20-22.11
CEEGS26
WARSAW
POLAND
CEEGS, the Central and Eastern European Games Studies Conference, is the annual conference of the DiGRA Central and Eastern Europe chapter dedicated to exploring various aspects of games, including digital, analog, and hybrid formats, as well as the cultural and social contexts in which they exist. CEEGS aims to promote and advance game research, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe. With a decade-long presence in game studies, CEEGS has established itself as an inclusive and internationally-minded platform, welcoming researchers, academics, and professionals from Europe, North America, and Asia. The conference is organized by the University of Warsaw in collaboration with Sustainable TRAnsiTion for Europe’s Game IndustriES (STRATEGIES)
The Conference will take place at:
American Studies Center, University of Warsaw
Dobra 55, 00-312 Warsaw, Poland

Submissions Deadline: 14 February 2026
23 February 2026
Notification of Acceptance: 30 April 2026
Workshops proposals: 30 May 2026 12 June 2026
Registration Opens: 15 June 2026
Deadline for Early Bird: 15 September 2026
Registration Closes: 31 October 2026
Conference Dates: 20-22 November 2026
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
All CEEGS 2026 papers in the main program must contain original research work and should be submitted as abstracts of approximately 500 words (400 words minimum and 600 words maximum), preferably in .docx format. Each submission needs to be accompanied by a list of references cited within the abstract, which do not count towards the word limit.
To submit an abstract, you will need to create an account (or use an existing account) in the CMT system. Please click here to submit. In CMT, your abstract and references will need to be entered as plain text in the field provided.
All papers will undergo a peer review process by at least two expert reviewers to ensure a high standard of quality, considering originality, soundness of method and/or argument, clarity of exposition, and relevance to the conference’s thematic areas. For this reason, please remember to anonymize your submission.
A single author may submit multiple abstracts, but will only be allowed to present a maximum of one single-authored and one co-authored paper (or two co-authored papers).
The Doctoral Consortium and workshops do not count into this limit. You can learn more about Doctoral Consortium here.
If you have questions about the review process, please contact the Program Chair: Agata Waszkiewicz, agata.waszkiewicz@kul.pl.
CEEGS has a long tradition of inspiring workshops, meant mainly to present and discuss work-in-progress research. Workshops will take place on the first day of the conference. Workshops can be proposed by May 30, 2026. If you want to propose a workshop, please contact Przemysław Kordos, pkordos@al.uw.edu.pl.
On-site participation only (no hybrid form).
CEEGS 2026 CALL FOR PAPERS
Digital Earths | Material Realities: Sustainability of/in Video Games
As we navigate the complexities of the Anthropocene, the relationship between play, technology, and the environment has become a critical focal point for scholars, designers, and players alike. Video games are not merely escapes from reality: they are complex systems that model, simulate, and comment upon our ecological existence. Even more critically, the medium itself is deeply embedded in the material world, reliant on global supply chains, energy consumption, and hardware lifecycles.
“Digital Earths | Material Realities” invites scholars and researchers to explore the manifold intersections between game studies and ecology. We seek to investigate how games represent natural environments and how game mechanics reinforce or challenge extractive ideologies, as well as to consider the material footprint of the gaming industry itself.
From the lush, digital wilderness of open-world RPGs to the resource management game mechanics and from the carbon footprint of cloud gaming to the rise of solarpunk narratives, the conference seeks proposals that illuminate the ways in which games shape our understanding of the climate crisis and its attendant concepts of sustainability, ecocriticism, and ecology.
We welcome submissions from a wide variety of disciplines, including game studies, media ecology, environmental humanities, sociology, and design. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
god games and geo-engineering
(anti)colonial ecologies
carbon footprint of cloud gaming, streaming, and server farms
indie / slow games as eco-design practices, as well as low-poly/low-spec games
systems of extraction and game mechanics
virtual photography and digital nature tourism
ecocriticism and close readings of environmental narratives in video games
aesthetics of the “digital sublime”: rendering nature, weather, and flora
post-apocalyptic vs. solarpunk: (e)utopian and dystopian ecological futures
animals, plants, and non-human actors in game worlds
green game mechanics
environmental impact of the games industry: e-waste, planned obsolescence, and hardware lifecycles
serious games and gamification for climate action
eco-activism within gaming communities
sustainability in game production
extractivism in game worlds (terraforming, land&resource grabs: how games reproduce or challenge colonial ways)
The workshops will be held on 20 November 2026.
If you would like to participate in a workshop please contact its organizers directly.
Bartłomiej Schweiger
bartlomiej.schweiger@gmail.com
As videogame creators and scholars, we are very often confronted with affirmative slogans regarding our role and possible impact that our work can have on the world around us: how our work can affect our communities, address important political issues, uncover truths about the world, teach useful skills or help those in need. In this workshop we want to invite you to explore the opposite–what games and game scholarship cannot do. We aim to expose the boundaries of our agency as creators and scholars. We want to explore powerlessness. We invite the presentations that state what can’t be done, what failed to work, and explore the vulnerability that lingers in realisation of limitations in the game object, theory, and oneself.
The idea to explore the powerlessness stems from the fact that the aforementioned affirmation, of both game development as a creative practice and game studies as an academic one, fills us with more and more suspicion. How can those statements be made in a world of growing right wing radicalisation, a world in which the agency of game industry workers is being severely limited by corporate interests, one in which precarity of academic work is being pushed to the extreme levels? Not to mention the rather limited successes of the workers movement both in gamedev and in academia.
The direct inspiration for this workshop was the audience reaction to Rasheed Abueideh keynote on last year’s DIGRA conference. While the Palestinian developer’s speech solicited a standing ovation and a call, by the members for the association, for DIGRA to oppose in one way or another the criminal practices of Israeli government in Gaza and West Bank, it was only that much a scholarly organisation could really do.
This workshop invites a thorough reflection on the things we cannot do and those out of our control, as well as on various systemic and accidental factors that limit our work and its impact on the world.
The main objective of this workshop is to localise the areas of powerlessness–where and why we, and the things we create, are powerless. We will analyse what can be learned from our powerlessness and how it can influence meaningful action in the future. It is also important to mention that it is not our stance that “nothing can be done, everything is futile and no action makes sense.” Rather, our stance is that the analysis of powerlessness can be by itself empowering and its understanding can lead to meaningful change. However, at the same time one needs to be cautious to not turn in the direction of easily achievable but meaningless action. We must remember to counteract the instinct to suppress the unpleasant in search of an easy way out.
How to participate: To take part in the workshop one should prepare a short description (around 200 words) of a topic related to feeling of powerlessness in their work as either game scholar or developer, explaining how powerlessness is conceptualised in relation to their case study. Participants will be asked to prepare short 10 minute presentations regarding said topic. These presentations will serve as a base for a group work in which participants will collaborate to prepare their “disempowered mind maps.” Those maps will be then discussed between the groups and then used to create the compiled mind map.The map will aid us in noticing the main themes present in the participants’ experience of powerlessness, addressing them in the broader context, and identifying the common sources of powerlessness.
Due to the workshop’s specificity, the maximum number of participants is 20. The decision of particular submission’s acceptance into the workshop will be based on its quality. The submission should consist of the aforementioned description of a case in which they felt powerless as a scholar or a developer, a short explanation on why they are interested in the workshop, as well as a brief bio.
Submissions should be sent to contact email: powerlessness.workshop@gmail.com
Submission deadline: 1st of September 2026
Elina Roinioti, Mathias Fuchs, Tomasz Z. Majkowski
Video games such as Katamari Damacy (Namco, 2004), Bishōjo Senshi Sailor Moon (Angel, 1993) or – set within an East European context – Krzyżacy [Knights of the Cross](Free Mind, 2002) or Warsaw Rising (Pixelated Milk 2019, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej) have often relied on one-eyed storytelling, flat visuals and stereotypical character design. Other games—such as Bubsy 3D (Bend Studio, 1996), many Sonic titles, as well as a wide range of casual and hypercasual games—have frequently been criticized for their reliance on stock emotions, clichés, shallow affective engagement, or forms of bad taste.
While this does not represent the video game industry in its entirety, some argue that mass consumption, non-negotiable accessibility, and emotional persuasiveness are structural tendencies of the medium. An interesting question, then, is whether the framework of kitsch can be used to approach these aspects of video game creation. Much like garden gnomes, collectible figurines, or ubiquitous landmark souvenirs, can video games be understood as digital kitsch objects: plug-and-play artefacts created for mass appeal?
This workshop will critically investigate and rethink the concepts of kitsch under the conditions of the ludosphere. Starting from classical debates on the phenomenon of kitsch (Greenberg 1939; Broch 1955; Dorfles 1968; Kulka 1996; Mihăilescu 1997) and moving toward more recent frames of kitsch in game studies, the workshop addresses the following questions:
The workshop builds on a series of seminars held in 2024 and 2025, with participating students from Hungary, Austria, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, China and Germany. During the seminar sessions, plastic Beethovens, miniature Greek Gods, and CePeLia, the infamous communist-aera institution producing “folk art” circulated alongside theoretical propositions and conceptual building blocks. At the end of the workshop, participants will have developed a clearer understanding of kitsch in relation to digital games through both critical discussion and playful interaction.
Workshop flow:
Part A: Participants assume the role of both curator -placing their objects inside an un-exhibition- and visitor, circulating and writing down their thoughts on Post-It as part of the walk-along method (Kusenbach 2003).
Part B: In the second part, participants along with the organizers will analyze the findings from the walk-along method, initiating a discussion on kitsch and “kitschness” in games.
Important information:
Participants are:
a) requested to bring a kitsch reference from their own cultural background: a local video game (links, images, or videos), a related artefact, or a nostalgic object. Those who choose to present a digital kitsch object should also bring their laptop.
b) invited to reflect on their object and think of a video game that aesthetically, visually or conceptually communicates with the object. A garden gnome might reference Plants VS Zombies Garden Warfare 2 etc.
Participants who are interested in joining us should send an email to: kitsch.games.ceegs@gmail.com until 30th September 2026, mentioning their kitsch object of choice and why they want to participate.
Max. Number of participants: 20
Joanna Lenik
This writing workshop delves into the design of gamebooks from the perspective of non-human protagonists, including forests, rivers, and urban environments. Participants will create interactive narratives by developing character frameworks, mapping decision paths, and experimenting with branching structures. Through guided exercises, you will translate narrative choices into flowcharts and construct short gamebook prototypes.
The workshop foregrounds questions of agency, perspective, and environmental storytelling, prompting participants to consider how procedural design shapes interpretation. Integrating elements of narratology, game studies, and creative writing, the session features concise theoretical input, hands-on design tasks, and peer feedback. It is designed for students, writers, and designers interested in interactive fiction and ecological approaches to narrative.
This writing workshop explores the design of gamebooks from the perspective of non-human protagonists, such as forests, rivers, and urban environments. Participants will develop interactive narratives by constructing character frameworks, mapping decision paths, and experimenting with branching structures. Through guided exercises, they will translate narrative choices into flowcharts and produce short gamebook prototypes. The workshop foregrounds questions of agency, perspective, and environmental storytelling, encouraging reflection on how procedural design shapes interpretation. It integrates elements of narratology, game studies, and creative writing, and combines concise theoretical input with practical design tasks and structured peer feedback. The workshop is intended for students, writers, and designers interested in interactive fiction and ecological approaches to narrative.
The workshop adopts a Research Through Design methodology, combining analytical reflection with creative practice. It opens with a brief introduction to the formal properties of gamebooks and selected examples of branching narratives, followed by guided exercises in character construction, decision modelling, and narrative prototyping. Participants will work individually or in small groups, present work in progress, and engage in moderated discussion focused on design strategies and their interpretive implications.
Prospective participants are invited to submit a short statement of interest (150–250 words) outlining their motivation to participate in the workshop and any relevant interests in interactive narrative, gamebooks, or environmental storytelling. Participants are not expected to have prior experience in game design or to submit a developed project. The workshop is open to individuals at all levels of experience.
Applicants will be notified of acceptance shortly after the submission deadline. The workshop will be conducted in English and is for a group of approximately 10–15 participants in order to ensure a collaborative working environment.
Submissions should be sent to: j.lenik@uw.edu.pl
Submission deadline: 06/11/2026
Mark Maletska, Paolo D’Indinosante, Robin Zingarelli
robinlongobardizingarelli@gmail.com
Queer (Ruberg & Shaw, 2017) and trans game studies (Ruberg, 2022) have emerged as dynamic and growing fields of inquiry. Existing research has explored not only the increasing presence of queer and transgender identities in games (Shaw, 2015; Ruberg & Shaw, 2017; Thach, 2021; Kosciesza, 2023; Maletska, 2024), queer and trans players (Whitehouse et al., 2023) and queer independent designers (Ruberg, 2019a, 2019b), but also the subversive potential of games as a medium (Ruberg & Shaw, 2017; Ruberg & Phillips, 2018; Ruberg, 2019a; Chow, 2023; Ruberg, 2025).
As these fields continue to expand, however, important questions remain. What are the emerging directions of queer and trans game studies? Which theoretical frameworks, research methods and creative practices are proving most productive? Which limitations remain unresolved? How can scholars engage with increasingly complex intersections of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity and disability? What responsibilities do researchers have when studying vulnerable communities during a period marked by intensified political attacks on queer and trans lives (Butler, 2024) across many parts of the world?
As most scholarship on queerness and transness in and around games continues to be produced by North American or native English-speaking scholars, it seems crucial to begin pushing queer and trans game studies beyond their dominant geographic and cultural boundaries by centring intersectional voices, particularly from underrepresented contexts, whose contributions remain limited. Such an effort requires attending not only to digital game worlds, but also to the material realities that shape queer and trans lives and modes of participation across different local and global contexts.
Building upon ongoing conversations initiated through the DiGRA 2025 workshop Queer/Trans Game/Studies at a Crossroads: Reflections, Challenges, and Futures, the CEEGS 2025 workshop Queer/Trans Game/Studies Spaces: Reflections, Challenges, and Futures and the forthcoming special issue of G|A|M|E – Games as Art, Media, Entertainment, entitled ‘Queer and Trans Game Studies in Global and Local Contexts’, this workshop seeks to create a space for collective reflection on the present and future of queer and trans game studies in different geographic and cultural contexts. Participants are invited to discuss ongoing projects, emerging objects of study, methodological challenges and analytical approaches. Alongside work-in-progress research presentations, we particularly welcome interactive and experimental formats that contribute to rethinking what queer and trans game studies can become.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
The workshop is designed as a discussion-oriented forum for work-in-progress research and creative practice. Participants may contribute through short research presentations, game demonstrations and experimental formats. Each contribution will be followed by discussion. At the end of the workshop, participants will take part in a collective roundtable dedicated to identifying future research directions and opportunities for collaboration.
The workshop welcomes researchers at all career stages, game designers and students working across games studies, queer studies, trans studies and related fields. Participation from underrepresented voices is particularly encouraged. The workshop is designed for 8–12 active participants presenting or discussing their work, with additional attendees welcome as observers. We estimate that the total number of participants, including both active and passive attendees, will not exceed 20 people.
Daniel Vella, Hans-Joachim Backe, Tomasz Majkowski, Magdalena Kozyra
Twenty-five years on from the declaration of “computer game studies year one” in the editorial for the inaugural issue of Game Studies (Aarseth 2001), the academic field has grown to the extent that it has arguably entered a phase of retrospective consolidation. Thematic taxonomies, methodological overviews, historiographic approaches, and critical surveys have all been undertaken as means of mapping out the field of game studies (see, for instance, Quandt et al 2015; Lankoski & Björk 2015; Martin 2018; Mäyrä 2020).
Building on this existing work, this workshop asks a question that ought to have not only conceptual, but also practical and pedagogical implications on the field: what are the canonical texts in the academic literature of game studies?
The question becomes more and more pertinent as new academic programmes in game studies, at both under- and postgraduate levels, continue to be designed and launched, and as more and more academic work touches upon the study of games from across the humanities, the social sciences, and beyond.
When we ask about the canon of game studies, we do so with an awareness that any notion of a ‘canon’ and of canon formation is a double-edged sword – that, at the same time as it performs the necessary groundwork of mapping the foundations of the field and foregrounding key contributions and ideas, it also perpetuates the epistemic injustice of exclusion and the establishing of hierarchies of importance and visibility. As with any attempt to map out the contours of an academic field, attempts at canon formation inevitably carry the bias(es) of the individual scholar(s) situated in their disciplinary, institutional, linguistic, national, generational and ideological contexts.
With this in mind, the workshop format – and the multiplicity of contributions and perspectives it invites – is the ideal format to address such a question. We do not consider it a desirable goal to formalise the definitive canon of game studies; instead, the aim will be to highlight the multiplicity of perspectives and perceived ‘canons’ that different academics and educators can bring to the discussion, and to draw attention to the negotiations.
The workshop will take the form of a structured and moderated group discussion. Participants will be asked to prepare in advance their own list of what they consider to be the twenty key texts of game studies – the papers, book chapters, or monographs they would recommend as the initial starting-point for engaging with and understanding the field of game studies, published in any language (not restricted to texts in English). No further preparation is required.
Given the participatory nature of the workshop, it is limited to a maximum of 16 participants (in addition to the organisers). Prospective participants are invited to register for the workshop, on a first come first served basis, by sending an email to daniel.m.vella@um.edu.mt
Leon Xiao
Recently, new EU law (the Digital Services Act) was adopted to require large social media platforms to publish a “library” of all paid adverts shown and associated data as to what user demographics the ads targeted and reached. Data are only required to be provided for EU countries, but some platforms do voluntarily provide data for non-member states (e.g., the UK). However, few scholars are aware of the existence and functions of these “ad libraries,” and fewer still use them for research. We are organising a workshop focused on equipping attendees with methods and ideas to pursue further research in the game advertising subfield.
This 1.5-hour workshop will be hands-on and include a live demonstration of the libraries’ varying capabilities depending on the platform, including both manual data collection and using the API to automate data collection. The organisers will also briefly present their already published research to demonstrate the method’s reliability and relative maturity, including research assessing compliance with UK loot box advertising rules that has been explicitly referenced in parliamentary debates in January 2026. (If you have already used this data source and would like to present your research results and methods as well, that would be awesome! Please get in touch with the organisers via leon.xiao@cityu.edu.hk, and we will make time.)
Then, participants will be broken into groups to brainstorm potential research questions based on the presented methods and try using the ad repositories themselves, with the organisers being on hand to provide technical assistance. Finally, each group will present their ideas and experience for feedback from the group.
Schedule:
00:00–00:25: Tutorial on how to use social media advertising repository for research, including previous examples and a live demo
00:25–00:35: Break
00:35–01:00: Brainstorming research questions and conducting pilot data collection and analysis
01:00–01:10: Break
01:10–01:25: Sharing of research projects and feedback
01:25–01:30: Debriefing
This workshop is for you if you want to unlock an objective and comprehensive source of game-related paratext and associated demographic data for your research: advertising materials and who saw them. You do not need to prepare anything ahead of time and need only bring a laptop so that you can try using the advertising repositories yourself during the workshop.
This workshop relates to the topic of sustainability because by using this method, researchers can freely access high-quality research data without needing to expend significant research funds, e.g., paying for research assistants or survey participants. This is particularly relevant for researchers working in countries where research funding is harder to acquire. We recycle and repurpose data that social media platforms have already collected and generate public knowledge whilst saving resources. This may open up a wider debate about how the research process could also be more environmentally conscious.
Renata Ntelia, Joleen Blom, Magdalena Bednorz
We warmly invite scholars working in game studies and related fields to participate in this workshop on love, romance, and emotional attachment in games, hosted as part of CEEGS26. This workshop addresses a critical gap in Game Studies by inviting participants to engage with the concept of love in games. By exploring how players experience and interpret love through game characters, we aim to deepen scholarly understanding and foster a vibrant network for future research and collaboration. This initiative not only elevates an underexplored topic, but it also highlights the unique capacity of games to offer profound emotional experiences, redefining the cultural and academic discourse surrounding love.
Games frequently evoke strong emotional responses, with love being one of the most profound human experiences reflected in narratives and gameplay. Indeed, many games allow players to actively participate in the unfolding of love stories, including major mainstream titles such as Baldur’s Gate 3 as well as genre-specific games of the so-called dating-sim category, e.g. Love and Deepspace, comprising a significant part of the video games industry revenue. Game studies research has previously explored aspects of romance in games, including philosophical inquiries, close readings and poetics, design challenges, feminist and queer analyses, sociological studies, as well as socioeconomic and transmedial perspectives. Furthermore, previous research studying player experience (PX) has looked at and established the importance of character attachment in game design. Still, studies that focus specifically on game love are not numerous, leaving several underexplored areas. There remain questions about the nature and simulation of love in virtual spaces, while a pervasive stigma as to the significance and impact of this line of research continues to accompany, if not cloud over, any such endeavours.
This workshop aims to provide a vital platform for engaging in discussions around love with game characters, creating an inclusive space for interdisciplinary dialogue among game scholars. Some topics of inquiry could be the following:
While the focus of the workshop is that of digital games, we welcome contributions pertaining to any type of game, including board games, tabletops, single-player, MMORPGs, LARPs etc.
To participate, prospective contributors should submit an abstract of 150–200 words, excluding references, by Friday, 21 st of August AoE, to loveingames26@gmail.com, with the email titled CEEGS26_Last Name_Title of submission. Notifications will be sent by 4the of September 2026, allowing accepted participants enough time to register before the early-bird deadline of the 15th of September.
To register for the conference, please pay the applicable fee through a bank transfer to the account of the University of Warsaw and fill in the registration form available here.
EARLY BIRD FEES
until 15 September
Early Bird fee: 450 PLN (ca. 105 Euro / 122 USD)
Reduced Early Bird fee*: 340 PLN (ca. 80 Euro / 93 USD)
REGULAR FEES
until 31 October
Regular fee: 560 PLN (ca. 131 Euro / 152 USD)
Reduced Regular fee*: 450 PLN (ca. 105 Euro / 122 USD)
The payment should be made in PLN.
Please add “CEEGS2026” in the title of the transfer. Bank account for transfer:
For Polish participants: 17 1160 2202 0000 0000 6084 9762
For Foreign participants: PL17 1160 2202 0000 0000 6084 9762
Account owner:
American Studies Center, University of Warsaw
Dobra 55, 00-312 Warsaw, Poland
SWIFT: BIGBPLPWXXX
* Reduced fees apply to students, including PhD students.
Agata Waszkiewicz, agata.waszkiewicz@kul.pl
Andrei Nae
Kübra Aksay
Zsofia Orosz-Reti
Paweł Frelik, p.frelik@uw.edu.pl
Piotr Kubiński
Przemysław Kordos
Emilia Mazur
Kacper Karwacki
The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.