensitive public policies, violence prevention protocols, and actions that promote the participation of women and gender diversity in technical and leadership roles. In this regard, the paper seeks to provide empirical evidence and critical analysis that contributes to the construction of a more inclusive, professionalized, and equitable video game ecosystem.

ABSTRACT. This abstract will report work-in-progress research on migrant workers in the Finnish game industry during the pivotal moment of policy reform in 2025. By doing so, it will shed light on the precarious condition of game industry workers with migrant backgrounds amid contradictory political discourse: on the one hand, perceived as a highly demanded, specialised workforce, while on the other, treated as a replaceable human resource in a constant demand for passion-driven labour.

ABSTRACT. This project examines how digital games represent and reinterpret folklore and cultural heritage through a research-by-design case study. It explores the tensions between living, variable folkloric practices and the stabilising effects of digital codification, drawing on frameworks such as cultural presence, folk mechanics, digital folklore, and mnemonic hegemony. Using the development process of a small folklore-inspired game prototype, the study analyses how design decisions emphasise, transform, or omit cultural elements. The work contributes a practice-based account of culturally based game design and reflects on the ethical and methodological challenges of translating living traditions into interactive systems.

ABSTRACT. User-generated gaming (UGG) platforms have emerged as significant spaces for the construction and negotiation of collective memory, yet research has largely overlooked how their economic infrastructures shape the ways historical pasts are produced, consumed, and contested. On platforms like Roblox, monetization is not a neutral technical layer but a structural force that determines access, visibility, and symbolic hierarchies within game worlds. This work addresses these concerns by examining Roblox experiences that reconstruct the Yugoslav past, a case that sits at the intersection of creator economy dynamics and post-conflict memory politics. The study first maps the monetization options available to Roblox creators, drawing on the platform’s regulatory framework (Roblox Corporation 2025). This taxonomy is then applied to Yugoblox to observe how these tools are concretely implemented, or deliberately avoided, when what is effectively being sold is access to a traumatic past. Secondarily, an inductive thematic analysis of player conversations on Roblox and Discord (Holmes 2013; Guest et al. 2011) about monetization is conducted. The preliminary results show three overarching themes: a) normalized commodification of memory; b) creators’ liminal positions between hobbyists and entrepreneurs; c) strategic commitment to historical accuracy. On Roblox, engaging with Yugoslav pasts is mediated through normalized consumerism and entrepreneurial performance. While historical accuracy may remain a strategic asset in game promotion, memory work becomes structurally entangled with commercial optimization.

ABSTRACT. This contribution examines how the roguelite game CloverPit creates a "resonant relationship" between players and game systems through ludemes, small meaningful units of gameplay combining mechanics and aesthetic elements. Using close-playing analysis and autoethnographic methods, the authors explore how these ludemic interfaces enable players to transform seemingly random gambling mechanics into strategic mastery, demonstrating how minimal game structures can generate complex affective connections between players and game worlds.

ABSTRACT. This research investigates how sensory aesthetics operate as a foundational mode of queer worldmaking within the "Dragon Age" franchise and how these aesthetic strategies have been differently received across fifteen years of evolving cultural, technological, and political contexts. While "Dragon Age" is frequently celebrated for its representational inclusion, its queer romance options, trans-coded characters, and narrative openness, this study contends that queerness in the series emerges not merely through representational visibility but through a sensory grammar: the textures of light and shadow that structure intimacy, the tonal cadences of voice acting that mediate desire, the spatial architectures that encode marginality or belonging, and the environmental atmospheres that orient players toward or away from queer affective possibilities. Drawing on queer phenomenology (Ahmed), affect theory (Massumi), and the sensory-aesthetic frameworks of game studies (Niedenthal, Calleja), this project reframes queerness as something 'felt'. Something delivered through embodied interaction and aesthetic perception rather than solely through narrative content. This approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of how queer meaning is produced in games and why that meaning shifts over time.

Methodologically, the study integrates sensory-aesthetic close reading with reception theory and authorial intention analysis to map how queerness is encoded, decoded, and contested. The project analyzes a corpus of key scenes, trailers, environmental spaces, and player-controlled encounters across "Dragon Age: Origins", "Dragon Age II", "Dragon Age: Inquisition", and "Dragon Age: The Veilguard", identifying how aesthetic changes across installments recalibrate the series’ queer tone. These textual readings are paired with a comprehensive reception study that interprets responses from queer communities, mainstream gaming publics, and antagonistic groups through Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model, Jauss’s horizon of expectations, and Sedgwick’s distinction between paranoid and reparative readings. The methodology further employs Booth’s “implied author” and Eco’s “model reader/player” to examine how players infer intention and how they imagine what Bioware is trying to do and how breaks in aesthetic continuity lead to ruptures in perceived ideological meaning. Through this triangulated design, the study carefully differentiates between backlash rooted in homophobia and transphobia, criticism rooted in aesthetic and tonal dissonance, and the complex, ambivalent readings produced within queer communities themselves, who often negotiate between attachment, betrayal, and hope.

The significance of this research lies in its demonstration that queer reception in gaming is profoundly sensitive to shifts in sensory and affective design, not merely the presence or absence of queer characters. As the hostile reaction to "The Veilguard" illustrates, players interpret visual style, color saturation, animation choices, and tonal register as political signals. Signs of corporate pandering, ideological overreach, or authentic queer commitment. This project shows that changes in sensory aesthetics can be perceived as changes in queer intention, altering how players read the game’s ethics and identity politics. By foregrounding sensory aesthetics as a central mechanism through which queerness is communicated, affirmed, or disavowed, this study contributes a crucial theoretical intervention to game studies, queer studies, and reception theory. It argues that if queerness in games is increasingly lived as a felt experience, an affective orientation formed through aesthetics, then understanding the sensory conditions under which queerness is welcomed or rejected becomes essential for developers, scholars, and players alike. Ultimately, this research elucidates how the Dragon Age franchise functions as a cultural barometer, capturing the evolving tensions between queer inclusion, aesthetic expectation, and interpretive politics in contemporary digital culture.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores how virtual environments in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt function as existential spaces of dwelling, shaping identity and belonging through player interaction. Drawing on Heidegger’s concept of “dwelling” and Casey’s notion of place as an active entity, the study examines how gameworlds transcend mere geography to become socio-political and cultural constructs. Central to this analysis is the figure of the witcher—Geralt of Rivia—whose marginalized status reflects broader questions of exclusion and liminality. By employing the concept of genius loci (spirit of place), the paper investigates how Kaer Morhen and other in-game locations embody layered identities, intertwining history, aesthetics, and institutional power. Through hermeneutic and ontological approaches, the research argues that virtual places operate as existential actors, enabling players to experience dwelling beyond spatial justice frameworks. Ultimately, The Witcher 3 demonstrates how digital gameworlds interrogate notions of home, identity, and socio-political belonging, offering players a profound engagement with the meaning of place.

ABSTRACT. This paper argues that Outer Wilds renders vast, incomprehensible cosmic phenomena emotionally accessible by transforming them into “temporalised hyperobjects.” Drawing on Timothy Morton’s philosophy, we demonstrate how the game’s interlocking temporal structures—recursive, entropic, and diasporic—make hyperobject traits like viscosity and nonlocality experientially tangible. Through a framework integrating embodied phenomenology and affect theory, we analyze how these structures cultivate a mode of posthuman play rooted in attunement rather than mastery. The 22-minute loop, the decaying solar system, and the scattered Nomai ruins guide players to feel, rather than simply solve, systemic interdependence and impermanence. This study contributes the “temporalised hyperobject” as a new lens for game analysis, showing how Outer Wilds uses temporal design to model an ecological consciousness where meaning emerges from resonant coexistence with systems beyond human control.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the ontological shift of non-Player Characters (NPC) from scripted scenery to generative social mediators within the life-simulation game Petit Planet. Focusing on the AI hostess Nalo, we examine how the strict adherence to a professional role and active facilitation allow the AI to function as a supportive mechanism for interpersonal engagement for socially anxious players, reducing the cognitive load of multiplayer interaction. While this mediation fosters inclusive enjoyment across diverse lines of identity, we argue it simultaneously constructs a highly regulated environment stripped of emotional friction through rigorous safety alignment and algorithmic policing. By analyzing the intervention of Nalo in sensitive discourse, this study critiques the tension between automated inclusion and normative restriction. It contributes to the DiGRA community by theorizing the emergence of triadic human-AI-human social structures, where pleasure is engineered through the foreclosure of conflict.

ABSTRACT. This Extended Abstract explores feelings of discomfort when playing games with persuasive messages, asking: Are all games meant to provide us with fun play and a good time? What player experience do alternative games bring forth? Why then would players play such games, if not for fun?

ABSTRACT. This study presents a systematic literature review of 175 empirical papers (2015-2025) on game-based sustainability education. Utilizing Sankey diagram analysis, we map the structural dependencies between design clusters, teacher roles, and learning outcomes. The analysis reveals a critical divergence in current "ecogame" design: while Systems Thinking interventions show a strong reliance on active teacher facilitation to achieve deep cognitive goals , Mechanics & Empathy designs predominantly marginalize the teacher (58% reported as "Absent"). We identify this as the "Empathy Paradox": the industry's drive to automate emotional engagement through immersive mechanics often displaces the essential "Teaching Presence" required to process complex environmental grief and values. Consequently, these automated interventions frequently stall at surface-level motivation rather than achieving lasting attitudinal change. We argue that future research must shift from analyzing games as autonomous pedagogical tools to designing for the integrated "Game and Teacher" system, specifically through features that empower rather than bypass the teacher.

ABSTRACT. Playfulness is an important component of wellbeing both in theory and a growing empirical body of literature. Past studies of games and wellbeing are valuable but often lack the use of contemporary positive psychological tools or reinforcing theory on playfulness. This study aims to contribute to game studies by integrating a positive psychological toolset and playfulness as a theoretical approach to studying the wellbeing effects of the virtual reality active video game Beat Saber. A non-clinical mixed-methods intervention was conducted where 34 participants came in to play 60 minutes of Beat Saber, reporting their Positive and Negative affect before and after the study, their playfulness as a personality trait, and perceived exertion. A reinforcing semi-structured interview was conducted on perception of playfulness, stress and experience in the game. In conclusion we find evidence that Beat Saber raised positive affect, lowered negative affect and increased participant sense of playfulness.

ABSTRACT. In October 2025 the secretary general of the UN António Guterres “acknowledged it is now ‘inevitable’ that humanity will overshoot the target in the Paris climate agreement” (Watts and Xipai 2025). The tone of Guterres’ announcement, informed by scientific data and confirmed by many climate researchers (Calvin et al. 2023) was not a warning or a prophecy but a regrettable acceptance of the hardships to come for humanity in the very near future. Guterres’ acknowledgment that overshooting the Paris climate target is now inevitable signals that climate change is no longer a future concern but a present reality. This shift calls for a corresponding change in ecogames scholarship, which must evolve from a predominance of speculative models of climate action to a focus on immediate, actionable contributions to citizenship and livability. In this paper, I argue that ecogames must now, through theory and practice, address the lived realities of the climate crisis, particularly the increasing displacement of communities due to climate change.

ABSTRACT. Shinrin-Yoku, a practice originating in Japan, describes a person spending time and relaxing in a forest environment, with research showing it has relaxing properties that can help relieve stress and anxiety. Not everyone has easy access to natural environments, so research has shown that using Virtual Reality (VR) can provide an immersive medium to simulate this experience. This paper explores the extension of such research by utilizing an Extended Reality (XR) implementation with real objects matching the virtual environment. We compare a VR and an XR version of the environment while measuring participants' stress levels through three questionnaires and a heart rate monitor. We found that both versions made participants less stressed, but participants had a slight preference for the XR version and explored that environment much more. We show our experience provides comparable restorativeness to users to state-of-the-art applications.

ABSTRACT. Blind boxes are gambling-like physical products with hidden randomized contents, conceptually similar to video game loot boxes, and feature gamified pre-unboxing interactions: shakability (inferring contents via shaking-related sensory cues) and squeezability (identifying items through squeezing-induced texture or shape cues). In Mainland China, the 2023 Guidelines on Rules for Blind Box Business Operation mandates prominent disclosure of prize probabilities, age restrictions (prohibiting sales to under-8s and requiring guardian consent for 8+), and other key details. This study empirically assesses how Chinese blind box packaging aligns with these regulatory requirements and how pre-unboxing practices influence purchasing decisions. Using convenience sampling with purposive elements, 50 popular, IP-based, and emerging brand blind boxes were examined. Coding focused on probability disclosure completeness and accuracy, visual prominence, age restriction presentation, and shakability and squeezability. Preliminary results show 46 boxes included probability disclosures, but only 16 were complete and accurate; most disclosures were poorly prominent. All 50 met age restriction requirements (8+). Excluding 4 non-interactive badges and 1 transparent "clear box", 30 of 45 valid samples were unshakable, 15 shakable; 5 had squeezable outer packaging and 17 squeezable inner packaging. These pre-unboxing features shape consumer anticipation and pleasure, complementing regulatory compliance as core research foci.

ABSTRACT. INTRODUCTION Board game adaptations of video games have been around since Frogger (Konami 1981). However, these adaptations are perceived as capitalizing on popularity rather than delivering a well-adapted experience (Watson 2024). Despite generally low public opinion, BoardGameGeek.com (BGG) lists over 2000 entries under the “Video Game Theme” category–with half published from 2018 onwards–indicating significant and consistent interest in adapting video games to board games.

Recently, Slay the Spire: The Board Game (Dworetsky et al 2024) received both critical and popular acclaim, and is currently ranked 27th best game overall on BGG. Despite marked differences in the medium and mechanisms, players express that the game succeeds because it “feels” like the video game (Ashley 2024). This implies that, anecdotally, players expect these adaptations to aim for fidelity of player experience (PX). Previous work has explored the complications in adaptation between videogames and non-interactive texts (i.e. books and films), particularly focusing on fidelity of characters, narratives, and world (Randall and Murphy 2012). Further work in video games has explored the impact of graphical fidelity (Gerling et al. 2013). However, scant work exists on capturing fidelity of PX between two forms of interactive media.

In this paper, we present close readings (Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum 2011) of two contemporary video games and their board game adaptations analytically focusing on PX. By examining Slay the Spire: The Board Game (Dworetsky et al 2024) and Wilmot’s Warehouse (Haggett et al 2024), this paper begins to consider what experiential elements are relevant to preserving PX fidelity when adapting video games to board games.

SLAY THE SPIRE Slay the Spire (Mega Crit 2019) is a single-player, roguelike deck-builder, where players pick a character and try to climb the Spire. The game is divided into three acts , each with fifteen randomly generated encounters and a boss fight. Combat is turn-based and strategic. Players draw cards from their deck (max 10 in hand) and play them using the limited energy they have each turn. Non-combat encounters may give players the opportunity to add, remove, or upgrade cards in their deck. The overall gameplay experience is concerned with optimal deck construction, optimal turn-to-turn play, and creating synergies with equipped items. As part of the roguelike experience, players are anticipated to die frequently on runs, but on death they unlock new relics and characters to play in their next run.

Slay the Spire: The Board Game (StS:BG) (Dworetsky et al 2024) is a co-operative, roguelike deck-builder, similarly divided into three acts, where players engage in card-based combat (no hand limit) to advance towards a boss fight. The board game structure and mechanisms are somewhat simplified to make it conducive to co-operative tabletop play. There are fewer rooms per act, with only a subset of them being randomly generated. Enemy health, and damage numbers have been scaled to make the manual tracking more manageable. Card rarities, costs and effects have been adjusted for both game balancing and because of physical constraints. The overall gameplay actions and combat experience feel strategic like the video game, but the gameplay feels easier with little fear of dying and ending a run prematurely. The game also allows for unlocking more cards and items but only after winning all three acts.

Figure 1: The table layout of Slay the Spire: The Board Game showing the map, character board, game tokens, and cards.

WILMOT’S WAREHOUSE Wilmot’s Warehouse (Hogg and Haggett 2019) is a puzzle game, where the player(s) must first organise warehouse inventory, and then deliver the correct stock to co-workers. The gameplay is simple, with difficulty caused by the time pressure in both the organise and search phases. The cooperative mode necessitates more verbal communication as players establish a shared organisation system and delegate tasks. Every three rounds, players may purchase upgrades for their character and reorganise their stock without time constraints. The increasing number of items and stock in the warehouse makes this feel like a game of attrition, where inevitably your organisation system will fail and you will not be able to deliver items on time.

Wilmot’s Warehouse (WW:BG) (Haggett et al 2024) is a cooperative memory-based puzzle game played in two phases. In the stocking phase, players work together to organise thirty-five items on a grid within a time limit. This is complicated by cards that introduce specific communication rules for a specific round. After seven stocking rounds, players enter the customer phase where they have five real-time minutes to match the inventory cards to the right spot on the grid. The communication and stocking phase feel like the video game, though with more rules to accommodate for the finite number of items. However, the reduced warehouse space and singular items made it feel less daunting than the video game.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Through close reading, I interpret WW:BG’s PX as closer to its source material than StS:BG. Both adaptations are adjustments (Leitch 2009, 98), requiring mechanical changes to make them more suitable to the multi-player tabletop context. For WW:BG the scale of the game is drastically reduced and the difficulty along with it. However, the core PX of communicating with your teammates to create your personal organisation system was untouched and even enhanced by these changes. Comparatively, StS:BG’s minor tweaks in balancing left the combat feeling similar, but the roguelike elements felt lacking. Boucher et al (2025) define roguelikes through two experiential aspects: variety and meaningful deaths. By tying ‘unlocks’ to winning instead of deaths, StS:BG has made death the end state of the game instead of a meaningful part of gameplay like in the video game.

These case studies are preliminary work exploring PX of adaptations. The current games mechanics align well with tabletop play, allowing for clear mechanical adaptations. Future work should consider examining PX fidelity of less clear adaptations, such as the action-based roguelikes Binding of Isaac Four Souls (McMillen 2018) and Dead Cells: The Rogue-lite Board Game (Bauza et al. 2024).

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates how designers of escape rooms employ diegetic construction and multimodal strategies to create immersive, emotionally engaging experiences that elicit diverse forms of pleasure and affective involvement. Although escape rooms rely on physical environments that might appear naturally conducive to immersion, establishing a coherent and emotionally engaging world proves considerably more complex. The process of diegetization—integrating narrative, spatial design, and interactive elements into a unified fictional framework—plays a central role in shaping immersion and contributes to the formation of memorable game (Stasiak 2025) and one-off experiences characteristic of contemporary escape rooms. Since their emergence in the late 2000s, escape rooms have drawn extensively on design principles developed within digital games, particularly point-and-click adventures, whose logic of environmental interaction and spatial puzzle sequencing has significantly shaped the format (Nicholson 2016). Games more broadly constitute a well-established domain for studying affect, emotion and player experience, with research in game studies demonstrating how digital play can elicit, model and respond to complex emotional states (ex. Karpouzis &Yannakakis 2016). Work on affective gaming emphasises that games depend not only on mechanical structure or visual realism but also on affective realism and emotional responsiveness, which enhance engagement and experiential depth (Gilleade, DIx & Allanson 2005; Hudlicka 2009). These insights are crucial when considering escape rooms, which translate digital conventions of emotional and affective engagement into physical environments and rely on embodied, multisensory interaction to produce heightened experiential intensity. Within this context, immersion becomes a foundational concept. Rather than a simple sense of absorption, immersion can be understood as a layered experiential state shaped by narrative coherence, sensory alignment, player expectations and the perceived stability of the fictional world (Murray 1997; Ryan 2001; Calleja 2011). When transferred from digital media to physical space, these conditions become more demanding: inconsistencies or non-diegetic elements can disrupt the experiential frame more immediately than in virtual environments – as the effect of „film set shock” (McMahan 2003). This is where diegesis—rooted in narratology as the organisation and coherence of the represented world (Genette 1980) —becomes central for escape room design. Although later adapted for the study of interactive media (Galloway 2006), its broader theoretical lineage underscores its relevance for any medium that seeks to sustain a consistent representational space. Applying the concept to escape rooms foregrounds the challenge of constructing a world that must hold together materially, narratively and affectively in real time. Diegesis in escape rooms is grounded in a design process that prioritizes elements integral to the fictional world. When all components align, the room gains experiential realism, and players more readily suspend disbelief (Kirkpatrick 2004), not only cognitively but also affectively, responding with emotions that feel anchored in the world (Calleja 2011). The affective dimension becomes especially significant when diegetic integration encompasses multimodal sensory design. Multimodality amplifies emotional impact by engaging multiple channels of perception simultaneously (Gerdes et.al. 2014), enabling designers to pre-configure emotional responses through coordinated sensory cues. Scents, temperature shifts, soundscapes and tactile textures can elicit visceral reactions that deepen affective involvement (Norman 2004). A warm cookie or cinnamon smell can evoke domestic comfort, while metallic, dusty or mouldy scents strengthen fear or unease in horror settings. When these modalities remain diegetically coherent—matching the narrative, environment and mechanics—they strengthen emotional realism and intensify player engagement (Boston & Tingoy 2016), producing feelings that are embodied rather than merely imagined. The analysis focuses on Polish escape rooms included in the Top Escape Rooms Project Enthusiasts’ Choice Award (TERPECA) ranking—currently the most influential and methodologically consistent global evaluation of escape rooms. The presence of several Polish rooms in this ranking indicates not only their international recognition but also their relevance as exemplars of advanced design. Due to the inherent constraints of the medium—particularly the one-time nature of the experience and the difficulty of obtaining detailed production materials from designers—the study adopts a descriptive, reconstructive approach based on participatory autoethnography and participant observation. Specific rooms are not identified, both for ethical reasons and to preserve the integrity of gameplay, and the analysis instead focuses on broader ludic structures, strategies of diegetic integration, and sensory-affective mechanisms observable across these experiences. This study therefore examines how multimodal realism and the diegesis of design practices shape emotional responses, diverse forms of pleasure, and the feeling of presence within hyperrealistic heterotopias, highlighting how sensory, narrative, and affective elements contribute to intersectional pleasures in gameplay experiences. The following research questions will guide the analysis: - How do diegetic cohesion and multimodal realism contribute to affective involvement in escape rooms? - How can the interplay of multimodality, digitization, and affect extend current theoretical discussions on emotional design and sensory affordances across media? Taken together, these questions position escape rooms as a unique site for investigating how sensory coherence, narrative alignment, and technologically mediated design choices produce intensified affective engagement.

ABSTRACT. This paper proposes "fossil play" to analyze 18XX railroad board games as cultural artifacts that lock players into a persistent now of 19th-century capitalism. Through recursive temporal mechanics, these games perpetually reproduce the logics of steam-powered modernity, offering players nostalgic refuge in an perpetual age of steam—18XX forever.

ABSTRACT. This abstract details preliminary research examining how online user reviews transform into spaces for cultural and political discussion. Focusing on the release of Assassin’s Creed Shadows (Ubisoft, 2025), this study analyzes the review bombing campaign that erupted after the game's release. The inclusion of an historical Afro-American samurai and a female ninja protagonists, and the option for queer relationships, provoked an immediate and polarized response highlighting “authenticity,” “wokeness,” and the perceived “politicization” of the franchise.

Review bombing, defined as the coordinated posting of negative user reviews often driven by cultural or political opposition, has become a recognized mode of collective resistance in game culture. This “ideology-driven polarization”, (Cantone et al., 2021) takes place on sites like Metacritic, where user ratings are frequently more polarized and emotional than professional critic reviews, reflecting differing standards of authority and evaluation (Santos et al., 2019; Coronado-Blázquez, 2024). Furthermore, the deletion of reviews represents a mechanism through which toxic technocultures (Spallaccia, 2023) restrict cultural ownership and belonging for certain audiences. In the absence of prescriptive legal constraints, platforms develop their own bespoke policies, effectively regulating the emerging discourse. Platforms must also contend with threats to integrity, ranging from ideological backlash to review spam and rating manipulation. By examining the ensuing backlash and the subsequent moderation, this research situates the Shadows controversy within broader contemporary debates about gaming culture, representational resistance, and the politics of moderation.

The study employed a mixed-method approach combining quantitative score aggregation, topic modeling, and qualitative thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022). We conducted 4.077 iterations of automated scraping of Metacritic’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows (PlayStation 5) user review page from March 21 to April 23, 2025 (the first month after launch). The final dataset includes 3.502 user scores, 1.835 of which included a textual review, and 635 of which were deleted by Metacritic's moderation system. Additionally, the dataset included 92 professional site scores for the game, also from Metacritic.

Most of the parsed reviews were written over the course of the first day. Shadows’ estimated length is between 34 and 64 hours (Metacritic imposes a 36-hour delay). Professional critic scores had a mean of 84%, whereas user scores had a mean of 51%. However, when computed separately, user reviews showed a distinctly bimodal distribution, with deleted reviews had an average of 27% (and a median of 10%) and accepted reviews had a mean of 63% of (and a median of 80%).

The bimodal distribution of user scores suggests that ratings were positioned as ideological statements rather than nuanced assessments of quality. This difference reflects distinct regimes of cultural authority, mirroring findings on discrepancies between expert and amateur reviews (Santos et al., 2019; Coronado-Blázquez, 2024). The concentration of user scores in the first hours suggests that the rigor of the review is secondary to the need to project either early praise or criticism to reporting media.

To analyze the ideological opposition, the BERTopic topic modelling technique was applied, resulting in a total of 42 topic clusters. We then used Gemma-2-2b-it LLM to write natural language titles for each cluster using the contained words and the designated most representative reviews. The following LLM BERTopic cluster titles from the deleted review sample ranked first, second and thirteenth in size respectively, and showcase the negative rhetoric that Metacritic removed: Black Yasuke Controversy (including 107 reviews): Criticism on the Afro-American protagonist and appeals to "historical accuracy". Turbocharged Inclusivity/Woke Agenda (including 99 reviews): Rejecting non-heteronormative representations and denouncing a hidden political agenda. Manipulated Assassin's Creed Reviews (including 19 reviews): Claims that Metacritic censors dissent and inflates positive scores, reflecting user distrust of platform governance.

A complementary qualitative thematic analysis of the most representative deleted reviews of the clusters created through BERTopic is being conducted, and the preliminary results include similar topics than the ones identified by BERTopic. Out of the eight code groups identified by one researcher, the three most prevalent are Illegitimate black samurai, Metacritic dynamics discussion and inclusion of non-traditional relationships or gender identities. Discourses of "historical accuracy" seem to be policing representation. Backlash against the Black samurai or queer romance suggests that "realism" serves as a cultural boundary designed to maintain whiteness, masculinity, and heteronormativity as the unmarked norms of historical imagination within the medium. Users instrumentalize "cultural respect" toward Japanese heritage to legitimize exclusion, using authenticity as a rhetorical weapon. This rejection of inclusion aligns with research connecting backlash to hegemonic masculinity and toxic technocultures (Spallaccia, 2023), and the rejection of established conventions of whiteness, masculinity, and heteronormativity (Shaw, 2015; Ruberg, 2020).

The deletion of hundreds of discriminatory reviews underscores the political function of platform moderation. This process, which can be seen as “algorithmic forgetting,” (Chun, 2016) obscures the true extent of toxicity while leaving the underlying ideological sentiment intact. Moderation, therefore, manages the visibility of hate rather than addressing its root causes. The opacity of Metacritic's rules makes it difficult for users to know how moderation is occurring, breeding distrust and the conspiratorial claims seen in the deleted reviews.

Ultimately, the Shadows controversy reveals that online rating systems in the context of a review bombing are forms of discursive participation, where scoring translates social tensions into quantifiable metrics. Understanding review bombing not as noise but as discourse allows observing how audiences articulate and resist competing visions of what games should represent and how. It also represents a chance to elucidate the discourse that is removed from the desired sanitized criticism, excluding hateful and discriminating comments against the representation of minorities and questioning the moderation policies.

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. Sage. Cantone, G. G., Tomaselli, V., & Mazzeo, V. (2021). Ideology-driven polarization in online ratings: The review bombing of The Last of Us Part II. arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.01140. Chun, W. H. K. (2016). Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media. MIT Press. Coronado-Blázquez, J. (2024). A NLP Approach to Review Bombing in Metacritic PC Videogames User Ratings. arXiv:2405.06306. Ruberg, B. (2020). The Queer Games Avant-Garde. Duke University Press. Santos, T., Lemmerich, F., Strohmaier, M., & Helic, D. (2019). What’s in a review: Discrepancies between expert and amateur reviews of video games on Metacritic. ACM HCI, 3(CSCW), 1–22. Shaw, A. (2015). Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture. University of Minnesota Press. Spallaccia, B. (2023). Hegemonic Masculinity and Toxic Technocultures: Discourse in the Review Bombing of HBO’s The Last of Us. Anglistica AION, 27(2), 177–190.

ABSTRACT. Analyzing DIY game engines and fantasy consoles using a mixture of archival analysis, textual analysis, and critical making, this paper explores the ambivalent, reactionary movement of game developers rejecting readymade game engines in ways both accessible and exclusionary

ABSTRACT. Interactive narrative design has long assumed a player-centred paradigm in which systems primarily respond to human choice. Large language models (LLMs) destabilise this arrangement by enabling non-player characters and platform-level agents that remember, plan, and act semi-autonomously across time. This extended abstract proposes “agent-centred interactive narrative” as a critical lens for understanding how LLM-integrated games redistribute narrative agency and reshape player pleasure. Through close analysis of recent LLM-driven works—including dialogue-focused games such as 1001 Nights and Dead Meat, social simulations like Generative Agents and AI Town, narrative sandboxes such as Instantale, and platform-level assistants exemplified by SIMA 2—the paper maps a shift from branching choice structures toward multi-agent ecosystems in which players increasingly become negotiators, witnesses, directors, or caretakers. It develops a conceptual framework along three dimensions: the distribution of agency between players and agents; changing configurations of authorship in framework-based, co-created narrative; and emergent “relational pleasures and their discontents”, where curiosity, care, frustration, and ethical unease sit alongside mastery. The contribution is both descriptive and diagnostic: it offers vocabulary for analysing LLM-native games while foregrounding intersectional questions of who benefits from, and who is marginalised by, emerging forms of intimacy and dependency between human players and AI agents.

ABSTRACT. In this paper I argue that videogames are fundamentally haunted by the systemic regime of global capitalism. Gordon writes that ‘haunting is a constituent element of modern social life’ (2008, 7); I contend that haunting is also a constituent element of videogames. I forward that addressing the haunted status of videogames is essential in processes of decolonisation (see Tuck and Ree 2013; Gordon 2008), in conducting nuanced analyses of meaning inscribed by game design, and in locating videogames’ relationship to the hyper object of the Capitalocene: a term I use to conceptualise the current geohistoric moment and its environmental shifts not as the result of the presence of the human being, but rather the longue durée of capitalism. To explore these ideas, I present an initial close ‘playing’ of two North American videogames: Bastion (Supergiant Games 2011) and I was a teenage exocolonist [Exocolonist] (Northway Games 2022) and examine how the affects of haunting are distributed across each game.

I suggest hauntings are significant in relation to the Capitalocene because they persistently render visible ‘empire’s foundational past’ and make past violence ‘impossible to erase from the national present’ (Tuck and Ree, 2013, 654). Haunting is by its nature ambivalent and diachronic: ‘ruin and remake’, ‘horrific and very plain’, and a phenomena which foregrounds ‘the Now of dripping and the slow stuttering time of comprehension’ (Tuck and Ree 2013, 646-647). Haunting is ‘what is no longer or not yet’ (Fisher 2012, 18) but also present and ‘relentless’ (Tuck and Ree, 2013, 642). Videogames are fundamentally bound to the context of the Capitalocene by nature of only ever existing under its purview. In addition, many videogames have complex relationships with repetition, temporality, the banal and the sublime: all affective and aesthetic hallmarks of hauntings observed by various scholars reflecting on capitalism and modernity (see Derrida 1994; Fisher 2012; Gordon 1997; Marx and Engels 2017; Miéville 2022; Roy 2014; Tuck and Ree 2013). I take Calleja’s position that the virtual is a place ‘continuous with the haunts of our everyday lives’ (2011, 182). When the ‘exclusionary logic’ (Calleja, 2011, 169) of distinct virtual and physical space is removed, I argue that if the everyday is thus haunted (Tuck and Ree, 2013; Gordon, 1997), then videogames are too.

I explore how Bastion and Exocolonist both engage with solastalgic and posthumanist narratives and suggest ‘no resolution’ to their Capitalocene hauntings but rather ‘coexistence, deferral, and even an embrace of this anxiety’ (Tuck and Ree 2013, 646). Both Bastion and Exocolonist are set in post-apocalyptic and post-traumatic worlds whose unreachable past nonetheless fundamentally forms and haunts the landscapes of the present. In addition, each videogame features a child protagonist encouraged by the nostalgia-laden adults of the world to build a utopian tomorrow. The ‘tomorrows’ of Bastion and Exocolonist are already stained by the desires of those who remember the past, and will slip towards stasis, violence, and genocide without intervention. I explore how Bastion and Exocolonist are each designed to encourage the player to acknowledge their hauntings, and, in embracing the ‘making and remaking’ of their narrative world, allow themselves to ‘bound into the past as they stretch into the future’ (Tuck and Ree, 2013, 648), decentring the linear progression of normative bildungsroman or ‘coming of age’ narratives.

Inspired by Tuck and Ree’s work in ‘The Glossary of Haunting’ (2013), this paper is the first component of a new long-term project of mine to develop a similar glossary of videogame hauntings. I offer the initial analyses of Bastion and Exocolonist as a way of articulating how observing videogames as fundamentally haunted enriches their study. I argue listening to the ghosts is valuable in expressing how videogames as artistic artifacts inscribe meaning and consciously and subconsciously reflect on the ‘longue durée of a modernity never entirely reducible to capitalism but driven primarily by its contradictory logic’ (Ngai 2012, 188). To borrow a phrase from Gordon, the videogame ghost ‘is alive, so to speak. We are in relation to it, and it has designs on us such that we must reckon with it graciously’ (Gordon 2008, 64). I suggest to fulsomely engage with videogames, one must attend to the ghosts.

REFERENCES Calleja, Gordon. 2011. In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation. MIT Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. Routledge. Fisher, Mark. 2012. ‘What is Hauntology?’, Film Quarterly, Vol. 66, No 1, pp. 16-24. Gordon, Avery. 2008 (first published 1997). Ghostly Matters : Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, 2nd ed. University of Minnesota Press, University of Minnesota Press. Marx, Karl, and Engels, Friedrich. 2017. The Communist Manifesto. Translated by Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels, 1888. Pluto Press. Miéville, China. 2022. A Spectre, Haunting. Haymarket Books. Ngai, Sianne. 2012. Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting. Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press. Northway Games. 2022. I was a teenage exocolonist. Nintendo Switch. USA: Finji. Roy, Arundhati. 2014. Capitalism: A Ghost Story. Chicago, Illinois, USA. Haymarket Books. Supergiant Games. 2011. Bastion. Nintendo Switch. San Francisco, USA. Tuck, Eve and Ree, C. 2013. ‘A Glossary of Haunting’ in Handbook of Autoethnograpy, eds. Stacey Holman Jones, Tony E. Adams, and Carolyn Ellis. Left Coast Press. pp 659-658.

ABSTRACT. This paper offers an early exploration into how Ghost of Yōtei represents Japanese cinematic history and indigenous Ainu history. Building on the established scholarship of remediation, the paper deploys close reading and paratexts to understand how the game’s mechanics, aesthetics, narrative, and advertising convey reflections of Japan’s feudal past as recontextualized and remediated from film and history. The analysis examines the influence of twentieth century Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa to the game, situating the developer’s reverence to the director through the dual inclusion of Kurosawa Mode as a prestige summation of his distinct filmic style, and frequent reference to Kurosawa themes of morality and nature. In contrast, the game’s depiction of the Ainu indigenous people, native to Hokkaido, is parsed through their own history and customs, but also simultaneously through a remediated understanding of native American peoples and western expansionist frontier history.

ABSTRACT. This paper articulates an analysis of the 'Pokémon' franchise through contemporary developments in critical plant studies. A significant portion of the over one thousand collectable Pokémon are some form of animate plant, but existing game and screen studies scholarship does not dedicate significant attention to this aspect of one of the world’s largest media franchises. Through critical textual analysis of transmedia portrayals of individual Pokémon, this paper aims to complement existing scholarship on their animal-like qualities with a consideration of the other major kingdom of multicellular life.

ABSTRACT. The fragmentary nature of Sifu’s (Sloclap 2022) game world, underlying its thematic design, leads us to an overwhelming question: 1. Can a video game with discrete levels/stages construct a coherent and cohesive (all-encompassing) spatial environment, such as a city? And, more importantly, is this urban environment actually congruent with the cultural foundation serving as the main theme for the game? Or simply put, in the case of Sifu, 2. How does this space articulate its purported “Chinese-ness”?

ABSTRACT. In this presentation we would like to present an analysis and case study of city design in games The Sims 3 (Maxis, 2009) and The Sims 4 (Maxis, 2014). The Sims series tries to simulate pleasurable life and create a safe space (Bódi, 2024) for players at the same time. The Maxis games are creating a utopian vision of our everyday cities reflecting Kłośiński's reinterpretation (2018) of Huizinga’s magic circle (1955). While researching the relationship between game spaces and utopias, we are using the common understanding of the term 'utopia', however it should be noted that a fictional vision of an idealized world should be called 'eutopia' (Maj, 2014).

However, this simplified simulation of life lacks many of the hardships and systematic problems people face in reality. Instead, it creates an idealized, shallow portrayal of life in a neoliberal system, where everything can be obtained solely by hard work and discrimination or poverty doesn’t exist. By eliminating all inequitable factors in its world The Sims is trying to create a safe space that players can escape to from difficulties in their lives (Bódi, 2024). However, by doing that, the game sells an idealistic utopian idea that from the start everyone is equal to each other and so by hard work they can achieve the same outcome (Sicart, 2003). By that, the game world feels more like a simulation of the American Dream than of life itself (Scuderi, 2023). By showing this capitalist utopia, The Sims resemble something akin to Baudrillard’s (1994) simulacrum as many game worlds do (Kłośiński, 2018). This impacts city planning in the series significantly.

The suburbia in American society and media carries the image of safety and family values, when in history we can see that this image was heavily curated, fake and built upon exclusions and xenophobia. (Massey, Denton, 1993) Only certain groups could live there, and it was guarded by the law how this area should look. (Rothstein, 2017) Moreover the concept of suburbia was never a natural emerging phenomenon, but an artificial system promoted by developers (Duany et al., 2000), influenced by the gas and car industries, excluding individuals that are unable to drive (Bozovic, 2025). The Sims series replicates the same image of suburbia as save cozy space, but does not acknowledge its history and many problems, they are sort of lost in translation from reality to game. We believe that this erasure of said issues only cements this false image of American suburbia (Curlew, 2005) and further plays in neoliberal utopias.

However the visible elements that signify the exclusion are still present in this games, for example in The Sims 4 there is no vehicles, your sim will just teleport to location, but the cities are still designed in a car-dependent manner, just as there is no racism or homophobia in games but there is suburbia that was built upon exclusion. The default place for starting your game in The Sims is typical suburbia where the player built their own home from the start, such as Willow Creek in The Sims 4 and Sunset Valley in The Sims 3. Strict rules for building american suburb houses (Duany et al., 2000) are replicated by a limited amount of items a player can choose from in the series. The neoliberal utopia is further being replicated in city design by exclusion of slums or other poor districts from the games (Curlew, 2005). Furthermore, in The Sims 3 the better social standing you have, the more probable that your sims will live far away from the starting area, usually on top of hills or in penthouses on rooftops, which is exemplified by the city Bridgeport from the Late Night DLC (Udontcareaboutphilip, 2025).

The Sims’ privileged perspective is exemplified by how it views other more “exotic” locations. It suffers from orientalistic and colonialistic tendencies, represented by vacation worlds, for example Selvadorada, in which your sims can’t live but they can go to explore. Those worlds are inspired by real world places dominated by tourism. (Murthy, 2019) The player is not meant to experience the culture of the places, but to play into the escapist narration of breaking the Sims' everyday work routine. Even if a certain tourist destination gets its own world, it is often portrayed by a single activity special to this location. For example, in the Mt. Komorebi location, inspired by rural Japan, the player is encouraged to explore a mountain or go skiing, which is viewed as a vacation activity. The Sims’ transactional and capitalistic idea of those places is further exemplified by the possibility of selling historical artefacts from those destinations.

In conclusion The Sims offers its players an altered version of our reality, by which it presents a capitalistic and neoliberal agenda reflected in the game's city design. The game tries to create a pleasurable simulation of life, which in fact is making a utopian version of our reality by erasing all the discriminating and exclusive factors. However, The Sims displays auto-centric planning despite not even having cars in the first two games. Similarly, the game creates a safe environment without inequalities and exploitation, basing its world on an American suburbia - inherently inequitable, classist, and xenophobic urban planning approach. In our presentation we hope to provide an interesting perspective on utopias, neoliberal game spaces and idealised simulation of reality.

References: Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan Press. Bozovic, T. (2025). Urban Walkability and Equity in the Car-Centric City. W Inclusive Cities and Global Urban Transformation (pages 77–85). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-7521-7_7 Bódi, B. (2024). The duality of cozy games: cozy agency, neoliberalism, and affect. Replay the Polish Journal of Game Studies, 11(1), 51–64. https://doi.org/10.18778/2391-8551.11.04 Curlew, A. B. (2005). Liberal Sims?: Simulated difference and the commodity of social diversity. In Proceedings of DiGRA 2005 Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play. Duany, A., Plater-Zybeck, E., & Speck, J. (2000). Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. North Point Press. Fishman, R. (1987). Bourgeois utopias. (pages 21-31) Huizinga, J. (1955). Homo ludens: A study of the play-element of culture. Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0807046814. Kłosiński, M. (2018). Hermeneutyka gier wideo: Interpretacja, immersja, utopia. Wydawnictwo INSTYTUTU BADAŃ LITERACKICH PAN. Maj, K. M. (2014). Eutopie i dystopie. Typologia narracji utopijnych z perspektywy filozoficznoliterackiej. Ruch Literacki. Massey, D. S., & Denton, N. A. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Harvard University Press. Maxis (2009). The Sims 3. Electronic Arts Maxis (2014). The Sims 4. Electronic Arts Murthy, N. (2019). The colonial, non-colonial and decolonial in video games. Game Developer. Retrieved December 5, 2025, from https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-colonial-non-colonial-and-decolonial-in-video-games Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright Publishing. Sicart, M. (2003). Family Values: Ideology, Computer Games & Sims. Proceedings of DiGRA 2003 Conference: Level Up. 10.26503/dl.v2003i1.72. Udontcareaboutphilip. (2025, February 22). Wealth, classism and world building in The Sims 3 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5698P0NIBI [available: 23.11.2025]

ABSTRACT. This article applies sexual script theory to examine how Chinese otome game players negotiate, reinterpret, and rewrite sexual scripts through their interactions with game narratives, platforms, and fan communities. Drawing on walkthrough and in-depth interviews, this study explores how players assert agency in pre-scripted romance narratives, manage potential sexual risks in virtual contexts, and negotiate desires between pleasure and shame. Through selective engagement with storylines and fan-based rewriting practices, players develop intrapsychic scripts that challenge hegemonic sexual scripts. While recognizing the commodified nature of otome games, this article argues that players consciously navigate and embrace such commodification as a means to amplify their voices and reshape gender discourse. In doing so, this study highlights the duality of otome games as both commercial products and counterpublic spaces where women exercise narrative control and rearticulate intimacy on their own terms. This study extends sexual script theory by highlighting how digital intimacy is not only shaped by cultural scenarios and interpersonal scripts but also actively rewritten by users within commercial platforms.

ABSTRACT. This study focuses specifically on young female otome game players in China through the theoretical framework of affective shift from dissonance to solidarity (Hemmings 2012; 2005). It argues that females experience discomfort in gendered experiences and may develop feminist consciousness due to this affective dissonance. As this affective dissonance accumulates, females seek affective solidarity, facilitating personal change and engagement in political discourse. This research seeks to explore female gamers’ views on traditional heteronormative relationship construction in Chinese otome games and their engagement in actions to gain discursive power to explore their shift in feminist affective experiences.

ABSTRACT. Player communities actively reinterpret how ecogames represent environmental crises, potentially turning games designed to foster climate awareness into contested spaces where ecological meanings are renegotiated. This paper examines Civilization VI: Gathering Storm and its Reddit paratexts to show how the game’s explicit modelling of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions, natural disasters, and sea‑level rise becomes a focal point for debate. The analysis draws on a corpus of 616 Reddit comments (2019–2020), combining semantic network analysis with inductive thematic coding to identify dominant interpretive frames.

The findings highlight a sharply polarised discussion. Many users portray climate change as a hoax or exaggeration, attribute warming to natural cycles, and question the integrity of climate scientists, while a smaller group defends the game’s alignment with mainstream climate science and uses it to discuss mitigation and long‑term risks. In these exchanges, climate change is frequently repositioned as a matter of belief rather than evidence, which narrows the range of responses seen as legitimate and flattens the complexity of the issue.

The study suggests that player communities can operate as crucial arenas where ecogame representations are debated, reshaped, and used to circulate alternative climate knowledge. In this setting, game‑adjacent online platforms serve as infrastructures for constructing environmental pasts and imagined climate futures, with communities acting at once as potential drivers of activism and as hubs of denialism.

ABSTRACT. INTRODUCTION While accessibility research in games has made significant strides in addressing functional barriers to play, a critical gap remains in understanding the quality of experience that follows accessibility. This study posits that for disabled players using adaptive controllers like the Xbox Adaptive Controller (XAC) with mainstream games not designed for them, play becomes a complex site of negotiation. Moving beyond the binary of access versus denial, we investigate how players navigate the haptic and systemic mismatches between customizable hardware and rigid software to carve out spaces of pleasure. The central research question asks: how do disabled players, through an intersectional lens of identity and resource, actively negotiate and redefine pleasurable engagement when their embodied interactions with games are mediated by adaptive technologies? This inquiry aligns with the DiGRA 2026 theme by critically and celebratorily examining how pleasure is not simply enabled or restricted, but dynamically co-created at the intersection of design, technology, and diverse corporeal realities.

Theoretical Framework This research is anchored in a synthesis of Crip Technoscience and Intersectionality, framing adaptive gaming not as a technical fix but as a sociotechnical practice. We challenge the normative “standard player” embedded in mainstream game design and the often homogenizing category of the “disabled gamer.” Instead, we conceptualize pleasure as a form of affective negotiation—an active, creative, and sometimes resistive process where players leverage their expertise, community knowledge, and technological workarounds to transform moments of potential frustration into personal triumph and enjoyment. Crucially, this capacity for negotiation is not equally distributed. An intersectional analysis reveals how factors such as economic capital (affording niche peripherals), cultural capital (technical literacy to map complex controls), and social capital (access to supportive communities) fundamentally shape the pathways and possibilities for achieving pleasure. Thus, the experience of haptic pleasure is understood as deeply intersectional, mediated by overlapping systems of ability, class, and knowledge.

Methodology To capture the nuanced, lived experience of this negotiation process, the study employs a qualitative digital ethnography complemented by in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The ethnographic component involves sustained participatory observation within key online communities where disabled gamers congregate, such as specialized subreddits and Discord servers. This allows for the naturalistic study of how players share configuration profiles, troubleshoot collective problems, and narrativize their gaming achievements. Following this, approximately 15-20 disabled players who regularly use adaptive controllers will be recruited for interviews. These interviews will explore personal histories with gaming, detailed accounts of configuring setups for specific games, and rich descriptions of what constitutes pleasure and frustration in their play. Where possible, screen-recorded play sessions will be collected to triangulate verbal accounts with observed practice.

Experiments & Results Analysis of the ethnographic and interview data will be structured around comparative case studies of players engaging with different game genres. For instance, examining play in a fast-paced action title like Elden Ring may reveal how players reconfigure the “intended” haptic challenge of rapid button combos into a distinctive, deeply strategic pleasure born of meticulous timing and remapped control schemes. Conversely, analysis of a seemingly accessible social simulation like Animal Crossing: New Horizons might uncover how mundane actions like menu navigation or item placement present hidden barriers, and how players employ creative macros or switch sequences to reclaim the pleasure of casual creativity and sociality. Preliminary findings anticipate highlighting several key themes: the intellectual and affective pleasure of “solving” the control puzzle itself; the communal joy derived from sharing these solutions; and the profound sense of agential pleasure when overcoming a design not meant for one’s body. The results will explicitly map how these experiences vary along intersectional axes, demonstrating that the pursuit of digital pleasure is inextricably linked to material and social realities.

Conclusion This study concludes that for disabled gamers using adaptive technology, pleasure is not a passive reception of designed content but an active achievement negotiated across uneven terrain. It argues that mainstream game design’s latent ableism is not merely a barrier to access, but a provocation for innovative player-led practices that fundamentally expand the definitions of play and pleasure. The research contributes to game studies by bridging the gap between accessibility and experience-quality research, and to broader discourse by modeling a crip-intersectional analysis of technology use. Ultimately, it offers a critical framework for designers: to move beyond creating static accessibility options and towards fostering negotiable systems—designing with open input APIs, shareable configuration layers, and a humility that recognizes players as expert co-designers of their own pleasurable experiences.

ABSTRACT. EXTENDED ABSTRACT Martinican female game designer Muriel Tramis, in addition to postcolonial and educational games, designed the most divisive part of her oeuvre: the Erotic Trilogy, composed of Emmanuelle (Tomahawk 1989), Geisha (Tomahawk 1990), and Fascination (Tomahawk 1991). While the Erotic Trilogy faced harsh criticism in the United Kingdom, French magazines elevated at least the third game to cult status. This presentation aims to account for the strong disparities in the trilogy’s reception in the two countries mentioned.

The research was based on the trilogy’s paratextual analysis, incorporating the methodology derived from Švelch (2020). Paratexts included both contemporary reviews and retrospective texts from France and the UK. French publications included Tilt, Génération 4, and Joystick, whereas English ones included Amiga Power, PC Format, and Richard Cobbett’s retrospective reviews in PC Gamer (Cobbett 2011; 2013). The reception of Emmanuelle (a loose adaptation of Emmanuelle Arsan’s books) and Geisha (a loose collection of minigames set in Japan) was uneven in France (Coulon 1988; Boulauck et al. 1989; Baron 1990; Jovanovic 1991), while British publications universally panned them (Howladar 1989; Cobbett 2013). Fascination, one of the first digital games featuring a Black female protagonist and prefiguring the plot and appearance of an analogous character in Quentin Tarantino’s film Jackie Brown (cf. Tarantino 1997), provides a clear example of the stark disparities between the British and French press. While British journalists mocked the erotic content and plot inconsistencies (Davies 1992; Cobbett 2011), the French press embraced the game (Roux 1991; Harbonn 1992), and Fascination continues to receive positive reviews in contemporary blogs (Carali 2011).

How can one account for such British animosity toward the Erotic Trilogy? Several explanations are possible. First, Tramis’s role as lead designer of all three games may have rendered her vulnerable to widespread mockery (none of the reviews cited here were authored by women). Second, cultural differences between France and the UK likely shaped reviewers’ reactions. Whereas France has been regarded as erotically permissive—an assessment that can be linked to the enormous popularity of the Emmanuelle books, the source of Tramis’s game—the UK, deeply rooted in Protestant or Puritan religious traditions, would scarcely welcome works of a sensitive content; the reaction often assumed a hypocritical tone, for example by mocking the game’s feminist message while accusing the creator of giving Germaine Greer a “heart attack” (Davies 1992, 34). Finally, the Erotic Trilogy became an easy object of attack because of mutual French–English animosity; Fascination’s poetics was readily labeled the prime example of the “French touch” (Squires 1992, 70).

The research outcomes allow the summary that the Erotic Trilogy’s reviews differed in three patterns. (1) Discussion of them in the UK was gendered because of Tramis’s sexuality; (2) it was customarily discriminating; (3) it was steered toward chauvinistic tones. Thus, the reception of French games in the UK aligned with what Graeme Kirkpatrick (2015, 111–18) regarded as the development of aggressive masculinity in British gaming culture of the 1980s and 1990s. Although sexism was not absent in French gaming culture, local reviewers were somewhat more compassionate toward the towering female personality of the French gaming field.

REFERENCES

Baron, Cyrille. 1990. “Geisha.” Joystick, no. 11: 210. Boulauck, Dany, Jacques Harbonn, and Olivier Hautefeuille. 1989. “Aventure : Emmanuelle.” Tilt, no. 72: 51. Carali, Olivier. 2011. “Fascination (PC, 1991).” Jeux vidéo et des bas, April 15. https://jeux.dokokade.net/2011/04/15/fascination-1991/. Cobbett, Richard. 2011. “Crapshoot: Fascination, One of the Most Confusing Erotic Thrillers Ever.” PC Gamer, October 8. https://www.pcgamer.com/saturday-crapshoot-fascination/. Cobbett, Richard. 2013. “Saturday Crapshoot: Geisha.” PC Gamer, June 29. https://www.pcgamer.com/saturday-crapshoot-geisha/. Coulon, François. 1988. “Le grand zoo : Muriel Tramis.” Joystick Hebdo, no. 7: 26. Davies, Jonathan. 1992. “Game Reviews: Fascination.” Amiga Power 17: 34–35. Harbonn, Jacques. 1992. “Fascination.” Tilt, no. 102: 86–87. Jovanovic, Jean-Loup. 1991. “Geisha.” Tilt, no. 87: 70. Kirkpatrick, Graeme. 2015. The Formation of Gaming Culture: UK Gaming Magazines, 1981-1995. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137305107. Roux, Christian. 1991. “Fascination.” Génération 4, no. 38: 130. Squires, Matt. 1992. “Complete control: Fascination.” Amiga Power, no. 19: 70–71. Švelch, Jan. 2020. “Paratextuality in Game Studies: A Theoretical Review and Citation Analysis.” Game Studies 20 (2). https://gamestudies.org/2002/articles/jan_svelch. Tarantino, Quentin. 1997. Jackie Brown. United States: Miramax Films. Taylor, Graham. 1989. “Emmanuelle.” The One, no. 7: 38–39. Tomahawk. 1989. Emmanuelle. Atari ST. France: Coktel Vision. Tomahawk. 1990. Geisha. Amiga. France: Coktel Vision. Tomahawk. 1991. Fascination. DOS. France: Coktel Vision.

ABSTRACT. Over the last decade, empathy has become a key term in both game studies and industry discourse. Empathy is regularly invoked as proof of games’ cultural value, with particular attention to so-called ‘empathy games’ that promise to help players understand the experiences of marginalised others. At the same time, there is growing scepticism about empathy as a design goal, with critics questioning both its conceptual clarity and its political effects. This paper contributes to these debates by asking a simple question from a bottom-up perspective: when players say a game ‘made them feel’, who is the primary beneficiary of that feeling, others or themselves? In doing so, it speaks directly to DiGRA 2026’s theme of Intersectional Pleasures, examining how pleasure, empathy, and identity intersect in players’ accounts of story-driven games. Conceptually, the paper starts from sociological accounts of empathy as a socially situated capacity that is shaped by context, proximity and interaction. Game studies and HCI literatures often emphasise the immersive and interactive qualities of games, suggesting that first-person perspectives, ‘choices matter’ systems, and long-form storytelling uniquely support ‘walking in someone else’s shoes’. In parallel, critical work on ‘empathy machines’ questions whether such experiences generate meaningful solidarity, or whether they invite players to consume others’ suffering as an affective resource and to substitute feeling for politics (Ruberg, 2020). This project brings those strands together and asks how empathy in games is actually lived, narrated and enjoyed by players themselves. Empirically, the paper draws on an online qualitative survey conducted with twenty adult players. Rather than presenting participants with a predefined list of ‘empathy games’, the survey invited them to choose any games, platforms, or genres that had stayed with them emotionally. Eight open questions asked respondents to describe games, characters and storylines that had affected them, taught them something new, or changed how they saw themselves or others, alongside brief socio-demographic questions. A reflexive thematic analysis was then used to identify recurring patterns in how players link emotion, pleasure and identity in their accounts of play. The analysis generated three interrelated themes: morality, identification, and personal growth. Across the sample, respondents repeatedly foregrounded moral deliberation as a key source of intensity and enjoyment. They described taking pleasure in making difficult choices, feeling responsible for companions, and watching the consequences unfold over time. Empathy here is tied less to specific marginalised groups and more to the satisfaction of exercising moral agency, testing one’s values, and reflecting on whether ‘I would have done the same’ outside the game. This moral work can feel both pleasurable and uncomfortable, and often becomes a point where players narrate games as meaningful. The second theme, identification, shows that feelings of connection are strongly shaped by timing, biography, and intersectional position. Respondents described powerful resonance when games echoed their current life situation, such as caring for a child, struggling with mental health, or coping with precarious work. Sometimes this involved clear overlaps of gender, sexuality, or marginalisation, for example non-binary players connecting with characters who felt ‘out of place’. In other cases, players described identifying across difference, for instance men feeling close to women protagonists because of shared experiences of responsibility, loss or resilience. Across these accounts, intersectional traits are present but not always explicit; what often matters most are the points where stories of class, care, embodiment or illness intersect with the player’s own life. The third theme, personal growth, further underlines the self-oriented nature of many of these experiences. When asked what games had ‘taught’ them, respondents frequently spoke about learning facts, histories or perspectives, but also about discovering their own capacities for patience, leadership, empathy or resilience. Esports, role-playing games, and sandbox titles were described as spaces for testing limits, rehearsing futures and experimenting with different ways of being. The pleasures of learning that players describe are real, yet they are usually framed in terms of individual development rather than collective transformation or sustained engagement with structures of oppression. Taken together, these findings complicate both celebratory and dismissive accounts of empathy in games. On the one hand, players clearly articulate rich emotional, ethical and reflective engagements with a wide variety of games, many of which would never be labelled as ‘empathy games’. Empathy, identification and connection do not simply reside in particular genres or mechanics; they emerge at the intersection of game design, life stage, identity and context. On the other hand, the study supports arguments that empathy in games often serves the player more than the communities represented. Participants primarily mobilise games as resources for thinking about their own morality, relationships, and capacities, rather than as tools for ongoing engagement with others’ structural disadvantage. Hence, for DiGRA’s focus on Intersectional Pleasures, the paper offers three contributions. First, it recentres players’ own accounts of what feels meaningful, pleasurable and ethically challenging in games, cutting across identity categories, genres and platforms. Second, it highlights the ambivalent relationship between empathy and pleasure in play, where ‘feeling for’ others is frequently entangled with the satisfaction of ‘feeling like’ a better, more knowledgeable, or more resilient self. Third, it suggests that future work on intersectional games and pleasurable politics should move beyond empathy as a standalone design promise, towards examining how different players use games to negotiate their own identities, privileges and vulnerabilities in situated, and sometimes self-serving, ways.

Key reference Ruberg, B. (2020). Empathy and its alternatives: Deconstructing the rhetoric of “empathy” in video games. Communication, Culture & Critique, 13(1), 54–71.

ABSTRACT. This extended abstract revisits the dominant gaming culture of the early-to-mid 2000’s, one which catered overwhelmingly to a masculine, heterosexual, and white hegemonic gamer subject known colloquially as the loser. We argue that the loser’s legitimation through douchebag games in the post-9/11, pre-Gamergate world highlights how white, male imaginaries shaped game culture in ways whose reverberations are felt even now with the rise of the alt-right. This approach offers a historically grounded account of how games shape political subjectivities and contribute to ongoing digital harms.

ABSTRACT. The Steam Group “Woke Content Detector” is created in March 2024, with the objective to establish a list distinguishing games with “woke content” from others. The members share a (very) traditionalist view on society and talk about the ways the so-called “woke enemy” has infiltrated the video game culture to disseminate some themes. Then, in May 2025, the creator of the group disappeared, leaving it without barrier against trolls who mimic the linguistic codes of the original member to mock them. However, the group continued to work but had to adapt. This presentation will seek to show the discursive and interactional changes that has occurred within the group with the departure of the sole administrator.

ABSTRACT. This abstract presents work-in-progress research on migrant game developers in South Korea. Drawn from longitudinal interview data collected since 2022 (n=11), the abstract will shed light on the condition of marginalised group of immigrant game industry workers in a homogeneous development culture.

ABSTRACT. Game developers are leveraging their medium as a tool for planetary change, challenging traditional paradigms that separate play from real-world impact. Based on ethnographic research with European developers, this study examines how bottom-up initiatives are reshaping game design and production through sustainable practices. We explore games' dual nature as both environmentally impactful products and tools for ecological engagement. The research reveals developers' intrinsic motivations to address climate challenges through creative practice while confronting the industry's material footprint. By investigating these paradoxes, the study advances understanding of game development as a culturally significant force capable of driving social and environmental change in our climate crisis era.

ABSTRACT. As of today, many papers on game localization focus on the different types of texts that translators have to deal with in their professional capacity. Authors such as Bernal-Merino (2015) have described at length the difficulties and specificities of the different types of text present in video games, but there is one element that has received little attention in Translation Studies despite appearing in most games: achievements. Achievements have been studied from the point of view of their effect on the motivation of players (Cruz et al., 2015; Blair, 2011) or their components (Hamari & Eranti, 2011), but not from the perspective of the way they are localized even though they convey a lot of information in just a few words. This paper will focus on the localization of the names of Minecraft’s achievements as they contain references to popular culture or wordplay, while simultaneously conveying essential information about the game system. In Minecraft: Java Edition, achievements are called “advancements”, which function not only as “secondary quests” (Hamari & Eranti, 2011, p. 3) but also as a structuring device that guides players through the game’s systems. Beyond this functional dimension, Minecraft’s advancements have a distinctive form: their display names frequently draw on popular culture references, wordplays and expressions that maintain a close relationship with the game’s underlying mechanics. Localizing these names requires translators to navigate the challenge of preserving the information load, but also to keep, whenever possible, a culturally meaningful element for the target culture. As stated by Hamari and Eranti (2011), achievements are composed of two main parts: the signifier, which corresponds to the visible part in the game’s interface, and the completion logic, the invisible part in the game’s code. The signifier is itself composed of several elements, such as its name, description, and associated icon, that differentiate each achievement and guide players. The completion logic comprises the trigger, the conditions and the multiplier, which together define precisely what players have to do to unlock an achievement. A detailed understanding of this completion logic is necessary when analyzing the translation of advancements’ names, since they are designed to guide players by offering indirect and implicit cues about the underlying requirements. Localizing display names therefore involves balancing two intertwined goals: maintaining the link with the completion logic and conveying cultural references in the target language. This balance is particularly challenging when cultural references do not have an equivalent in the target language, requiring translators to adapt elements from the target culture without undermining the name’s guidance function. Achieving this balance is crucial to ensuring that all players perceive and respond to the game’s objectives in a comparable way. This paper specifically analyzes the French localization of Minecraft’s display names. It explores how translators balanced conveying information about the completion logic and adapting cultural references, idioms, and wordplay, so that French players can still perceive and act upon the underlying game objectives. This paper shows that translators have often found ingenious ways to retain, modify, or recreate the balance between cultural elements and their relationships with the completion logic. They achieved this by drawing on established translation strategies, such as those described by Delisle and Fiola (2013), and adapting them to the unique requirements of interactive media. Overall, Minecraft’s advancements offer a compelling case study for the localization of achievements, which, despite their apparent simplicity, are intricately tied to gameplay and often embed numerous cultural references that require careful adaptation. By analyzing the strategies employed by the translators, this paper highlights how achievements can be effectively localized to preserve both gameplay functionality and cultural meaning, demonstrating why these elements warrant attention in video game localization research.

ABSTRACT. Game engines, particularly Unity (Unity Technologies) and Unreal Engine (Epic Games), have undergone a dramatic transformation, evolving from specialized tools for videogame development into expansive platforms that now serve film and television production, architectural visualization, live event broadcasting, automotive design, and interactive simulation development. This research examines the ramifications of this technological expansion for creative practitioners who have incorporated these engines into their professional workflows across non-gaming sectors.

Centering the investigation on London's creative economy—selected due to the United Kingdom's sustained policy emphasis on creative industries and the city's dense concentration of cultural workers—this study interrogates the uneven power dynamics that emerge when game engine technologies migrate beyond their original domain (McRobbie 2016). Through a methodological approach informed by Anna Tsing's conceptualization of friction (2004), this research attends to the specific moments where the scalability ambitions of game engine corporations encounter resistance, adaptation, and unexpected transformation. Rather than assuming seamless technological transfer across industries, this framework enables analysis of how different sectoral contexts, professional cultures, and creative practices generate friction against the universalizing logic of platform expansion.

To investigate these dynamics, I conduct interviews with what I term engine workers—the artists, technicians, and creative professionals who perform the crucial labour of translating game engine workflows and visual languages into contexts for which these tools have only recently been adapted. Data collection comprises approximately 20 in-depth interviews with London-based practitioners, conducted from April 2025, who have integrated game engines into their creative practice, supplemented by participatory observation within these emerging professional communities.

Engine workers navigate a complex terrain of dependencies and constraints. They confront technical lock-in mechanisms that bind them to proprietary ecosystems, must continuously adapt their expertise to accommodate platform updates and corporate strategic shifts, and operate within marketplace structures that mediate their access to clients and audiences. Drawing upon scholarship on the platformization of cultural production (Nieborg and Poell 2018; Poell, Nieborg and Duffy 2021) alongside critical analyses of game engine technologies and labour relations (Chia et al. 2020; Chia 2022; Freedman 2019; Nicoll and Keogh 2019; Lohmeyer 2021; Malazita 2024), this research conceptualizes game engines as platforms that accumulate power through their technical architecture, cultivate economic dependencies, and enforce particular aesthetic conventions and production methodologies.

Game engines operate as powerful intermediaries, extracting economic value from creative labour while simultaneously enabling new forms of cultural production and constraining others. They standardize aesthetic and functional approaches across previously distinct industries, raising urgent questions regarding artistic authorship, expressive heterogeneity, barriers to entry, environmental implications of increased digital infrastructure, and the consequences of accelerated digital consumption. However, these asymmetrical power relations do not remain unchallenged. Analysis of interview material and observational data reveals diverse strategies through which creative professionals—both collectively and individually—negotiate, resist, and subvert the demands imposed by client expectations and platform logics.

By analyzing how game engines reconfigure labour practices, professional autonomy, and occupational identities across multiple creative sectors, this research contributes to the theoretical understanding of platform capitalism's penetration into cultural production and the impact of videogame technologies beyond the gaming sector. It demonstrates that platformization generates not only new dependencies but also new sites of contestation, adaptation, and creative resistance. The study reveals how the supposedly neutral efficiency of technological standardization carries profound implications for who can create, what can be created, and how creative value is distributed. It examines how young graduates, established media artists, and mid-career professionals across diverse specializations are collectively rethinking creative practice in relation to game engine production.

REFERENCES Chia, Aleena. 2022. "The Metaverse, but not the way you think: Game engines and automation beyond game development." Critical Studies in Media Communication 39(3): 191–200. Chia, Aleena, Keogh, Brendan, Leorke, Dale, and Nicoll, Benjamin. 2020. "Platformisation in game development." Internet Policy Review 9(4). Freedman, Eric. 2019. The Persistence of Code in Game Engine Culture. London: Routledge. Lohmeyer, Eddie. 2021. Unstable Aesthetics: Game Engines and the Strangeness of Modding. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Malazita, Jim. 2024. Enacting Platforms: Feminist Technoscience and the Unreal Engine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McRobbie, Angela. 2016. Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries. London: Polity Press. Nicoll, Benjamin and Keogh, Brendan. 2019. The Unity Game Engine and the Circuits of Cultural Software. New York: Palgrave McMillan. Nieborg, David and Poell, Thomas. 2018. "The platformization of cultural production: Theorizing the contingent cultural commodity." New Media and Society 20(11): 4275–4292. Poell, Thomas, Nieborg, David B. and Duffy, Brooke Erin. 2021. Platforms and Cultural Production. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2004. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

ABSTRACT. It is problematic to conflate "characters" and "avatars" by using them as synonyms for a player's on-screen representation, which can cause theoretical ambiguities and lead to inaccurate assessments of player experiences. This paper delineates these concepts, so that we can measure player experiences more accurately as either "character identification" or "avatar embodiment." We provide a theoretical analysis that establishes a clear and meaningful distinction between "characters" – parts of a game's narrative with predefined emotions and motives – and "avatars" – player representations that are manipulated, controlled, and customizable. From this distinction, identification is understood as a player-character relationship (based on mental processes measured through the character's emotions, motives, and other story features); embodiment is a player-avatar relationship (i.e., the player's control or agency over this representation). We provide a theoretical framework (conceptualization) and vocabulary (operationalization) to more accurately understand, assess, and design player experiences.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to propose a new way of hosting diegetic conversations between a player character and a non-player character (NPC) in the context of interactive entertainment (video games). Instead of a preset list of dialogue options for the user to choose from, the user is allowed to create their own dialogue for the player character, and a large language model (LLM) is used to create an NPC’s response. By formatting this system correctly and managing both the unpredictable input of the player and the non-deterministic output of the LLM, an NPC can act in character according to a pre-written script and can dynamically change behavior during the interaction. This paper also goes into depth about using the low-level logical reasoning capabilities of LLMs to change game states, and the potential ways to structure, store and use semantic qualitative data using LLMs.

ABSTRACT. This paper bridges the gap between analyses of emotional rhetoric and Marxist ideology critique by highlighting the manner in which emotions and empathy contribute to the naturalisation of ideology in video games.

(see attachment for full abstract)

ABSTRACT. What counts as kitsch and tackiness in digital games?

ABSTRACT. This paper extends an established framework for analysing abstraction and realism in serious games by introducing a seventh dimension that accounts for how cultural meaning is constructed, represented and interpreted within game environments. While the existing model describes the pedagogical implications of fidelity across visuals, audio, mechanics and interface, rules, narrative and feedback, they provide limited guidance for understanding how domain-specific values, practices and material cultures are encoded into playable experiences. To address this gap, the proposed Domain Culture System draws on anthropological theory and intercultural game studies to articulate how cultural ideology, practice and material can be conveyed at varying levels of abstraction and realism. The resulting multidimensional spectrum provides designers and researchers with a structured way to examine how cultural logics shape player interpretation, engagement and learning, alongside other factors that influence the realism of serious games.

ABSTRACT. Serious games often rely on familiar dynamics of play. Curiosity, collaborative problem solving, and the pleasure of working through a clue can draw people into topics that they might otherwise avoid. When the subject is older adult mistreatment, however, play becomes charged in a particular way. It can create an opening, but it can also feel at odds with the gravity of the issue. This paper examines how that tension is negotiated in La valise de Lise, which led to the co-development of adaptations of the game with two Indigenous communities: the James Bay Cree and Nunavik Inuit. We argue that the concept of transcreation offers an ethically attuned and culturally grounded approach for the co-creation of serious games across contexts. In the original Québec French version of La valise de Lise, players open a locked suitcase and piece together the fragments of a fictional older woman’s life. As players solve the puzzles, examine objects, decipher documents, and work together to interpret clues, they gradually recognize a situation of mistreatment within a family setting that is subtle and relational. The game, which is inspired by the escape room genre, asks players to pay attention and recognize the ambiguity often present in situations of mistreatment. In Haraway’s terms, it encourages them to “stay with the trouble” (2016) rather than reach for quick resolutions. In line with Flanagan’s (2009) work on critical play, the game relies on the capacity of play to unsettle assumptions and open pathways for reflection within a structured but exploratory environment. When the Cree and Inuit communities invited our team to adapt the game, a first, obvious step to initiating the adaptation was considering translation (from the original French to English, Cree, or Inuktitut) and localization (setting the game in “the North”). However, these two processes would not have been adequate for this work. Both translation and localization would have left the underlying text stable across cultural contexts, merely converting the language of play and leading to superficial changes in game elements (Bernal-Merino 2015; O’Hagan and Mangiron 2013). While accounting for these aspects is crucial, older adult mistreatment is not experienced or interpreted in identical ways across communities and cultures. The clues that signal harm, the nuances of family relationships, and the words available to describe dynamics all carry different meanings—not to mention the context of colonial domination and histories of local resistances. Mere translation into Cree or Inuktitut, for example, still risks transporting external understandings of mistreatment from the South into a Northern context where they do not fit, may flatten local concepts of kinship, care, and obligation, and may reproduce past histories of colonial violence and trauma. Further, play, storytelling, and collaborative problem-solving already hold deep cultural significance in Cree and Inuit social life, often shaping how learning unfolds and how knowledge is transmitted across generations. Work by Cruikshank (1998) on storytelling as situated knowledge and by Igloliorte (2017) on Inuit narrative and visual practices underscores the importance of understanding play not simply as “mechanics” but as culturally meaningful modes of engagement. For this reason, the adaptation work has entailed slow, in-depth collaborations with local community members, as well as a demand that we situate ourselves as members of white settler culture. Transcreation is a concept that offers an understanding of the need for an expansive and creative re-authoring of content in this context. The goal of transcreation as a process is not to preserve the source text but to retain the intended emotional and narrative force (O’Hagan and Mangiron 2006; Pedersen 2014). Transcreation assumes that a one-to-one equivalence across cultures is rarely possible and acknowledges that narrative, tone, pacing, meaning, and affect need to be redefined. In the case of La valise de Lise, this has meant rethinking story arcs, using locally meaningful objects and symbols, working with local artists, rethinking puzzles, and reframing the relational dynamics at the core of the story. The core experience remains the same insofar as players still discover mistreatment through careful collective inquiry, yet the expression of that experience shifts in ways that are culturally appropriate and take into account the specific history of colonialism and decolonization being undertaken by these two Indigenous communities. The titles of the new games, Jane’s Journey and Mary’s Message, reflect this re-authoring process and the collaborative shaping of each game’s narrative identity. These changes bring forward a question: How can the playful qualities of the game support thoughtful engagement with a topic shaped by histories of pain, vulnerability, and silence? The Cree and Inuit adaptations do not reject playfulness and pleasure. Instead, they treat them as tools to be handled with intention. Enjoyment does not erase seriousness; rather, it can create enough distance for participants to move toward a discussion of difficult material at a manageable pace. In this presentation, we argue that transcreation, as a guiding concept, serves three important functions. First, it preserves the procedural intention of the game rather than its literal storyline. Following Bogost’s work on procedural rhetoric (2007), what matters is the structure of inquiry and interpretation that the game invites. Second, it enables ethical resonance with the targeted community of players. By reworking both narrative and material cues, transcreation ensures that the experience remains meaningful without imposing external moral expectations. Third, it helps manage the tension between the ludic and the serious. Playful elements are not removed, but they are used to support attentiveness, emotional pacing, and a willingness to stay in conversation. Together, these functions illustrate how transcreation contributes to broader discussions in game studies about the cultural portability of serious games and the ethical challenges of designing for diverse communities. The Cree and Inuit adaptations of La valise de Lise suggest that transcreation is not a simple task of co-production. It entails an ethical commitment to designing serious games that can be adapted across cultural contexts without losing their complexity or sensitivity. Transcreation keeps the door open for curiosity, discomfort, discovery, and care, and allows players to stay with the trouble long enough to consider mistreatment in ways that acknowledge existing colonial histories and broader dynamics of power, while reflecting the specificity of cultural contexts and familial relationships. REFERENCES Bernal-Merino, M. Á. (2015). Translation and Localisation in Video Games: Making Entertainment Software Global. Routledge. Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. MIT Press. Cruikshank, J. (1998). The Social Life of Stories: Narrative and Knowledge in the Yukon Territory. UBC Press. Flanagan, M. (2009). Critical Play: Radical Game Design. MIT Press. Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. Igloliorte, H. (2017). Inuit artistic expression and Indigenous knowledge. In The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories. Routledge. Mangiron, C., & O’Hagan, M. (2006). Game localization: Unleashing imagination with “restricted” translation. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 6, 10–21. O’Hagan, M., & Mangiron, C. (2013). Game Localization: Translating for the Global Digital Entertainment

ABSTRACT. The institutionalization of game education has historically relied on curriculum models exported from North America and Western Europe. However, as game development democratizes globally, a one-size-fits-all pedagogical approach is becoming increasingly insufficient. As Grace notes in the inaugural issue of the ACM Glboal Games Educaion Now Series, the current era of global games education is defined by a rapid diversification of methods, where the "now" of game education requires a distinct focus on regional context and adaptability (Grace, 2024). This presentation, informed by findings from Global Games Education Now workshops in June and November of 2025 helps widen the discourse around challenges and standards for games focused curricula higher education. The work draws upon the comparative analysis of syllabi (Gandolfi, 2021) to explore how educators across continents are delivering games education to meet changing regional needs.

The research features observations about the unique needs and points of address for Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East/North Africa (MENA), Oceania, and the Global North. By highlighting regional realities, this works moves beyond theoretical discourse to offer actionable frameworks for inclusive, culturally responsible, and forward-looking game education. It draws from work on educational communities as varied as Türkiye (Catak, 2025), Indonesia (Wibow et al., 2024), and Kenya (Aseey, 2021).

ABSTRACT. This paper addresses a key challenge in teaching Interactive Filmmaking: the lack of accessible, free software that allows students to create interactive film experiences without requiring intermediate programming skills. This issue is especially pressing given the financial constraints of universities, the high cost of filmmaking equipment, and the fact that many students in interactive film courses come from arts and humanities backgrounds, where coding anxiety is common (Jr and Amoloza 2015; Morais et al. 2018). In response, this paper introduces a modified version of Twine—a widely used tool for interactive storytelling—that is adapted to provide a mostly drag-and-drop interface. The goal is to enable students to create interactive films similar to Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (Slade 2018) or I’m Your Man (Bejan 1992), democratizing the creation of interactive films for non-technical students.

ABSTRACT. EXTENDED ABSTRACT

In the emerging body of research concerning the intersection of poetry and games, there is a degree of consensus that poem-game hybrids are most likely to be successful when they revolve around either puzzle mechanics, ‘slow’ gameplay (Navarro-Remesal, 2016) or gentle exploration. Agata Waszkiewicz has said, for example, that ‘poetry-making’ in video games is most often “presented in a form of poems-as-puzzles: the player can only choose words or verses to complete a poem” (Waszkiewicz, 2024); her research focuses on examples of these, as well as the various ways video games strive to be ‘poetic’, usually by encouraging and leaving space for reflection, offering resistance to interpretation, or generating a mysterious or beautiful atmosphere (Waszkiewicz, 2025). Other researchers are similarly interested in “using poetic gameplay to create a sense of defamiliarization […] and encourage reflection” (Mitchel et al, 2020) or how a game’s “text, avatar presentation, visual style, and interaction logics work together to establish an intriguing mode of poetic address” (Magnuson, 2023).

These are not traits readily associated with games that foreground combat mechanics, let alone those with a focus on simulated single combat with hand weapons or fists. Where poetry (of one kind or another) does emerge in such contexts, as in 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch Productions), it is usually through a mini-game or side quest – something which offers a break from the primary compulsion loop. If we widen our field of enquiry from poetry to language games more generally, there are some notable exceptions: Cryptmaster (Akupara Games, 2024) requires that players input words one letter at a time to occasion violent actions from one of four party members, such that the player can be understood to perform a harsh, staccato verse. They are also encouraged to fill out partially incomplete words to unlock more options, strengthen members of the party, or reveal some of the game’s backstory. In the Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia (Morbidware, 2019), meanwhile, the player must type incantations at the same time as dodging incoming attacks; a unique style of difficulty arises from having to think of words and movement at the same time.

It is possible, of course, for simulated combat to be slowed for the purposes of permitting more complex and carefully determined strategies. This is the norm in turn-based fantasy role-playing games, especially of the table-top variety, where flow of combat is determined – and represented – by the outcome of sequential dice rolls, with combatants taking turns to move or attack. This carries through to video games derived from the same or similar intellectual properties, such as Torment: Tides of Numenera (inXile Entertainment, 2017), as well as deck-based combat games like Slay the Spire (Mega Crit, 2019), where combinations of cards are used in place of dice rolls. If action mechanics can be made less frantic in this way without completely breaking the illusion of intense, fast, face-to-face clashes, then they can theoretically be slowed down sufficiently to allow for engagement with poetry, even incorporating poetry into combat simulation.

This paper is therefore positioned as a report on the progress of a practical investigation into the creation of a simulated hand-to-hand combat system which simultaneously functions as a kind of collaborative poetry generator. The purpose of such a system is to explore the potential meaning of virtual combat beyond that which is widely accepted: namely, that it recreates the thrill of actual combat in a low-to-zero-risk environment, affords spectacle, and produces a dynamic barrier for players to overcome. In poems like ‘Late Round’ by Kim Addonizio (Addonizio, 1993) and ‘The Boxers’ by Michael Longley (Longley, 2014), hand-to-hand combat also functions as metaphor for other kinds of human intimacy and misalignment – less spectacle, more rough reality. Can this richer potential for meaning be made a feature of games which utilize player decision-making and chance as their principal engines, and which seek to represent violence graphically? If so, this would open up a new front in the nascent genre of ‘game poems’ and expand our understanding of the ways these two mediums can interact with one another.

ABSTRACT. Methodological approaches to managing game development (and) research lifecycles are often fragmented. This paper translates Howell and Stevens’ (2019) Game Space Model (GSM) into the Game Space Methodology, a stage-based framework for organising game development and practice-based research. The methodology reorders the GSM’s “game-as” units into nine practical stages, guiding a project from Design Philosophy through Design, Creation, Publication, Play, and finally Analysis. Each stage highlights indicative processes, outputs, and methods drawn from design research and related paradigms. After outlining how the GSM was translated into a practical framework, the paper uses a single-case study of What We Take With Us – a multi-format, values-conscious wellbeing game – to demonstrate its efficacy. The case shows how the methodology supports planning, documentation, and cross-stage reflection, but also highlights limitations around its labour demands, fit with industrial approaches, and stages of the game development process that may currently be unconsidered in the methodology.

ABSTRACT. As products of both creative endeavors and corporate planning, game characters are prepared and transported for player engagement. Previous research about representation, both videogame characters as well as identity politics, and marginalized game industry workers, has been at the forefront of gender- and feminist writings in interdisciplinary game studies. This study is located in the intersection of these perspectives, focusing on the King’s Diversity Space, a game design and research collaboration between King, Activision: Blizzard, and the MIT Game Lab (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Game Lab). The results show how different goals, limited transparency, misinformation in promotional material and eventual loss of equal ownership resulted in an eventually non-successful collaboration.

ABSTRACT. Current research on in-game monetization emphasize addiction, gambling-like mechanics, deception, and children, with solutions focusing on transparency and improved information uptake. Yet, many adult players who object to existing monetization strategies are neither addicted nor misinformed; they understand the mechanics and incentives, and still feel taken advantage of. This paper identifies two overlooked opportunities developers have to take unfair advantage of informed adults. Drawing on the exploitation literature, I argue that in-game monetization can be exploitative of vulnerabilities inherent to ordinary gameplay. Exploitation can occur substantively through unfair pricing, since microtransactions are not presented in competitive environments and so do not satisfy the standard conditions for price fairness. Exploitation can also occur procedurally through ordinary, non-pathological changes to players' rational profiles induced by gameplay. Responsibility thereby shifts to creators when we acknowledge that vulnerabilities arise from the gaming environment itself rather than deceptive practices or information deficits.

ABSTRACT. A non-violent game is not merely a video game in which the player is stripped of the possibility of fighting or hitting back. Rather, it is a title in which the mechanical aspects of the game offer clear constructive alternatives to violence – a way of interacting with the environment and the population of a fictional world in an attempt to solve problems, reduce conflicts, communicate with others, and facilitate intimacy and understanding. In this paper, I analyse L.O.L.: Lack of Love (Love-de-Lic, 2000) and Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games, 2020) as different approaches towards the implementation of active non-violence as a gameplay mechanic and a source of pleasure. Drawing on queer game studies scholarship by Bonnie Ruberg, Naomi Clark, and Anastasia Salter, I investigate how avatar identity is constructed in both titles – as a non-human entity capsizing the "survival-of-the-fittest" logic in L.O.L. and as a non-binary psychopomp in Spiritfarer. I further characterise how each title constructs affirmative non-violent action: as symbiosis (the act of coexisting in a mutually beneficial relationship with other beings) in L.O.L., and as liberating care work (tending to the needs of a vulnerable other while enabling them to regain autonomy) in Spiritfarer. In so doing, I hope to show two instances in which the labour of non-violence turns into a pleasure that can rival the glee of destructive violence so prevalent in many video games. (for the full extended abstract, please see PDF included)

ABSTRACT. This article focuses on and explores the intersection between game studies and folkloristics. Specifically, it considers The Mooseman, a game by Russian studio Morteshka, from the perspective of cultural preservation. It considers the way that the game represents the reconstructed Permian mythology, modeled after the metal castings in the Permian animal style, in its narrative, its audio-visuals, and its mechanics. It also considers the place of the game, as an artistic interpretation of an ongoing field of academic study, in the broader context of cultural preservation  and heritage studies. To do this, it draws upon discourses in game studies, heritage studies, and folkloristics.

ABSTRACT. The discussion around the value of authenticity is a fundamental element of the Western history of thought. Since the formalisation of the cave allegory in The Republic (Plato, Book VII, 2000), Western reflection has been greatly concerned by the truth-falsehood dichotomy. This notion can be seen throughout the history of philosophy after Plato, with most philosophers thereafter positioning the truth as their teleological imperative, with authors such as Descartes (1996) serving as a prime example. In the XX century, due to the prominence of existentialist writers such as Martin Heidegger or Jean-Paul Sartre, authenticity became a fundamental aspect of philosophy. Nowadays, the notion of authentic experience emerges in the context of cultural studies (Zimmerman, 2021). The problem of authenticity is evident in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive, 2025), where it is the fundamental aspect of the plot. In my presentation, employing a close reading method, further enhanced by Kłosiński’s hermeneutical approach (2022), I aim to illustrate how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 can be read as an explication of an experience of the fictional world and the issues related to it. Clair Obscur utilises its narrative, especially its ending, as a philosophical discussion about the authenticity of the individual experience, understood from the existential perspective (Heidegger, 2008). Clair Obscur’s storyline revolves around the denizens of the city of Lumière, led by Maelle and her brother Gustave, who try to stop the cataclysm controlled by the malevolent entity called the paintress. However, throughout its runtime, the storyline becomes completely subverted, as the player and the characters realise that the world, in which the story takes place, is a piece of art created by the members of the Dessandre family, of which Maelle is a part. This reveals a change in the narrative’s goal. Maelle and Verso – her brother from the “real” world – attempt to free the painting from the reign of the members of Dessandre family. Ultimately, the game culminates in a confrontation between Maelle and Verso. Maelle wishes to preserve the painting, while Verso aims to destroy it. Both characters present conflicting philosophical perspectives: 1. Existential reading (Verso): authenticity is the experience of one’s being-in-the-world (Heidegger, 2008). The world of Clair Obscur is not real, as its elements exist only in the ontological sense, and not the existential one (Sartre, 2018). Authenticity is objective, as it emerges from the experience of one’s existence. Verso is aware that his existence is not authentic, because he exists in a fictional world 2. Absurdist reading (Maelle): The concept of authenticity is meaningless, as it is as fake as the painting itself. The subject has the power to make anything authentic. The meaning of an experience cannot be found; it must be created (Camus, 2018). Maelle knows that the painting is not real, but she chooses to believe that it is. The confrontation happens as the focal point of the narrative. The characters of Clair Obscur believe that their world is real. However, in a moment of metalepsis (Waszkiewicz, 2024), they become emmersed1 (Kubiński, 2015), as they realise that every part of their world, aside from Maelle, is inauthentic. The confrontation between Maelle and Verso answers whether the world they inhabit is authentic. If Maelle wins, the world is deemed authentic. If Verso wins, the world is considered fake. However, the confrontation also happens from the player’s perspective, which mirrors that of the characters. At first, the player is led to believe that the characters inhabit the “real” world, which is then subverted in the moment of metalepsis and their emmersion from the fiction. The final confrontation puts the decision of authenticity in the player’s hands. If the player chooses Maelle, the world of Clair Obscur is real. If the player chooses Verso, it is fake. The player experiences their own immersive metalepsis. The player knows from the start that the world of Clair Obscur is not real, as it is a part of the video game. The subversion of the game’s narrative reflects the game’s main conflict onto the player. The player must decide whether their experience of the fictional world was authentic, thus worth preserving, or fake, hence not worthy of their time. I propose that Clair Obscur explicates the fundamental issue behind one’s every experience of art objects, which I conceptualise as the pleasant fictionality dilemma. Video games, like every other piece of culture, are created, which evokes the question of the authenticity of one’s experience. If the experience of the game is real, thus authentic, it puts a real emphasis on the player to care (Sorge) (Heidegger, 2008) for the elements of the 1 Emmersion is the moment of disillusionment of the player. The player’s engagement with the fictional world breaks, which leads to their realisation that they are partaking in a artificial experience. game-world. This can be seen as an instance of a wicked choice (Sicart, 2013). In this case, the wicked choice is related to the pleasure felt by the player during their play. If they deem their pleasure as real, then they have to also consider the object of their pleasure as real, which puts actual moral and ontological obligations upon them. If they consider their pleasure as fake, then this also makes the object of their desire not real. This absolves the player of their obligations, but questions the reality of their experience. In summary, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game centred on the concept of authenticity. The main story concludes with a choice, whether the fictional world is an authentic place, thus making the experience of it real. This conflict happens on two levels. Firstly, it is decided within the game’s story. Secondly, lies within the player, who decides whether their experience of the game was authentic. The pleasant fictionality dilemma can be seen as an instance of wicked choice, where the game tests the player’s positions in relation to ethics, aesthetics, and ontology. Authenticity is a crucial aspect concerning studies of works of art, as it carries a massive amount of obligations with it.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines the increasingly fluid boundaries between sound design and musical scoring in contemporary “cozy games,” with particular attention to Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Unpacking. These games cultivate atmospheres of comfort, intimacy, and low-stakes engagement, yet their sound worlds are anything but simple. Instead, they rely on complex sonic ecologies in which environmental audio, Foley-like effects, and melodic scoring are woven together so tightly that traditional distinctions between design and composition are no longer sufficient. By extending the logic of cinematic Foley into interactive settings—and by treating moment-to-moment player actions as compositional events—cozy games construct sonic spaces that are responsive, affectively rich, and narratively expressive.

In Stardew Valley, sound design functions as a musical collaborator. While the game is well known for its pastoral melodies and seasonally shifting score, its environmental audio is equally integral to its affective impact. Action sounds such as watering crops, chopping wood, swinging tools, or the gentle puff of picked berries are carefully tuned and often pitched to sit comfortably within the harmonic palette of the background music. These sounds occur in patterned rhythms shaped by player behavior, creating emergent percussive layers that interlock with the composed soundtrack. As a result, Stardew Valley produces a hybridized acoustic ecology: the farm becomes both a site of labor and a dynamic instrument, allowing players to “perform” the space through their routine gestures. The sonic satisfaction associated with these actions is not incidental—it is built into the game’s design to reinforce a sense of embodied calm, ritual, and progress.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons extends this blend of score and design by anchoring its musical identity in diurnal cycles, meteorological conditions, and environmental textures. The rustling of cedar trees, the soft sibilance of ocean surf, the Foley of crafting at a workbench, and the hollow clink of fishing lures hitting water all coexist with the game’s hourly musical themes. These ambient sounds are not merely background; they are foregrounded moments of sonic pleasure that fluctuate depending on weather, time of day, and the kinds of activities the player engages in. The game’s audio engine subtly integrates these elements by adjusting spatialization, filtering, and volume to produce a continuous, evolving soundscape, one that supports and sometimes even replaces melodic scoring. In this sense, New Horizons behaves like a living composition—its score is less a fixed entity than an environmental process in which sound design functions as an adaptive musical layer. The player’s movement through the island acts as a form of navigation through a spatialized score.

Unpacking, by contrast, demonstrates the expressive potential of Foley as narrative and musical material. With no spoken dialogue and only a minimal musical score, the game relies on the hyper-specific sounds of object handling to tell its story. The thud of a hardcover book, the soft crinkle of fabric, the resonant tap of ceramic, and the satisfying scrape of placing items on different surfaces are designed with meticulous precision. These sounds draw directly from film Foley traditions, where quotidian sounds are heightened to convey texture, emotion, and presence. Yet in Unpacking, this Foley work becomes a compositional system: each room, each stage of life, and each object placement forms a subtle percussive pattern that guides the player’s emotional engagement. The result is a kind of tactile music, where rhythm, timbre, and repetition communicate memory, transition, and domestic intimacy.

Taken together, these games reveal how cozy game audio operates as a form of “ambient composition” that merges cinematic Foley’s tactile expressivity (Ament 2024; Durand 2024, 2023; Mera 2016; Pinheiro 2023), ecological and multisensory listening (Galloway and Hambleton 2024; Galloway 2024, 2019), and the spatial logics of exploratory play (Scully-Blaker 2024, 2016). Whereas film Foley traditionally supports visual realism, in cozy games it becomes a primary affective force—foregrounded, pleasurable, and musically consequential. Everyday sounds, I argue, are elevated to compositional status, crafting a sonic rhetoric of care and attunement. They reward slow play, sustain gentle atmospheres, and encourage players to inhabit their digital environments not just visually, but acoustically and haptically.

By blurring the lines between sound design and musical scoring (Kulezić-Wilson 2019), cozy games challenge long-standing hierarchies within game audio production and sound studies. They demonstrate how environmental sound can function as a narrative vector, a rhythmic framework, and an affective anchor. Moreover, they model new paradigms of digital sound practice in which comfort, gentleness, and sensory attunement are central compositional values. These soft sonic worlds invite players into forms of listening that are ecological, embodied, and reciprocal—spaces where sound becomes companionship and where players, through their actions, co-compose the seam between design and score.

REFERENCES Ament, V. T. 2024. “Performative sound design: A cultural perspective on the art and craft of Foley.” In The Routledge Handbook of Sound Design, edited by Michael Filimowicz, 95-107. Routledge. Durand, J. 2024. “Library music as a matter of time.” Time & Society 33 (2): 212-233. Durand, J. 2023. “Library music as the soundtrack of YouTube.” In Remediating Sound: Repeatable Culture, YouTube and Music. London: Bloomsbury Academic, edited by Holly Rogers, João Francisco Porfírio, and Joana Freitas, 203-222. Routledge. Galloway, K. 2024. “Sounds of Extraction and Collection and Listening to the Pixelated Resources of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing: New Horizons.” In Music and Sonic Environments in Video Games, edited by Kate Galloway and Elizabeth Hambleton, 200-223. Routledge. Galloway, K. 2019. “Soundwalking and the aurality of Stardew Valley: An ethnography of listening to and interacting with environmental game audio.” In Music in the Role-Playing Game, edited by William Gibbons and Steven Reale, 159-178. Routledge. Galloway, K. and E. Hambleton, ed. 2024. Music and Sonic Environments in Video Games: Listening to and Performing Ludic Soundscapes. Routledge. Kulezic-Wilson, D. 2019. Sound Design is the New Score: Theory, Aesthetics, and Erotics of the Integrated Soundtrack. Oxford University Press. Mera, M. 2016. “Materialising Film Music.” In The Cambridge Companion to Film Music, edited by Mervyn Cooke and Fiona Ford, 157-172. Cambridge University Press. Pinheiro, S. 2023. “Foley gesture: Towards a theory of Acousmatic Foley.” New Sound International Journal of Music 61 (1): 60-83. Scully-Blaker, R. 2024. “The politics of wholesome games: Conservative comforts and radical softness.” Configurations 32 (2): 129-143. Scully-Blaker, R. 2016. “Re-curating the accident: Speedrunning as community and practice.” PhD diss., Concordia University.

ABSTRACT. INTRODUCTION This study investigates how specific moments in game live-streaming transform into a spectacle, in the form of emotional climaxes, that triggers intense audience reactions and disseminated as edited highlights. While existing research examine game live-streaming as a general construct, with a focus on participation motives (Cabeza-Ramírez et al. 2021; Li et al. 2020; Jodén and Strandell 2022), this study concentrates on specific highlight moments and conceptualizes them as spectacle. To conceptualise this transformation, the study employed an integrated theoretical framework that explains not only how such moments emerge within the performance and interactivity, in and around the livestreaming, but also how they escalate into ritualised collective spectacles. Drawing on Goffman’s (2023) dramaturgy and its extension to live-streaming contexts (Taylor 2018; Li et al. 2019), the study understands the stream as an ongoing, co-constructed performance in which streamers actively manage impressions while viewers participate through commentary, responses, and platform-specific expressive tools. This performative environment is further intensified through interactivity, defined as reciprocal, contingent communication supported by technological features (Bonner 2010; Lee 2005; Rafaeli et al. 2007). Lee’s (2021) multidimensional model clarifies how user control, responsiveness, personalization, and connectedness contribute to a dynamic co-performance, making the stream a site where meanings are continually negotiated. Within this interactive performance ecology, incongruity humour becomes a key mechanism that “charges” particular moments. Following incongruity theory (Raskin 1985; Morreall 1983), humour arises from the gap between expectation and outcome. In live-streaming, this typically occurs when a streamer’s stated intention, confident prediction, or carefully crafted performance suddenly collapses into an unexpected or contradictory outcome. Such incongruous disruptions not only attract immediate attention but also create a fertile trigger for viewer participation, prompting rapid chat reactions, shared jokes, or collective mocking. These strands collectively explain how particular moments become affectively charged and socially meaningful within the flow of the stream. Another explains how charged moments escalate into collective spectacle through ritualised audience participation. Collins’s (2014) interaction ritual model illuminates how synchronous engagement, such as bursts of danmu, repeated emotes, or coordinated textual reactions, creates the conditions for collective effervescence. When group co-presence, shared focus, boundary-making, and shared emotional tone align, individual reactions become amplified into a collective, synchronised response. This ritualised escalation marks the key transition from an isolated performance mishap to a socially recognised and emotionally intensified moment. Eventually, Debord’s (2021) notion of spectacle offers a lens for understanding how these ritualised reactions become further transformed into hyper-visible cultural products. Once clipped, circulated, and algorithmically amplified, these moments take on a “pseudo-reality” that exceeds the original live interaction. The spectacle therefore emerges not only from the streamer’s actions but from the layered interplay of performance, interactivity, humour, ritual participation, and platform mediation. METHODOLOGY This study utilises Androutsopoulo’s (2018) discourse-centred online ethnography. The target groups are non-esports streamers on the platforms of Douyin and Huya, broadcasting competitive multiplayer game Honor of Kings (TiMi Studios Group 2015). Full-session screen recordings capture gameplay, streamers’ verbal performances, and synchronous chat logs. This study aims to extract the highlight moments when certain actions from streamers cause a surge of audience reactions (e.g., bursts of corresponding danmu logs) and are even being made into video clips. Drawing on discourse analysis, the study examines communicative practices and semiotic resources. Analysis focuses on the common performances from streamers and audiences in constructing highlight moments. This study further examines how such moments occur within their broader sociocultural contexts. PRELIMINARY RESULT Preliminary findings reveal that the emergence of spectacles is not merely incidental but patterned. One of the spectacle archetypes based on initial data analysis found out a specific genre of streaming spectacle which we defined it as “xiafan”which is produced when a streamer’s gameplay performance strays significantly away from what is expected. For example, one streamer stated that he would perform a “Penta Kill”—killing all the five players’ characters in the opposing team, but ended with killing only four players and death, leading to flood of repetitive viewers’ phrase such as “?”, “xiafan”, “take down”, “hahaha” in the chat window. This gap between expectation and presentation aligns with Morreall’s (1983) incongruity humor and generates rapid, repetitive chat reactions. What begins as a single performance disruption is reframed by co-performance (Li et al. 2019) , reconstructing the failure, into a collective emotional climax.

As reactions synchronise, Collins’s (2014) interaction ritual becomes visible in live. The shared focus and the alignment of emotional tone generate “collective effervescence”(Collins 2014, 35). This ritual dynamic both amplifies and anchors the moment, making it especially memorable and naturally suited for extraction as a highlight clip. Once detached from its original moment and recirculated through platform algorithms, the incident takes on a new life shaped by Debord’s (2021) spectacle logic, becoming a hyper-visible, self-contained piece of entertainment that exists independently of the live-stream’s ordinary flow. In this sense, the spectacle is not only co-produced but cyclically reproduced, revealing how streaming cultures embed emotional and aesthetic value into brief, humorous ruptures of performance.

ABSTRACT. Seeking to build a critical race studies methodology that bridges formalist and cultural approaches to game studies, the article explores how a videogame’s various structures function as interconnected systems through which videogames communicate meaning via repetition. Drawing parallels between how games generate meaning through repetitive play and how racial formations are naturalized through repeated cultural practices, the article offers racial recursivity as a methodology for critical race game studies while demonstrating that formalist analysis and critical race studies are not oppositional but complementary tools for understanding how race operates in videogames and culture writ-large. The article applies this critical race studies methodology to the videogame BioShock, showing how the game is informed by racial ideas, which are, in turn, naturalized through repetition within both the game and across culture. This article establishes the theoretical groundwork for analyzing how game mechanics, aesthetics, and narratives work recursively to reinforce racial logics.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines how the indie game Jalopy (MinskWorks, 2018) critiques the dominant narrative of “freedom of movement” following the fall of the Berlin Wall by modeling mobility as precarious and intersectional. Drawing on mobility studies—particularly the “mobility turn” and concepts of mobility justice—it analyzes how the game’s mechanics of breakdown and repair, resource scarcity, and border negotiation transform the romanticized road trip into a labor-intensive experience. Through thematic and aesthetic close reading, the paper argues that Jalopy uses procedural rhetoric to expose the socio-political complexities of mobility, nostalgia (Ostalgie), and migration in post-socialist Europe. By centering an immigrant protagonist returning to Turkey, the game foregrounds how the pleasures of movement are stratified by status, infrastructure, and identity, challenging the notion that travel was a universal right in the wake of German reunification. (The submission is an Extended Abstract, please refer to the attached file)

ABSTRACT. In this paper I propose to look at artistic in-game photography (e.g. Poremba 2007; Giddings 2013; Gerling 2018; Möring und De Mutiis 2019; Švelch 2021; Zylinska 2023; Gerling u. a. 2023) through the lens of care ethics. The central argument is that many works from the brief history of artistic in-game photography can be understood as media of care because they exhibit specific care structures and participate in contemporary care discourses—thematically, structurally, or materially. The COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly elevated public perception of video games as media of care, making them visible to broader audiences as spaces for social connection, political protest, and self-care during lockdowns like e.g. Animal Crossing: New Horizon (Nintendo EPD 2020). This research extends this understanding to photographic practices within games, demonstrating how in-game photographs articulate pressing social questions and make marginalized interests visible. The analysis combines game studies, photography theory, and feminist care ethics, building on work in existential phenomenology (Leino 2013) and care ethics (Fisher und Tronto 1990; Puig de la Bellacasa 2011; The Care Collective 2020). The most popular definition of care then is “a species activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible” (Fisher und Tronto 1990). On the basis of this definition, I distinguish two fundamental care structures (Anonymous First Author): Existential Care is derived from a game’s gameplay condition (Leino 2009; 2013) and the structurally inscribed responsibility of players for their freedom as players and the successful continuation of a given game. Access to the game's image world depends on the survival of the player character or fulfillment of the gameplay conditions. In viewing this as an existential care aspect not merely of the game but also the game’s visual level allows me to extend Möring’s notion of the "Conditional Cyberimage" (Möring 2023). This care structure is fundamental to most forms of in-game photography, as photographers must first keep their avatars alive to access photographic locations. This is even the case when they use a photo mode that allows to suspend the gameplay condition. Relational Care, derived from Puig de la Bellacasa's "Matters of Care" (2011), describes how games become embedded in care ecologies extending beyond the ludic context. In-game photographs become nodes where different interests intersect and marginalized concerns receive attention and visibility. For this paper I aim to analyze key works of artistic in-game photography through media-aesthetic and photography-theoretical analysis, including: Joanna Zylinska's Flowcuts (2020; 2021) from The Last of Us Remastered (Naughty Dog 2014); Pascal Greco's Place(s) (2022) from Death Stranding (Kojima Productions 2019); Robert Overweg's The End of the Virtual World (2010); Alan Butler's Down and Out in Los Santos (2015) from Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar North 2013); Marie-Lena Höftmann's Women of Sekiro (2020) from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (From Software 2019); Thomas Spies’ Americana (2019), Total Refusal’s machinima film Hardly Working (2022) Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games und Rockstar Studios 2018) and Lorna Ruth Galloway's Twentysix Gasoline Stations in GTA V (2016). The analysis identifies several categories through which artistic in-game photographs function as media of care: Pandemic Images: Works like Zylinska's Flowcuts and Greco's Place(s) were created during COVID-19 lockdowns when physical travel became impossible. These photographers turned to post-apocalyptic game worlds to continue their practice, creating a form of reverse escapism—engaging with temporarily unreachable realities through virtual photography. Their depopulated landscapes reflect the fragility of care relationships and the precariousness of life under neoliberal capitalism, particularly as critical infrastructures collapsed during the pandemic. Marginal Spaces: Overweg's and Natalie Maximova's works document the edges of virtual worlds—spaces that should remain invisible, breaking the illusion of perfectly staged photorealistic 3D environments. These media-reflexive works can be understood as acts of care for the medium of video games itself, showing its artistic possibilities and distinguishing it from stigmatizing discourses. Social and Economic Critique: Butler's Down and Out in Los Santos makes homelessness visible as a "Matter of Care," questioning why lives that have fallen through welfare systems constitute a plausible representation of a major city in a video game. Höftmann's Women of Sekiro addresses gender representation, making visible the few women in the game who are literally marginalized in hard-to-reach background areas. Spies' Americana and Total Refusal's machinima film Hardly Working from thematize precarious working and living conditions, pointing to the algorithmic nature of both virtual and real-world labor. Environmental Critique: Galloway's Twentysix Gasoline Stations in GTA V combines media reflexivity with environmental criticism through its choice of charcoal screen printing, pointing to the harmful effects of carbon and fossil fuels—the very resources that make video games possible. This research establishes care as an analytical category for examining artistic in-game photography, demonstrating how structural conditions of gameplay become effective in photographic practices. It shows how in-game photographs participate in global care discourses around climate crisis, social inequality, and precarity, while problematizing the paradox that video games themselves are part of the criticized exploitation structures. Artistic in-game photography extends far beyond documentary or aesthetic functions. As media of care, these works articulate urgent social questions and give visibility to marginalized interests.

ABSTRACT. Drawing from empirical studies with gaming men in Finland and Norway and building on queer and feminist theory, this extended abstract advocates for a new research paradigm on men in game cultures. The suggested paradigm is one that better acknowledges men's subjectivities and, alongside examining gendered power structures, explores how men negotiate their relationship with these structures. This helps construct a more robust understanding of men’s gendered experiences of game cultures and paves the way towards a more hopeful future.

ABSTRACT. This study, based on interviews with 25 players of the Chinese MOBA game Honor of Kings (2015), investigates why and how players come to identify as fans of specific game characters—many of whom are adapted from Chinese history and mythology. Our findings reaffirm Klimmt et al.’s argument that video game characters combine fixed attributes defined by the medium with flexible attributes shaped by players’ in-game decisions, making identification an active and participatory process.

Furthermore, we find that players often feel empowered and derive satisfaction from reshaping once-weak or marginal historical figures into powerful heroes through gameplay. Many draw parallels between this transformation and their own experiences of self-improvement, such as career advancement or personal growth. For these players, the process becomes a form of “coming-of-age” experience that fosters sustained fan engagement, while also reflecting a reflexive awareness of both the game medium and broader fandom culture.

ABSTRACT. Time spent playing video games varies widely across individuals, meaning research participants bring different baseline knowledge and strategies that shape how they play games and potentially influence study outcomes. Building on prior work documenting differential effects between novice and expert gamers, we examine how game expertise—measured by self-reported hours per week and years of play—relates to player experiences and problem-solving behaviors across three onboarding conditions in the commercial puzzle game Baba is You. Analyzing multiple data sources from over 120 players, we found that general game expertise relates to higher enjoyment, more completed levels, and increased exploratory tinkering behavior, with some effects varying by onboarding condition. These results underscore the importance of accounting for gaming expertise in both game research and design.

ABSTRACT. Much recent work in the field of game studies, both in research and rhetoric, has made efforts to center player experience. Historical game studies and archaeogaming, however, has a ways to go in terms of detaching from scholar-fronted accounts of play and focusing on player populations and gaming communities (Politopoulos and Mol 2023; Gerritsen et al. in press). Game studies, and historical game studies and archaeogaming in particular, is still learning to “do” data science, in large part because of the field’s interdisciplinary underpinnings; games scholars variously adapt measures from media studies, sociology, reception studies, and behavioral psychology, but the resulting research is uniquely “ours”. When it comes to the widespread implementation of quantitatively oriented methods, historical game studies and archaeogaming are still finding their footing. This paper is part of finding that footing, engaging with the idea of iterative surveys of “past-player” populations as a fruitful mode of research. By exploring the development and execution of two quantitative measures for historical videogame play, we hope to highlight the importance of scaffolding established work in the field with interventions that are both player-focused and scalable.

ABSTRACT. Many different display technologies have been used throughout the history of videogames, each providing specific visual qualities associated with its pixel grid. This article presents the proliferation of visual elements associated with a pixelated output in retro-inspired videogames and beyond. These visual blocks are defined as faux pixels, since they carry over some conceptual aspect of pixels without relying on the material foundations of the underlying imaging technologies. The rise of technostalgia in the community is presented through relevant games that contributed to the definition of these new pixels. The loss of material connection and resurgence of analog aesthetics is discussed in light of similar phenomena occurring in other visual media.

ABSTRACT. The intersectional pleasures derived from representation, participation, and production within the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) game studies and game making practices offer a crucial lens to acknowledge to a better understanding of what makes games pleasurable and valuable. This perspective highlights the intrinsic, affective rewards inherent in game creation, play, and analysis for often marginalized groups. This presentation offers a simple if not obvious thesis through which the value of this work can be understood. Instead of contrasting such work within the typical traditional metrics like economic success, player base size, or high academic citation counts the presentation highlights the value in the pleasure of producing such work. Pleasure, especially in the absence of financial or popularity metrics, helps frame the rationale for such work in pragmatic terms. BIPOC Game Studies and the practice of making games as a BIPOC creator are fundamentally valuable because they foster communal, educational, and emotional rewards that extend beyond these conventional measures. They produce pleasure in the researcher-practitioner and oft ignored outcome in capital focused frames. The work offers a thesis in three types of distinct pleasure commonly articulated in surveys about diverse game jams and for the BIPOC Game Studies community. These are, pleasure in community, pleasure in production and pleasure of understanding.

ABSTRACT. This paper examines videogame as a geopolitical and symbolic field marked by inequality between the Global North and the Global South, dominated by the hegemony of the United States, Japan, and Western Europe. From a decolonial perspective, it seeks to reconnect with the philosophy of technology in order to problematize the technicist and determinist discourses that sustain the exclusion of subalternized voices, in particular the work of Martin Heidegger and his influence in gaming companies and big techs. Northern hegemony imposes a communicational “cacophony” that silences local productions and promotes the reproduction of foreign imaginaries, disconnected to Global South realities—a dynamic akin to the concept of technocoloniality. As such, the paper contributes to the DiGRA community by offering a framework for understanding how geopolitical and technological structures shape gaming experiences, especially in Brazil, and by suggesting pathways for more inclusive videogame production that amplifies subalternized voices.

ABSTRACT. The contributions of this paper are twofold. We begin by introducing the activities of a peer mentoring group for doctoral researchers that we have organized to reflect on the various forms of academic playing. After this we will move on to discuss the contributions games scholarship can have for contemporary higher education research and how providing some conceptual clarity can help these discussions gain even more significance and value.

ABSTRACT. The prevailing industrial logic in Virtual Reality (VR) development suggests a linear relationship between high-fidelity simulation and player immersion. However, this paper argues that the uncritical pursuit of hyper-realism frequently results in a "Simulation Trap," creating friction that degrades the play experience rather than enhancing it. Through the lens of "Ludoproprioceptive Dissonance," this study investigates the tensions between simulation and abstraction across three critical dimensions: interaction design, narrative delivery, and physiological endurance. In this research, we examine the "Uncanny Valley of Haptics," where visual expectations of weight clash with the proprioceptive reality of weightless controllers , and the "Bio-political Ceiling," where realistic locomotion incurs unsustainable metabolic costs and fatigue. By contrasting "Simulation-First" approaches with "Abstraction-First" case studies (e.g., Beat Saber, Moss), we demonstrate how strategic abstraction resolves these sensory conflicts. Ultimately, this research posits that effective VR design must prioritize embodied comfort and symbolic interaction over strict verisimilitude, acknowledging the limitations of both current hardware and the human body.

ABSTRACT. This paper focuses on using “critical making” and game design as a way of navigating complexities in the various hermeneutics of myths. Joseph Campbell identifies four functions of myth: the mystical function inspires in the individual a sense of awe and gratitude in relation to the mystery dimension of the universe; the cosmological function presents an image of the universe that links local knowledge and individual experience to that mystery dimension; the sociological function validates, supports, and imprints on the individual the norms of that society; and the psychological (or pedagogical) function serves to guide each individual through the stages of life, within the context of that culture. By applying game design to the study of mythology, games enliven these stories, offering players a way to experience these through play and reflect on both the historicity of these myths, while also providing space to understand how these myths might speak to modern contexts. By using mythology as inspiration for the design of games demonstrates how these stories are not stagnant but dynamic in their potential in their hermeneutics.

Games and mythologies share an ethos of engaging with structuring systems: we could consider how both have been used to make sense of larger cultural phenomena. I used this as a critical design challenge, taking inspiration from Greek mythology to design a tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG). TTRPGs are experiences where players, in which I include any dungeon master, collaboratively develop a generative storytelling experience through the procedures of storytelling provided by the structure of the game. Because TTRPGs foster a shared story development process, these games serve as spaces that invite players to experience a wide range of emotion, leveraging play to explore more difficult or possibly activating content. TTRPGs thus expand what “pleasures” are centered in the game experience.

This project drew inspiration from “The Abduction of Persephone” as the foundation for the game. Firstly, because it highlights religious folklore as a technology used by the Ancient Greeks to comprehend the system of seasonal change. Secondly, over time, its tellings and retellings have been revised to reflect the values of these storytellers who find power and/or problematic in the tale, including queer and feminist narrations. There are several interpretations of how Persephone became the Queen of the Underworld told for different audiences. Often these tales contain troubling content, including, abuse, sexual assault, gaslighting, and misogyny. However, some speculations and retellings consider Persephone’s perspective and agency. One feminist retelling removes Hades altogether, casting Persephone as a benevolent figure who descended into the underworld to care for the souls of the departed. Others cast the “abduction” more as an elopement, as Persephone tries to escape a controlling mother. Yet, because the stories rarely focus on Persephone’s perspective, her side of the story, including the trauma(s) she endured, is unclear. Putting the adaptations in context with the original, I considered how a game might explore the different aspects of trauma present in the narrative, offering a way for players to uncover nuances in the stories through storytelling and play.

And the Crops Withered is a single player tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) that focuses on the quest of Demeter, goddess of the harvest, searching for her missing daughter, Persephone. Players narrate the harvest goddess’s journey across a world ravaged by her own divine fury to uncover the mystery of what happened to her daughter. And the Crops Withered explores the different dimensions of the story, prompting the player to narrate Demeter’s search for her daughter. The player chronicles Demeter’s quest to find her daughter. Cards drawn from a tarot deck align with prompts for the players to respond to in their narration, a type of procedural storytelling. Playing from Demeter’s perspective allows the player to engage the tensions among the various tellings of Persephone’s Abduction, leaving space for ambiguity as a sight of playful exploration of ambivalence among the interpretations; whereas Persephone’s own perspective might offer a much too definitive answer. Doing so, we allow space to understand how one can be both a survivor of deep trauma and a mighty queen goddess.

ABSTRACT. Video game production brings together actors at different levels of formalization and professionalization – some of these actors are profit-driven corporations, while others might be hobbyists, volunteers, or cultural intermediaries not directly involved in making games like retailers or festival organizers. These different backgrounds, values, and modes of operation are bound to create frictions and power imbalances, in practice often benefiting the more unscrupulous entities (see Ruberg 2019; Srauy 2019). Following Brendan Keogh’s (2019; 2023) work on in/formalization of video game production, this submission addresses how these various approaches to game development co-exist and interact with each other in real locations. Our goal is to unpack the conflicting values of hobbyist and professional communities and provide a grounded and nuanced empirical analysis based on a bigger ongoing research project about the video game industry in Brno, Czechia’s second largest city with a long industrial tradition. By combining approaches from the fields of economic geography (e.g. Darchen and Tremblay 2015; Johns 2006) and production studies (Sotamaa and Švelch 2021), the submission will connect the various actors (developers, educators, government officials, cultural intermediaries) with critical theory on creative labor.

ABSTRACT. This study is focused on presenting a critical analysis of contemporary game design through the lens of neurodivergence, explaining on how environmental storytelling and spatial organization influence attention in players with ADHD. Drawing on platform studies, it examines Unreal Engine 5 as a production context, explores and recommends to developers how its technical affordances can help shape inclusive design practices. The point is to outline cognitive traits across ADHD subtypes and relate them to specific environmental design strategies. Through a analysis of recent UE5 titles, it identifies and extracts aesthetic and structural patterns that assist or hinder neurodivergent engagement. The work ultimately wants to argue for treating neurodivergent cognition as a one of core design parameter and integrating accessibility into environmental planning rather than as an add-on.

ABSTRACT. We find Virtual Reality (VR), and the ideas about what world the technology is meant to bring about, at a particularly vexed moment in time. The dream of VR as “the ultimate empathy machine” (Milk 2015) has held sway over the medium for the past decade, propagated most prominently by Meta’s “VR for Good” programs and later by the United Nations’ deployment of VR as “PeaceTech” – as a peace machine. However, by 2024, Meta had paused its “VR for Good” program and began scaling down its Reality Labs division (Bye 2024; Isaac 2025). In 2025, together with military tech company Anduril Industries, Meta announced a $100 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to develop VR hardware for the Army. This is an ironic turn of events, considering that Anduril founder Palmer Luckey was allegedly ousted from Meta for his pro-Trump politics in 2017, a few years after his company Oculus VR had been bought up by the then-liberal tech giant for over $2 billion (Hayden 2024; Somerville 2025). In the current political situation, with Silicon Valley’s general realignment towards the far right and the global militarization of Big Tech in full swing, we are witnessing VR drift from its aspirations of being a technology for peace towards being a technology for the war machine. Drawing on concepts and methods from cultural studies, international relations, and science and technology studies, we explain how the above-described shift could take place through an analysis of the martial history and “technopolitics” (cf. Hecht and Edwards 2010; Ølgaard 2025) of Virtual Reality and its surrounding “sociotechnical imaginaries” (cf. Jasanoff 2015). Key to that analysis will be an attentiveness to how the affordances of VR as a “playful media technology” (cf. Frissen et al. 2015) have been mobilized both in the service of peace and of war, and how both sides operate through a similarly violent logic of surveillance and control.

ABSTRACT. Game-based learning (GBL) is widely recognized for its potential to enhance engagement and deepen learning, yet dominant models are shaped by Western paradigms that often overlook African cultural frameworks, linguistic diversity, and socio-economic realities. This paper argues for systemic adaptation of GBL grounded in Ubuntu pedagogy, postcolonial and decolonial game studies, and participatory culture principles. We introduce a Four-Layer Adaptation Framework addressing values, narrative sovereignty, participatory practices, and equity to guide culturally responsive design. Drawing on a South African pilot study, we illustrate how localized approaches foster inclusivity, collaboration, and cultural relevance while advancing Sustainable Development Goals. By reframing GBL through African epistemologies, this work positions Africa as an active innovator in game studies and offers a roadmap for equitable, context-sensitive educational game design.

ABSTRACT. This paper argues that ecologically themed survival games like Frostpunk and The Long Dark structure ethical play through "entropic temporality"—time experienced as systemic decay and scarcity. Moving beyond traditional morality systems, these games use irreversible decline to foster a care-based agency rather than conquest-driven mastery. Drawing on Bernard Stiegler’s philosophy, the study frames this as "anti-entropic" action: the adaptive, caring work of sustaining a world in disintegration. Through a triangulated methodology analyzing game design, embodied play, and community discourse, the research identifies a typology of care practices—Distributive, Communal, Mitigative, and Embodied—that emerge from distinct player roles. Ultimately, it demonstrates how entropic design transforms survival into an ethical practice grounded in relational responsibility and reflection, making digital play a space for engaging with real-world precarity.

ABSTRACT. Souls-like games exemplify how digital play can produce radical forms of pleasure through sustained challenge: players voluntarily invest 60+ hours in experiences designed to kill them repeatedly. This paper theorizes ordeal pleasure as a complex affective phenomenon emerging from three synergistic mechanisms: Ludic Cultivation (mastery through fair adversity), Aspirational Deferment (delayed gratification oriented toward future growth), and Communal Mythopoesis (collective construction of shared meaning). Through abductive synthesis of game design analysis, empirical player studies, and community discourse analysis, we show how Souls-like games mediate pleasure via the architectural orchestration of difficulty, temporality, and social meaning-making. Comparative analysis (Elden Ring, Hollow Knight, Lords of the Fallen, The Surge) illustrates how specific design choices enable or undermine ordeal pleasure. The framework extends motivation theory temporally, specifies social mechanisms beyond generic relatedness, and offers design principles for understanding how challenging games transform suffering into complex satisfaction rather than mere frustration.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents the Entrepreneurial Journey Game, an embodied, role-play-based learning experience designed to strengthen entrepreneurial mindset development and uncertainty through improvisation, surprise events, hidden roles, and collaborative decision-making. While entrepreneurship simulations traditionally emphasise cognitive problem-solving, this design leverages performative, social, and material modes of play characteristic of analogue larp and tabletop role-play traditions. Drawing on Game Studies frameworks, particularly work on embodied enactment, uncertainty as a core ludic principle, performative identity, and the role of facilitation - this paper positions the game as an exploration of how analogue, improvisational mechanics can cultivate experiential mindsets. Using a pre/post mixed-methods survey (n=26), the study measured shifts in entrepreneurial intention, comfort with uncertainty, creativity, and practical entrepreneurial skills. Results indicate increased comfort with ambiguity, enhanced creative thinking, and improved confidence in core activities such as idea validation, planning, and pitching. Qualitative responses highlight the value of role-play, investor interactions, and time-pressured teamwork. Findings are analysed not as learning outcomes, but as transformations in player experience, enactment, and interactional framing. Findings suggest that analogue embodied, game-based simulations offer distinct benefits for modelling the volatility and ambiguity inherent to entrepreneurial practice.

ABSTRACT. Neighborhood games to benefit the community are becoming more accessible and low-cost to build. Research is needed to identify how design can be reframed at the local level, including to create "locally made" games that connect residents to place, community, and local history. This paper analyzes three years of co-design with more than 50 separate towns and cities. The low-budget approach to game design centered on mobile messaging and voice for accessibility (MMS, SMS, branching voice trees). Findings advance our understanding of how to democratize game design for neighborhoods, especially through public libraries that are seeking to "engage beyond their walls" with cultural assets like murals and local history. Design patterns and models are needed for minimally-resourced groups. This study proposes how "game design" can be reframed to expand accessibility for first-time designers, and to our understanding of the intersectional pleasures of making games and narrative play in low-resource settings.

ABSTRACT. Military wargaming trains officers’ decision-making under uncertainty, yet gameplay is also an affectively dense social encounter. Treating laughter as a sequential, multimodal practice, this study examines laughter in naval wargame play. Drawing on 10 hours of gameplay from 25 hours of audiovisual data in the Swedish Defence University officer program, multimodal conversation analysis shows participants laugh to mark clever competition, soften miscalculations, and manage moments with scenario stakes. Instructors may join or resist laughter to rekey interaction toward learning. Contrasted with serious-game evaluation frameworks that model enjoyment as internal outcomes, the paper argues pleasure is collaboratively produced and pedagogically consequential.

ABSTRACT. We present ongoing research into the use of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) using a new model of coherence. There is an underdeveloped understanding within the sector of how best to leverage games, but D&D's popularity and general flexibility make it an attractive option. We introduce the concept of internal coherence (a game's coherence within itself) and and external coherence (a game's coherence with the real-world context in which it is played), to explore the implications of D&D in GLAM settings.

ABSTRACT. The paper revisits the study of Tarot and questions the presumed divide between quantifiable-outcome and oracle games of Tarot. By identifying shared ludemes derived from the material affordances of cards and their accompanying speech acts, the paper challenges the rule-centric structuralism underlying (Anglo-)European histories of card games. It reframes card games through an agentic lens and argues to treat practices like cartomancy, trading, and mnemonics as equally game-like. Turning to medieval China, the paper argues that these ludemes emerge from the history of money, conceptualizing card games as porous models of social worlds rather than enclosed formal systems.

ABSTRACT. This study examines how nostalgia for recent games is formed and transformed into gaming practices, moving beyond retro game discourse. An exploratory study combining quantitative and qualitative text analysis was conducted on YouTube videos and comments for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in South Korea. The analysis yielded three findings. YouTube comment section is a nostalgic space where players' memories and experiences are inscribed as social time. Comment that occurs here is a nostalgic practice that expresses and regulates emotions by contrasting the past and present, based on a sense of loss and deficiency regarding game series. This practice becomes a playful act where players critically engage with the game, invoking play experiences and nostalgia to reconstruct meaning through commenting. Game nostalgia is not merely retro representation or emotional recollection, but cultural practice that transforms into emotional play through the remediation of players' memories and experiences.

ABSTRACT. “Romania. 2000. Objective status updated.” This is how Hitman: Contracts opens up, with an abrupt mission briefing that turns an entire country into a target zone. Naturally, it is what one expected when starting a stealth video game from the POV of a highly skilled assassin. What you don’t expect, though, is how before any context can settle, Romania appears as a shorthand for an “other” space: dark, peripheral, where random characters depicted as mentally ill people ramble in Moldavian accents (“No, I’m not mad, these guys have all sorts of twins downstairs in the cellar, they are manufacturing them like cars, believe me”) and where medical staff talk about people as if they were cars (“This one has a broken carburetor, I’ll fix him and I’ll change the oil as well”). The Romanian language, heard here mostly by real-life players who do not understand it, is gritty, fragmented, and serves not as cultural specificity, but as atmosphere: a soundscape of chaos and pathology. In these first scenes, Romania becomes less a place and more an aesthetic of otherness as routine strangeness, where the player learns to see Eastern Europe through a filter of fear, decay, and narrative disposability. All this while, ironically, passing through the hallways and rooms of a state-of-the-art medical institution that for anyone living in Romania in the early 2000s would seem more science fiction than reality. Hitman: Contracts is far from alone in this strategy. Over the last few decades, the action of several video games has been set in Romania or, more specifically, Transylvania. While some are the work of Romanian companies (Black the Fall) and others have been created by foreign developers (Resident Evil Village, Castlevania, the upcoming Age of Zalmoxis, or Hitman: Contracts itself), the common denominator is their reliance on a limited number of tropes or aesthetic choices they associate with Romanian history. They range from medieval rulers who inspired the myth of Dracula to the more recent communist experience and from eerie folk to Eastern European hardmen, seemingly in a restrictive typology loop. In game studies, these narratives are already being investigated from the viewpoint of cultural representation, cultural geography (Ash & Gallacher 2011), and cultural heritage (Balela & Mundy 2011), with a focus on issues like cultural appropriation, exoticization, or Westernization: for example, Šisler (2008) and El-Nasr et al. (2008) have discussed the depiction of the Middle East and Muslim identity; Bembeneck (2013) has written about the homogenization of “barbarian” peoples in narratives set in ancient Rome; and Fung (2014) has problematized the tension between national identity and cultural hybridization in game development. Video games referencing Romania or Romanianness constitute a prime candidate for this kind of analysis, since so many of them use the space and the associated cultural identity as a narrative device. Multiple scholars have addressed this very phenomenon, writing about the problematic combination of “Romanian cultural markers” and American architecture in Resident Evil Village (Martin 2021), about “Balkanist villages” and their ahistorical domestication (Nae 2025), or about dystopified and commodified communism (Réti 2023). These approaches highlight the world-building mechanisms that contribute to the hegemonic image of Romanianness in video games, allowing us to extract and compare them. However, most studies resort to “close reading” (the detailed analysis of a single game) and borrow from cultural studies and anthropology to formulate their critique. What remains underexplored is the larger pattern, i.e. the array of tropes and ideological dominants shared across seemingly unrelated titles. In other words, not just how one game constructs Romania as other, but to what cumulative effect is this construction reproduced. To address this, we propose a quantitative and typological analysis of an extended corpus: video games (1) set at least partially in Romania or featuring Romanian characters, (2) developed by foreign studios, which provide “hetero-images” of Romanianness – “those images which characterize the Other” (Beller & Leerssen 2007). Since no comprehensive database indexes narrative location in videogames, our list will combine Wikipedia lists of games set in Romania with those set in Transylvania. Our goal is to establish a dataset substantial enough to reveal recurrent narrative and aesthetic patterns beyond anecdotal evidence. We plan to examine how Romanian intersectional identity and spatiality are narratively and visually constructed: whether locations are historically situated or instead collapse periods into a timeless collage; whether Romanian characters are individualized or reduced to anonymous groups of NPCs; whether language appears as meaningful communication, as fragmented atmospheric noise, or replaced altogether by accented English; and whether specific cultural references are deployed in ways that would be legible to Romanian players but opaque to international audiences. Ultimately, this study aims to trace how representational habits emerge and circulate, and approaches Romania and Romanianness as a dynamic case study for the sometimes predictable, otherwise surprising overlap of geopolitical imagination, commercial genre expectations, and local culture.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this paper is to consider the specificity of nostalgic narratives in Polish gaming journalism through a critical analysis of new Polish-language publications about Heroes of Might & Magic III (3DO, 1999) against the background of original press reviews. Much of the existing research on nostalgia for retro games will also be relevant to Polish gaming culture (Becker & Trigg, 2024; Whalen & Taylor, 2008; Wulf et al., 2018). It should be noted, however, that as a result of political transformation, the Polish market opened up to video games during the extremely dynamic development of the industry in the 1990s, focusing on the PC gaming segment due to the lack or limited official distribution of consoles (Ciszek 2024). Most of the games that shaped Polish gamers at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries belonged to the following genres: cRPG, real-time strategy and turn-based strategy (Krawczyk, 2015). Press reviews play an important role in shaping awareness of games. (Zagal et al., 2009). For Polish gamers at the turn of the century, the extensive range of specialist press publications was particularly significant (Staszenko-Chojnacka, 2021), as it was both a source of knowledge about games and a relatively cheap way to access full versions of older games and demos of new releases. Researchers have already studied the popularity of certain games in specific countries or regions, due to their local culture, economic factors, state media policy and the institutional organisation of e-sports. Such cases include the phenomenon of the FIFA series and similar football-themed games throughout Africa (GeoPoll, 2024), StarCraft II in South Korea (Rea, 2018), and CS: GO in Brazil (Menasce, 2017). For this reason, we believe that when writing about nostalgia for games in Poland, it will be valuable to take into account local objects of nostalgia (Makai, 2018) and the romanticisation of cult titles (Bosman, 2023), limiting the influence of global discourses. We want to examine changes in the Polish video game criticism community through qualitative content analysis and discursive analysis of critical texts devoted to HoMM 3, a title that has left an indelible mark on Polish culture and gaming history. The number of guides and fan content, including memes, created over the past 25 years proves that the game enjoys cult status among Polish gamers. What is more, the local character of this discourse is specific to it – although the game is recognized worldwide, only in Eastern Europe does its fandom continue to be active in tournaments and modding (e.g. Heroes 3 Tournaments, 2025; Jarzembski & Zapała 2025; KS, 2020). Therefore, we want to draw conclusions about the media success of HoMM3 on Polish soil. We are interested in the role that the original reviews published on the Polish video game market in the early 2000s may have played in sustaining canonical memory (Assmann, 2011), both as a tool for intergenerational transmission and as a carrier of that memory. We intend to compare critical texts published in the year of the game's release (1999) with contemporary reviews (20 years after release, 2019-2025), e.g. (kkk, 1999; Czarny Iwan, 1999; Woźniak, 1999). We want to extract from the existing texts (in the case of contemporary reviews, also video materials) what sentiment they convey towards the game, what language they use, and what function they try to fulfill for the audience. We acknowledge that due to very limited internet access at the turn of the century, print media was the primary source of information about new games for players, which is why the descriptive role of text was much more important. We will also take into account the popularization of game journalism, which will probably be manifested in the linguistic layer of contemporary reviews in the form of a developed sociolect. Despite the clear professionalization of Polish gaming journalism, evident in the shift of its target audience from young people (Staszenko-Hojnacka, 2021) to a general audience, a surprisingly large proportion of contemporary material seems to fall victim to its authors' nostalgia for HOMM3, ultimately characterized by a similar lack of criticism of the game as the reviews published in 1999. Contemporary material about the game can be divided into two categories:  nostalgic reminiscences that repeat the virtually uncritical narrative of the 1999 reviews (Araszkiewicz et al., 2019)  news articles about recent updates to some of the popular mods (eg. Jackowski, 2025; Gąsior, 2025) This work will demonstrate the special cultural status of HOMM 3 as a foreign game adopted by Eastern European players. In Poland, this status was influenced by economic, technological and social conditions, as well as the strong opinion-forming role of the gaming press at the turn of the century. In the case of cult games, magazine narratives remain so enduring that even today's more critical authors remain influenced by constructed canons. Contemporary content does not question the position of HOMM 3, adopting a nostalgic perspective. In order to deepen the analysis and conclusions, we plan to conduct broader research using content related to games created in the CEE region that are valued by Polish players but are not recognised worldwide.

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