8-10 SEPTEMBER
WROCŁAW, POLAND
CEEGS in Wrocław
This year’s conference will take place in Wrocław, “the City of one Hundred Bridges,” also dubbed the meeting place. It has long been a place on or near the border, linking multiple countries, cultures, communities, and languages. Historically influenced by Slavic, Roman, Jewish, and Germanic inhabitants, today the city continues to witness various kinds of international, intercultural, and interspecies meetings, which makes it a particularly matching scenery for the conference topic: Landscapes, Cities, Localities.
The conference program is managed by the Central and Eastern European chapter of the Digital Games Research Association. Workshops and local organization are managed by the local team at the University of Wrocław (UWr). The units organizing the conference at UWr are the Institute of English Studies and the Institute of Sociology.
Important dates:
Abstract submission deadline: 14 April 2025 21 April 2025
Notification to authors: 31 May 2025 5 June 2025
Deadline for workshop proposals: 16 June 2025 23 June 2025
Workshop acceptance/rejection notification: 22 June 2025 27 June 2025
Early bird registration deadline: 25 July 2025
Late registration deadline: 22 August 2025
CALL FOR PAPERS
Landscapes, Cities, Localities
Thinking in terms of space and environment is an experience shared by game designers, players, and scholars. Explorable, strategic, symbolic, imaginary, open or claustrophobic, game spaces can be essential genre markers, narrative devices, mechanical tools, political platforms, critical resources and more. The three spatial categories that co-create the topic of this year’s CEEGS conference – landscapes, cities, and localities – bring out the qualities that seem particularly in tune with the multifaceted and complex ways in which space may be relevant for games, game cultures, and game industries. On the one hand, they are, by definition, constructed, delineated and, more often than not, anthropocentric – locality defined from a situated point of view and usually signifying the mutual infiltration of the spatial and the social (Duncan, 1989); city as a trademark example of human-shaped habitat; and landscape implying the presence of not only an observer and their aesthetic lens, but sometimes also traveling technology (Urry, 2007). All those features resonate with controlled and pragmatic design as games’ fundamental attribute. On the other hand, each of those categories offers a different kind of flexibility, openness and porosity – local and global contexts in an ongoing negotiation within game cultures and industry; in-game urban settings frequently functioning as patchwork, heterotopian, or hybrid environments; landscapes reconciling the inevitable omnipresence of the player’s eye with various ways and not always anthropocentric goals of visualizing the gameworld space.
The three categories are also in line with the fact that many game scholars around the world are now interested in local aspects of games. The local, conceived broadly as a counterweight to the global (Swalwell, 2021), can manifest itself on different scales. In-game, this could mean a very specific area (S.T.A.L.K.E.R), a large stretch of land that now belongs to a single nation-state (Kingdom Come: Deliverance), or a region containing multiple countries (Reign: Conflict of Nations). In terms of game cultures and game production, “the local” could refer to a few friends making small games in the same city of the Eastern Bloc in the 1980s, to the contemporary indie game industry in a particular country, or to the decades-long unauthorized game distribution across Central and Eastern Europe.
The conference embraces all these scales, and also acknowledges the importance of the global scale. This year’s edition, however, puts emphasis on relatively small places and spaces, which we term as localities. The other two categories, landscapes and cities, are not meant to limit the discussion scope or oppose each other, but rather to signal the variety of approaches to space in and around the game medium: from flat to three-dimensional, from decorative to interactive, from carefully arranged to chaotic, from uninhabited to populated, from places to non-places (Augé, 1995).
We welcome academic contributions related to Landscapes, Cities, and Localities from any relevant disciplinary perspective, including the following topics:
in-game cities as heterotopias, melting pots, transcultural or multicultural environments, and more
simulacra, mimesis, and parody: real cities and environments mirrored in game worlds
architectural ideals, theories, and developments as they are mirrored in digital cities
game localization and regional game studies
ARGs and pervasive games
local games and local game histories
game production: culturally important cities and regions, game dev’s impact on local environments
urban ludic traditions and spaces
aesthetic functions of places in games
non-places and liminal places
soundscapes
games and cultural heritage, games and the politics of memory
green gaming, game ecologies, and ecosystems
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
All CEEGS 2025 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). 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.
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.
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. If you want to propose a workshop, please contact Sylwia Jankowska, sylwia.jankowska@uwr.edu.pl. Workshops can be proposed by June 23 and the instructions for submitting a proposal can be found here.
WORKSHOPS
What follows is a list of workshops accepted for the conference, sorted alphabetically by title. The workshops will be held on 8 September.
If you would like to participate actively in a workshop – e.g., by presenting a talk – please contact its organizers directly. (The same information is also available here.)
Analyzing Software within Platform Studies
Paweł Grabarczyk
pawg@itu.dk
Learn more
Platform studies is now an established and distinctive approach in game studies, characterized by its use of a diverse set of methods. These include code and hardware analysis, close readings of software, interview analysis, reverse engineering, social and institutional history, as well as discourse analysis. Needless to say, the specific choice of methods must always be tailored to the particular platform under investigation. Different books in the Platform Studies series vary in terms of the methods they employ and their overall focus, but most feature detailed analyses of software in relation to the technical affordances of the hardware.
The aim of this workshop is to focus specifically on software close reading and to use the case of the Atari 8-bit platform to illustrate both the challenges and opportunities involved in studying retro platforms today.
The workshop begins with a brief overview of the peculiarities of the Atari 8-bit platform— technical and historical details necessary for understanding the methods that will be demonstrated later. In the second part of the workshop, I will guide participants through examples of software analysis using source code examination and modern emulation tools. Participants will be encouraged to run an emulator on their own machines to explore how software was constructed, with the help of features such as screen composition analysis and asset extraction.
We will conclude the workshop with a demonstration of software that requires original hardware to run properly due to the limitations of contemporary emulation. This will highlight not only the technical challenges of retro platform research but also its potential to uncover forgotten or underappreciated aspects of software history.
The planned workshop duration is 1h. The workshop will be open for up to 20 participants who will be encouraged to use the emulation software themselves. The emulator is freely available. To avoid any copyright issues the retro software to be analyzed will be public domain.
Demystifying Abstracts: Introduction to Game Studies
Agata Waszkiewicz
agata.waszkiewicz@kul.pl
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To be active in academia is to write (so, so) many abstracts. Game studies, like every other discipline, has its own practices and norms – many of which often are assumed rather than clearly specified. And so, this workshop has been designed to demystify the process of abstract writing for BA and MA students, and to offer you a warm welcome to game studies conferences.
This workshop offers a focused, supportive environment for up to 12 participants, who will engage directly with their own research topics to craft strong abstracts and begin structuring scholarly articles.
The workshop will be divided into two parts: a short theoretical section during which we will try to answer the most pressing question (how to do a good literary review? How many sources are too many? What is a game studies methodology? What are reviewers looking for? Why you really do not need to mention the ludology vs narratology debate?) and a writing workshop during which the participants will work on their own abstracts. Special attention will be given to navigating and entering game studies in Europe, with consideration of the specificity of the requirements of the countries of the participants.
During the workshop, the participants will be expected to work on their abstracts, receiving and providing peer feedback, as well as work collaboratively to develop outlines and plans for transforming these abstracts into full articles.
Future Directions for Interdisciplinary Research on Gender and Games
Ida Martine Gard Rysjedal, Maria Ruotsalainen, Tom Legierse
tom.legierse@uib.no
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A focus on gendered issues has been part of game studies since the field’s earliest development, but its significance has increased in the past two decennia. Especially after #Gamergate, we have seen an exponential growth of studies on gendered discrimination, experiences and representation in games and gaming spaces from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds. The critical engagements with gender and games have both highlighted the gendered challenges present in game cultures (e.g. Cote 2020, Malkowski & Russworm 2017) as well in the study of them (e.g. Phillips 2020, Bergström 2022), This academic work has additionally highlighted the need for intersectional approaches to gendered issues (Gray 2020).
However, despite the field’s contribution to scientific and societal debates, issues persist. We are now at an important cultural moment in which there is an increased need to think about the futures we aim to contribute to with our research practices. Academia’s tendency to point out issues has been duly noted elsewhere (e.g. Sedgwick 2002, Pötzsch & Jørgensen 2023), and we agree a constructive turn is necessary. We need to think, collectively, about what is next, both in terms of theoretical underpinnings and pragmatic solutions. In other words, we need to ask not only what research on gender and games reveals, but also what research on gender and games should do?
In this light, we propose a workshop, titled Future Directions for Interdisciplinary Research on Gender and Games. This workshop focuses on mapping and understanding the central questions related to the research of gender and games. The central aim is to map the key research areas and directions for the near future and to ponder how they situate in the current global socio-political context. We encourage scholars to critically reflect on current research practices, and to propose a way forward that spells out the futures it works towards. Besides individual presentations, a general discussion will be utilized to synthesize various visions put forward during the workshop. This synthesis will form the basis for a co-authored commentary on future directions for research on gender and games.
In times where scientific communities are increasingly under political and societal pressure, not least when they are working on issues related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, we identify a vital need to form strong networks of scholars working on these issues. As such, an additional goal of the workshop is to bring scholars working on gender and games together and introduce them to a to-be-launched Interdisciplinary Network for Research on Gender and Games (initiation funded by Nordic Gender Fund). Through this network, we hope to ensure that the collaborations that form during the workshop can be sustained in the years to come.
Proposed structure of the workshop
The workshop will be open to conference participants who are not presenting in the workshop themselves, but who are interested in these issues. Nonpresenters are welcome and encouraged to take part in the discussions during the workshop. The workshop will be capped at 20 participants, including 5 presenters and 3 organizers.
The bulk of our workshop is reserved for presentations and discussion, with each presentation being limited to 10 minutes and followed by 20 minutes of discussion. We will take 5 minutes to introduce the session briefly at the start of the session, and 15 minutes to synthesize and conclude the session. The synthesis of this workshop will lead up to a co-constructed commentary based on the workshop’s discussions. Participants can voluntarily choose to contribute to this commentary, which we aim to submit to an open-access journal afterwards.
We will invite participants to join us for an informal dinner (on their own expense) after the session. During dinner, we can continue the discussion, but most importantly we will discuss the Interdisciplinary Network for Research on Gender and Games with those who are interested.
Hold My Paddle: Local Pong-Clone Memories & Materialities in (Post-)Socialist Europe
Michal Kabát, Juraj Kovalčík, Vojtěch Straka
michal.kabat@gmail.com
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What the session is about
Do you or your older siblings remember that winter in the late ‘70s when households everywhere unboxed a sleek Pong console and finally brought the arcade home? – We don’t. In socialist Czechoslovakia the state-owned Tesla conglomerate managed to release only a few thousand TV tennis units (XD 8000/8000A/8001), built around an original MAS 601–603 chipset and priced well beyond most family budgets. Meanwhile, hobbyists smuggled AY-3-8500 “pong-on-a-chip” ICs from Hungary or East Germany and wired together their own ball-and-paddle contraptions using scrap printed circuit boards, salvaged knobs, and step-by-step instructions from localized magazine schematics. Those improvised machines – now scattered across attics and forgotten club newsletters – tell a different, messier story of early videogaming: one of bootleg logistics, invisible factory labour (often performed by women), and teenage tinkerers dreaming in solder fumes.
Building on our forthcoming chapter “Hold My Beer! Pong Clones in Communist Czechoslovakia” that will be part of an edited collection Silicon Dawn: Creative Computing in Europe 1970-2000, this workshop invites CEEGS participants to surface comparable stories and artefacts from across Central and Eastern Europe. Together we will widen the lens from one country’s case study to a regional collage of memories, objects and social practices. We know that those stories are waiting to be told. Magazines like Radioamator i Krótkofalowiec in Poland and Radio, Televiziya, Elektronika in Bulgaria cited Czechoslovak manuals, and all around the Eastern Bloc there were local Pong clones – either manufactured or homebrew, AY-3-8500-based or otherwise. Let’s hear those stories.
Aims
- Exchange undocumented memories and artefacts – personal anecdotes, photos, circuit diagrams, battered plastic shells – that illuminate how local ball-and-paddle devices were made, modified and played.
- Compare national trajectories of production, distribution and reception, mapping common threads such as clandestine parts-hunting, state-sanctioned amateur electronics clubs, or gendered labour.
- Seed an open micro-archive (short oral-history clips, digitised images, scans) that will extend the chapter and underpin a co-authored publication slated for 2026 (we can share the work wersion of the text with possible workshop participants).
Format (3 hours)
- Scene-setter (10 min). A rapid overview of key gaps and provocations drawn from the chapter.
- Lightning show-and-tell (≈ 90 min). Up to twelve pre-accepted contributors each present a five-minute “object” and its story.
- Mapping & theming break-outs (45 min). Small groups cluster the collected material along axes such as amateur ↔ industrial or hidden ↔ visible labour, sketching patterns on flip charts.
- Wrap-up (20 min). We agree on post-conference tasks. Suggestions: ≤ 750-word vignettes and media files due 31 October 2025, a mailing list/Slack channel, and roles for editing the online archive.
Kaleidosgame – A Card Game for Teaching Creative and Analytical Thinking in Game Design
Rafael Marques de Albuquerque, Flávio Anthero Nunes Vianna dos Santos
albumarques@gmail.com
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This workshop introduces Kaleidosgame, an innovative card game designed to teach game design thinking. It allows participants to engage in collaborative, rapid ideation sessions where they combine mechanics from a curated deck to create original game concepts under evolving constraints (e.g., platform, audience). The activity fosters analytical and synthetic thinking, peer learning, and design fluency, mirroring the creative intensity of game jams. Designed for educators, students, and practitioners, the workshop offers a replicable tool for cultivating game design literacy through experiential, game-based learning.
Keywords
Game design education, card game, gameplay mechanics, creative thinking, experiential learning
Workshop Goals
By the end of the session, participants will:
- Understand how card-based games can scaffold creative and analytical thinking in game design education.
- Analyze games as emergent systems of interacting mechanics.
- Reflect on the role of constraints and divergent thinking in innovation.
Theoretical Framework
The workshop grounds its approach in the distinction between praxeology (processes/tools) and phenomenology (mechanics/experiences) in game design (Lankoski & Holopainen, 2017). It emphasizes Zagal’s (2008) framework for understanding how mechanics coalesce into player experiences and Schell’s (2008) iterative design principles.
Activities
- Discussion (10 min): Reflection on insights, pedagogical applications, and adaptations for diverse contexts.
- Introduction (20 min): Overview of the theoretical model and Kaleidosgame rules.
- Gameplay (60 min): Teams draw mechanic cards (e.g., “class systems,” “synchronization challenges”) and pitch game concepts under progressive constraints (e.g., “design for VR”). Peer assessment rewards creativity and viability.
Luddic Exhaustion – Reconceptualising the Poetics of Soulspaces
Krzysztof Olszamowski, Kacper Karwacki, Mikołaj Pokrzepa, Magdalena Kozyra
krzysztof.olszamowski@gmail.com
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Bonfire has gone out. We disenchanted the souls games. Creators started to imitate design practices popularized by From Software studio, such as approaches to environmental design and feeling of mystery, leading to the emergence of souls-like genre, which in result led to disenchantment (Weber, 1904) of such gameworlds, resulting in the continual fading of the ludic sublime (Vella, 2015). Daniel Vella’s conceptualisation of the souls-like genre experience as an aesthetic engagement with a gameworld that appears as impossible to fathom comes across as unattainable within the modern video-game landscape. The feeling of mystery, which characterises the initial experience of a souls-like games, is contrasted with the genre’s position within the industry. It becomes increasingly difficult to become enchanted with the soulspace especially while observing various efforts to better understand and explain their mysteries attempted by gamers and scholars alike (Illger, 2020; Andiloro, 2022).
The modern market is saturated with souls-likes and souls-lites (we understand these terms similarly to the dichotomy ‘rogue-like’- ‘rogue-lite’) across all budget categories: AAA titles such as Elden Ring (From Software, 2022) or Jedi: Fallen Order (Respawn Entertainment, 2019), AA releases exemplified by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive, 2025), Lords of The Fallen (Deck 13, 2014) and independent titles, including Hollow Knight (Team Cherry, 2017), Blasphemous 2 (The Game Kitchen, 2023). All these games, despite a significant variance in their approach toward game design – atmosphere, game mechanics, narrative – tackle the environmental design of the gameworld similarly, aiming at evoking a sensation of the ludic sublime within the player. This approach can be recognised as, but not limited to: labyrinthian level design with high relevance of shortcuts (Andriano 2024), narration based on a structure of intentional understatements and obfuscation of the storytelling devices, and a sense of progression evoked by the player’s increasing knowledge.
Overuse of these practices, coupled with the fan-based discourse around souls-likes and the amount of content created around the games (Welsh 2020), led to a situation where, once modern and avant-garde design approach became fully recognised by its recipients, leading to a slow fading of the ludic sublime. This exhaustion is greatly evidenced by the release of Elden Ring: Nightreign (FromSoftware, 2025), where the sensation of ludic sublime appears as irrelevant, instead being replaced by a postmodern collage (Jameson, 1989) of recognition, quotation and over-saturation.
The release of Elden Ring was linked to the introduction of souls-likes into the mainstream, but also to the dropping of game-world design based on linear mazes. The open-world gameplay design can be on the one hand read as following dominant trends, but on the other as a departure from the souls-likes identity. Elden Ring‘s design approach strikes a balance between constantly increasing combat challenges and introducing mechanics aimed at supporting players who reject the ‘git gud’ culture (Felczak 2024). However, in The Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoftware, 2024) expansion, developers proposed the opposite direction, returning to the pattern of interconnected linear locations, perhaps responding to nostalgia for the classic souls-like experience. The result was a combination of traditional level design and the intense, dynamic gameplay typical of modern souls-likes. In the spirit of this year’s CEEGS conference main theme – Landscapes, Cities, Localities – we propose to rethink and reconceptualise spatial poetics of souls, souls-likes and souls-lites games. We will be pleased to receive a variety of papers raising issues such as, but not limited to, e.g.:
- player within a soulspace
- alternative or non canonical game spaces (mods, fan works)
- mixed genres and borderline cases (2D “souls-likes”, jrpgs “souls-likes”)
- level design (open world in relation to the genre tradition, labyrinth-like gameworld)
- worldbuilding (atmosphere, environmental storytelling, aesthetic particularity of a gameworld)
- community aspect (emerging narrative, community notes and bloodstains)
- significant places and their meaning (hubs, boss areas, bonfires)
- music as a poetic tool
Queer/Trans Game/Studies Spaces: Reflections, Challenges, and Futures
Robin Zingarelli, Giulio Enea Bevione
robinlongobardizingarelli@gmail.com
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Queer (Ruberg & Shaw 2017) and trans game studies (Ruberg 2022) have emerged as dynamic and growing fields of inquiry, investigating the increasing presence of queer and transgender identities in games (Shaw 2015, Ruberg & Shaw 2017, Thach 2020, Kosciesza 2023), queer and trans players (Whitehouse et al., 2023), queer independent designers (Ruberg 2019a, 2019b), but also the subversive potential of games as a medium (Ruberg & Shaw 2017, Ruberg 2019a, Chow 2023). Stemming from transgender studies, queer studies, and their overlap (Stryker & Whittle 2006, Stryker & Aizura 2013), these works have pointed out the need to diversify games and game studies, as well as to establish counter-hegemonic practices and angles (Hantsbarger et al. 2022). Prominent works in the field remain, however, limited, and mostly produced by Western European and North American scholars, underscoring the need for contributions from intersectional and marginalised voices.
This rise in the popularity of queer/trans game studies coincides with heightened political scrutiny of queer and trans lives (Butler 2024), underscoring the urgency of critically examining these intersections. Queer communities have become focal points in the public discourse, as several countries adopt hostile legislation and censorship targeting transgender identities, including closures and cuts in Queer and Gender Studies departments in Anglophone academia (Butler 2024). In times of unpredictability, with both dictatorships and democracies limiting freedom of speech and aiming for the silencing of queer lives, we must strive to preserve counter-hegemonic approaches across both the academic and the non-academic spheres.
This workshop seeks therefore to investigate the state of the art of queer/trans game studies, of queer and trans representations in and around games, and of the reception of queer and transgender studies in the field of game studies, highlighting their relevance and the potential tensions between such overlapping fields, and the importance of marginalised spaces and localities in shaping our current understanding or queer/trans games and game studies. It also proposes to explore how game studies scholarship situates itself within the current socio-political climate around transgender lives, and how it can comprise a safe space for promoting transgender and queer awareness.
The workshop proposes to investigate (but is not limited to) the following questions:
- What are the origins, trajectories, methods, and future directions of trans/queer games studies?
- What is the state of the art of transgender and queer representations in games, and can queer and trans communities benefit from more visibility in the medium?
- How are queer/trans game studies situated geographically, and what are the main communities in focus? How is it possible to incorporate intersectional perspectives?
- What limitations or gaps persist within queer/trans game studies and game representations?
- How can we move towards greater queer and trans acceptance in game studies conferences, departments, and broader academic contexts? Should academic practices align with transgender activism to promote awareness, safeguard rights, and foster a diverse environment? And if so, how?
- This workshop aims to map the current landscape of queer and trans game studies, critically reflecting on their developments, and envisioning their potential to challenge, disrupt, and transform the relationship with game studies scholarship, bridging existing gaps and inviting research on underrepresented themes and from underrepresented subjectivities. The workshop is also a first step toward a forthcoming CfP for an edited volume on queer/trans game studies with the journal GAME.
Traversing Game Worlds: Movement, Mobility, and Mediation
Kübra Aksay, Sebastian R. Richter
kuebra.aksay@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de
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From walking and wandering “without an end point” (Kagen 2022, 27) to commuting, high-speed travel, and “digital tourism” (Lamerichs 2018; van Nuenen 2024; Salmond and Salmond 2016) or Ludoforming (Aarseth 2019) movement in video games is central to how players experience and engage with game worlds. Whether on foot, by car, on horseback, through teleportation, or via fast-travel systems, navigating virtual space is never merely mechanical; it is cultural, affective, narrative, and political.
Traversal in games can be understood as both a mechanic and an embodied practice, offering methodological and theoretical pathways for (re-)thinking about space and “non-places” (Augé 1995), exploration, infrastructure, identity, and sensory experience. Thus, the topic also opens up dialogue between everyday mobilities (e.g., commuting, migration, walking), theoretical traditions (e.g., phenomenology, psychogeography, infrastructure studies), and game design paradigms (e.g., open worlds, level design, travel mechanics). This intersection invites critical reflection on how virtual movement, ranging from embodied navigation to “armchair travel” (Korte and Sennefelder 2022, 1), shapes not only gameplay but also cultural understandings of place, belonging, and mobility.
This workshop invites participants to explore how spatial movement can serve as a critical lens for studying games. We welcome contributions examining the dynamics of navigating game space and how these dynamics shape meaning, structure, and aesthetics in digital environments. We encourage submissions that engage with both established and emerging approaches to in-game movement—planned and accidental, purposeful and aimless, embodied and abstract. Building on a substantial body of work on space, navigation, and mobility in game studies, this workshop seeks to highlight underexplored perspectives and propose new directions for thinking about how navigating game spaces can inform broader conversations about spatial politics, agency, infrastructure, and the experience of digital play.
Workshop Plan
This three-hour workshop begins with a 15-minute introduction by the organizers, outlining key questions, conceptual framing, and goals. Next, six short presentations (10 minutes each, followed by 5 minutes Q&A, 90 minutes in total) will offer case studies or critical reflections on traversal, covering a range of topics such as walking simulators, fast travel, liminal spaces, vehicles, and the cultural meanings of movement in games. Audience members will be expected to read abstracts provided by presenters in advance of the workshop.
The final segment of the workshop will be a roundtable discussion (45 minutes, preceded by a 15-minute break after the individual talks) open to all 15 participants. This session will reflect on shared themes from the talks, build on the feedback during the Q&As in the first half of the workshop, and methodological challenges of studying traversal in games, with the aim of building connections and identifying future directions for research on movement and spatial experience in games. Possible Topics Include (but are not limited to):
- Traversal and identity: gendered, racialized, or class-based movement
- Walking, wandering, dérive, and digital flânerie
- Vehicles, mounts, and modes of locomotion in games
- Commuting and routine movement in game narratives
- Fast travel, teleportation, and traversal shortcuts
- Traversal as metaphor (e.g., for grief, memory, exile, growth)
- Infrastructure, roads, and mobility systems in world-building
- Traversal and accessibility / the politics of movement
- Traversal interfaces: maps, waypoints, compasses, GPS
- Traversal constraints: borders, gates, loading screens
- Game speed, slowness, and the temporality of movement
Video Games between Postcolonialism and Postcommunism
Andrei Nae, Dorota Kołodziejczyk
andrei.nae@lls.unibuc.ro
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Central and Eastern Europe is still an underrepresented region in game studies. In recent years, the focus on the politics of games, gaming, and gaming cultures has been limited to what Immanuel Wallerstein would call either core or periphery countries. The semi-periphery finds itself in an uneasy position due to the blind spots of postcolonialism and the decolonial option, two approaches that have so far been rather inefficient in accounting for the semi-periphery, more specifically postsocialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
This workshop contributes to an on-going effort in Central and Eastern Europe to put the region on the political map of game studies by focusing on video games developed in the region and the representation of the region in games developed elsewhere. More specifically, the workshop will focus on Andrei Nae’s upcoming collective volume Video Games between Postcolonialism and Postcommunism that will be published by De Gruyter in 2025. The volume looks at video games developed in various regions of the world, while maintaining a strong interest in Central and Eastern Europe. The volume uses the diverse corpus of games to challenge the provincialism and theoretical shortcomings of postcolonialism and advocates for a postcolonial/postcommunist approach that can adequately provide an ideological account for video games and/in the semi-periphery after the dismantling of the Soviet Union.
The core activity of the workshop consists in a discussion between invited keynote speaker Dorota Kołodziejczyk, who has written extensively on postcolonialism/postcommunism, and Andrei Nae, the editor and main co-author of Video Games between Postcolonialism and Postcommunism, based on the book’s manuscript. The discussion will be ensued by a Q&A session involving the other participants and a subsequent discussion on future action for the further inclusion of Central and Eastern Europe into the academic mainstream of game studies.
REGISTRATION
EARLY BIRD FEES
until/on 25 July
Standard fee: 100 EUR or 430 PLN
Reduced fee: 70 EUR or 340 PLN (applies to students, including PhD students)
LATE FEES
until/on 22 August
Standard fee: 130 EUR or 560 PLN
Reduced fee: 90 EUR or 440 PLN (applies to students, including PhD students)
To register for the conference, please pay the applicable fee through a bank transfer to the account of the University of Wrocław and fill in the registration form. When filling in the form, you will be asked to provide proof of payment (a receipt or a screenshot).
The account number if you pay in EUR:
PL 92 1090 2590 0000 0001 5878 8893
The account number if you pay in PLN*:
56 1090 2590 0000 0001 5878 8862
In the bank transfer title, please write the conference number, 7003/0141/25, as well as your first and last names.
- We are accepting fees and registration forms until 22 August, but a lower fee (early bird fee) is available for those who register until 25 July. The fees include coffee breaks, lunches, conference materials, and a visit to the Museum of Games and Computers of the Past Era.
- The fees apply to active participants (those presenting a talk on 9 or 10 September and to those taking part in workshops on 8 September). For the other participants, there is no attendance fee, but meals, materials, etc. are not included.
- If you take part in a workshop but do not present a talk on 9 or 10 September, you are eligible for an early bird fee until 22 August. This is due to the fact that the admission process for the workshops has not started yet.
- *Please note that Polish participants are required to make the transfer in PLN, not in EUR.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Märten Rattasepp
Layers Upon Layers – the Spaces for Disco (Elysium & Pentiment)
Märten Rattasepp is an ex-academic, researcher, essayist, writer, and narrative designer from Estonia. He graduated with a Master of Arts degree from the University of Tartu in the field of literary and cultural theory, with a focus mostly on postmodern/amodern writing, metafiction, and historiography. After shifting to the gamedev world, he has written for games such as Pentiment, Disco Elysium, Death and Taxes, and Broken Alliance. From these, both Pentiment and Disco Elysium especially are intertwined with particular landscapes and localities, so much so that the living city of Revachol itself plays a significant part in the experience of the protagonist of Disco Elysium. The world of Disco Elysium is heavily built around particular temporalities and experiences of 90s and early 00s Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, while Pentiment is trying to recreate an authentic-feeling vision of a small town in early 16th-century Bavaria and the Holy Roman Empire.
dr hab.Dorota Kołodziejczyk
The Game Exotic – How to Decolonize Gaming and Not Lose the Fun? A Transmedia Reflection
Postcolonial studies have done a lot to raise the awareness how deeply entrenched the appropriative and commodifying processes of representing cultural uniqueness and difference are in the global culture of today (read: globality engendered by the cultural industry of the West). Even if literature, especially postcolonial literature, is keen to debunk the allure of exoticism inscribed in the very idea of adventure/quest/hero narrative since modernity (and before), and even if gaming communities are increasingly far-from-naïve cultural commodity consumers, the exotic remains a powerful transmedia force in cultural narratives which seep into games, too.
In my talk, I will reflect on how narrative media, including games, develop their own cultural landscapes by succumbing to two contradictory forces. One seeks always new stimulating narrative wrapping for the game, infusing it with exotic locales and encouraging ergodic involvement in the tasks of conquest and domination. The other undermines the mythopoeic pull of the hero/quest/conquest/domination narrative models as cultural commodification, reification and appropriation.
My key concern, however, will be not how criticism and game studies deconstruct and debunk the game exotic, but how games, as intermedia narratives, can actually eat the cookie and have it. In so many words, my question will be how we can enjoy the foundational narrative elements of the game which require an archetypal quest layer, and still decolonize what comes along with it and make our desire for the thrill of the exotic sustainable and equitable.
PROGRAMME
DAY 1
9 September
| 8:00-8:30 REGISTRATION |
| 8:30-9:00 OPENING REMARKS |
| 9:00-10:00 KEYNOTE 1 Dorota Kołodziejczyk The Game Exotic – How to Decolonize Gaming and Not Lose the Fun? A Transmedia Reflection |
| 10:00-10:30 COFFEE BREAK |
| 10:30-12:30 PANEL 1 (Un)Real Spaces chair: Agata Waszkiewicz | 10:30-12:30 PANEL 2 Spaces in Development chair: Stanisław Krawczyk |
|---|---|
| Hans-Joachim Backe Who, Where, or What Is the ‘Heart of Chornobyl’? Calculated Spatial Ambiguity in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 | Wacław Kulczykowski From Local History to Global Play: Science-Based Video Games as Tools for Cultural Heritage and Education |
| Tomasz Majkowski, Aleksandra Prokopek, Magdalena Kozyra Only Beavers Left Alive. Polish City Re-Builders and Climate Apocalypse | SIlvester Buček Reframing Game Space: From Technical to Symbolic Spectacle in Digital Game Marketing |
| Daniel Vella, Justyna Janik Taking in the View: Viewpoints, Vistas and Veduti in Games | Xinyu Kang, Yuantong Yun Climatic Erasure and Ecological Amnesia: A Critique of Climate Instrumentalization in CEE Game Development |
| Jan Švelch, Jan Houška, Tereza Fousek Krobová, Jaroslav Švelch The City of Brno as a Video Game Industry Cluster: Cottage-Like Origins and Community Values | Maria Ruotsalainen, Tanja Välisalo From Obscurity to Sports Pages – the Evolving Attitudes towards Esports in Media |
| 12:30-13:30 LUNCH |
| 13:30-15:30 PANEL 3 Mapping out the Spaces chair: Andrei Moran-Nae | 13:30-15:30 PANEL 4 Liminal and Ambiguous Spaces chair: Justyna Janik |
|---|---|
| Ashley Rezvani The City as Ideology: The Spatial Politics of Urban Planning in Frostpunk 2 and Terra Nil | Katarzyna Matlas“You’re on a Path in the Woods” – Liminality of Space as a Metamodern Narrative Design in Slay the Princess |
| Gerald Kapałka, Maria Celińska Emotional Landscapes in Localization: Affective Reception of Proper Nouns in Outer Wilds | Zsófia Orosz-Réti The Master’s Code to Dismantle the Master’s Game? Games as Pocket Universes in Black Mirror |
| Yuantong Yun Pixel to Parallax: Low-Poly Cartographies of Medieval Spatial Narrative in Games | Magdalena Kozyra, Aleksandra Łozińska Vampiric Spaces of Ambience. The Case of Visual Novels Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York and Shadows of New York |
| Diego Barroso, Zidong Huang Urban (Re)development for Video Games. Effective Ludoforming and the Work of Ryu Ga Gotoku | Mikołaj Pokrzepa, Matylda Szpila, Wojciech Nowak Headache as a Tool – Critical Strategies and Their Dissonances in Transhuman-Coded Ludotopias |
| 15:30-16:00 COFFEE BREAK |
| 16:00-17:30 PANEL 5 Home(less) Spaces chair: Anastasios Theodoropoulos | 16:00-17:30 PANEL 6 The Atmosphere of a Space chair: Daniel Vella |
|---|---|
| Zofia Matczak Visual Styles and Atmosphere – Representing Homes in Digital Games | Daniele Monaco Exploring Genius Loci in Videogame Worlds: A Philosophical Inquiry into Virtual Places |
| Oskar Dobczyński Analysis of Homeless Encampments in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon Video Game Series | Emilia Mazur The Atmosphere of the Lost Place in The Thaumaturge |
| Victor Navarro-Remesal, Beatriz Pérez Zapata, Antonio José Planells de la Maza “Don’t Leave the House”: The Meaning of Home in Contemporary Video Games | Kumru Akdogan Game Localities as Normative Affordances |
DAY 2
10 September
| 8:30-9:00 REGISTRATION |
| 9:00-10:00 KEYNOTE 2 Märten Rattasepp Layers Upon Layers – the Spaces for Disco (Elysium & Pentiment) |
| 10:00-10:30 COFFEE BREAK |
| 10:30-12:30 PANEL 7 Gendered Spaces chair: Agata Waszkiewicz | 10:30-12:30 PANEL 8 Reclaiming Spaces chair: Tomasz Z. Majkowski |
|---|---|
| Mike Graham Gaming Grandma and the Riverside Lodge: Space and Place at the end of a Grand Skyrim Adventure | Krzysztof Olszamowski Remaking and Cozyficating Game Space in Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth |
| Ines Munker “When You’re Not on Edge, you’re taking up too much space.” – Grotesque ‘Seelenlandschaften’ and the Subversion of Victorian Femininity in American McGee’s Alice: Madness Returns (2011) | Imola Bülgözdi Walking in Two Worlds: Videogames and Indigenous Futurity |
| Matylda Szpila Underground Spaces and Their Queer Potential | Szymon Kukulak Tesla-Coiled Eiffel Tower. The Role of Real-life Landmarks on Urban Battlefields in Real-time Strategy Games |
| Robin Longobardi Zingarelli Shades of a Rainbow Caffè: Differences and Localism in Queer Game Cultures in the Italian Context |
| 12:30-13:30 LUNCH |
| 13:30-15:00 PANEL 9 The End of Space chair: Magdalena Kozyra | 13:30-15:00 PANEL 10 Game Jam Space chair: SIlvester Buček |
|---|---|
| Lars de Wildt Apocalypse Where!? Locating the End of ‘the’ World | Jaroslav Švelch A Liquor-Powered Scene: The Becherovka Game Competition as a Cultural Intermediary in the 2000s Czech Game Industry |
| Michał Jutkiewicz Forgetting the Catastrophe. Reconstruction and Destruction in Lisboa and Warsaw: City of Ruins | Stanisław Krawczyk, Kim Holflod, Rikke Toft Nørgård, Em Achilleus Hansen “That’s Not Fair!”: Cultural Heritage, European Values, and Youth’s Societal Engagement at a Cultural Game Jam |
| Kacper Karwacki Playing and Nothingness – Aesthetics of Emptiness in Game-World’s Construction | Mikhail Fiadotau, Maria Garda The Glocal Game Jam? A Variantological Look at the Local History of Game Jamming Cultures in Poland and Japan |
| 15:00-15:30 COFFEE BREAK |
| 15:30-17:00 PANEL 11 Mythological Spaces chair: Agata Waszkiewicz | 15:30-17:00 PANEL 12 Analog Spaces chair: Jaroslav Švelch |
|---|---|
| Štěpán Šanda If the Astronomical Clock Stops, This Country Is Done For: Gameworld, Otherworld and Mythological Sites of Hrot | Karol Popow Cardboard Gameworld: Spatiality and Materiality in Board Games |
| Dale Leorke Navigating Lore and Landscape: Ludic Mythography and Player Pilgrimages in Dark Souls and Black Myth: Wukong | Konrad Augustyniak Was Sherlock Holmes from Wrocław? Locality and Theming in Polish Escape Rooms |
| Barnabás Springer, Pietro Noceti Playable Heritage: A Case Study of Embedding Folklore into Game Design for Cultural Mediation | Mateusz Felczak ‘D&Dfication’ of Localized Spatiality: (De)constructing ‘Kashubianness’ in Dungeons of the Amber Griffin |
| 17:00-18:00 GENERAL ASSEMBLY |
HEAD OF LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Agata Zarzycka, agata.zarzycka@uwr.edu.pl
VENUE
Institute of English Studies
University of Wrocław
Kuźnicza 21-22
50-138 Wrocław
PROGRAM CHAIR
Agata Waszkiewicz, agata.waszkiewicz@kul.pl
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