Der Campus Leipzig in der Nähe des Marktplatzes und des Hauptbahnhofs

CEEGS 2023: Meaning and Making of Games

Find the programme here.

October 19th

08:30 – 09:00

Registration at location in Leipzig

09:00 – 09:30

Opening remarks in room 214 by Joschka Mütterlein (Vice President), Christian Milster (Campus Director, Leipzig), Gerald Farca (Head of Games) and Mateus Felczak (CEEGS Program Committee)

The workshops and Doctoral Consortium are parallel, choose one.

09:30 – 11:00

Doctoral Consortium

Alessandro Franzò, University of Milan
Homemade: gaming houses as cultural and productive hubs in the eSports ecosystem

Michele Varini, Universitá Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Penelope’s Web 3.0

Emma M. Livesey, Deakin University Melbourne
Creating a place-conscious TTRPG for use as a writing program teaching tool

09:30 – 11:00

Greening Games Education. How to approach environmental issues in video game-related courses?

Organisers: Sonia Fizek (Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln), Laura Frings (Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln), Lukáš Kolek (Charles University), Andrea Hubert (Charles University)

09:30 – 11:00

„Welcome to Arstotzka! The Ludic ‘Other Europe’ Under Western Eyes“

Organisers: Tomasz Z. Majkowski, Aleksandra Prokopek, Magdalena Kozyra

09:30 – 11:00

„Video games, history and museums: Challenges and opportunities for collaborative game development“

Organisers: Amelia Williams, Lukaš Kolek, Fernanda Flores

09:30 – 11:00

Gaming and Neurodiversity

Organiser: Mikhail Fiadotau

11:00 – 11:30

It’s time for a coffee and snacks break!

Take the time to get to know each other, exchange knowledge and refuel before we continue with the workshops and Doctoral Consortium.

11:30 – 12:30

Doctoral Consortium

Thomas Hessling, University of Cologne
Cross-Cultural Sound Scraping: Sounds and Music as Design Elements in Computer Game Culture

Martin Látal, Palacký University Olomouc
The Body Virtual: Examination of Body and Embodiment in Virtual Space

11:30 – 12:30

Greening Games Education. How to approach environmental issues in video game-related courses?

Organisers: Sonia Fizek (Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln), Laura Frings (Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln), Lukáš Kolek (Charles University), Andrea Hubert (Charles University)

11:30 – 12:30

„Welcome to Arstotzka! The Ludic ‘Other Europe’ Under Western Eyes“

Organisers: Tomasz Z. Majkowski, Aleksandra Prokopek, Magdalena Kozyra

11:30 – 12:30

„Video games, history and museums: Challenges and opportunities for collaborative game development“

Organisers: Amelia Williams, Lukaš Kolek, Fernanda Flores

11:30 – 12:30

Gaming and Neurodiversity

Organiser: Mikhail Fiadotau

12:30 – 14:00

It’s time for a lunch break!

You can shop for food in the mall right across the street, or eat in the many diverse restaurants close to the campus.

14:00 – 15:00

Doctoral Consortium

Nikita Stulikov, Lomonosov Moscow State University
What are Games? A Comparative Meta-Ontological Analysis of Key Perspectives on Game Meaning

Robin Longobardi Zingarelli
Design practices and transgender agency in video games in independent and mainstream contexts (2005-2022)

14:00 – 15:00

Greening Games Education. How to approach environmental issues in video game-related courses?

Organisers: Sonia Fizek (Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln), Laura Frings (Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln), Lukáš Kolek (Charles University), Andrea Hubert (Charles University)

14:00 – 15:00

Level Design

Organiser: Michael Baur, (Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences)

14:00 – 15:00

Video games, culture and myth: theoretical and methodological approaches

Antonio José Planells de la Maza, Víctor Manuel Navarro Remesal

14:00 – 15:00

Games Journalism – At the Interlink between Game Studies and the Industry?
Organiser: Pascal Wagner (GamesMarkt)

15:00 – 15:30

Coffee break and snacks!

It’s time for a second break before we continue with the parallel sessions.

15:30 – 17:00

Doctoral Consortium

Lars Lindemann, CAU Kiel
Playing through the End Times: a mixed-method study of critical apocalypses in the video game medium

Martin Váňa, Charles University in Prague
Authenticity and video games

15:30 – 17:00

Greening Games Education. How to approach environmental issues in video game-related courses?

Organisers: Sonia Fizek (Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln), Laura Frings (Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln), Lukáš Kolek (Charles University), Andrea Hubert (Charles University)

15:30 – 17:00

Level Design

Organiser: Michael Baur, (Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences)

15:30 – 17:00

Video games, culture and myth: theoretical and methodological approaches

Antonio José Planells de la Maza, Víctor Manuel Navarro Remesal

15:30 – 17:00

Games Journalism – At the Interlink between Game Studies and the Industry?
Organiser: Pascal Wagner (GamesMarkt)

17:30 – 18:00

The last coffee break for this day!

18:00 – 19:30

Keynote by Jana Stadeler (Playground Games)

The Un-Reality of Video Game Cultures

Talk description will follow shortly!

20:00

Evening Location for a get-together!

More details will follow shortly.

October 20th

08:30 – 09:00

Registration at location in Leipzig

09:00 – 09:30

Opening remarks by CEEGS program committee and Gerald Farca

9:30 – 11:00

Keynote by Víctor Navarro Remesal (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Video Games as Animation: Inquiries into the Animatic Nature of Playable Images

Video games are a hybrid media that can be studied from many fronts. They have ludic, machinic, and narrative sides (Mukherjee, 2015) that can sometimes seem at odds in game analysis. However, there is another side that is often overlooked: video games are also animatic works. Our first contact with them is as playable images, a reality that places firmly within visual culture, and by not studying them as such we are cutting some much-needed ties. This makes games belong within the animatic apparatus explored by Cholodenko (2007) and Levitt (2018), an apparatus with its own formal structure, (an)ontology, and impact on our relationship with media. It also has further impacts on different levels, from design to semiotics. This presentation unpacks them in five fronts:

  • 1) history,
  • 2) genealogies,
  • 3) industry and intermediality,
  • 4) ontology and relation to reality, and
  • 5) player experiences.

11:00 – 11:30

It’s time for the first coffee and snacks break for the day.

The sessions are parallel, choose one for each time slot.

11:30 – 13:30

Session 1A – Queering the Utopian Spaces

11:30: Eren Ileri
CYBORG ASTRONAUT: Disembodied White Masculinity and the Imagination of Outer Space in Contemporary Video Games

12:00: Sebastian Möring
Towards an Understanding of Computer Games as Media of Care: Analyzing Animal Crossing: New Horizons in Light of the Recent Covid-19 Pandemic

12:30: Rebecca Käpernick
Maternal Representations in the Horizon and The Last of Us series

13:00: Gerald Farca
Farming Games and the Utopian Narrative

11:30 – 13:30

Session 1B – Apocalypse Now

11:30: Lars Lindemann
Contemporary manifestations of apocalypse in game and narrative design – Toward a “critical apocalypse”

12:00: Lawrence May
Death Stranding and the ecosystemic zombie

12:30: Krzysztof Czyżak
Between the future and the present – time travel video games and the challenge of post-apocalyptic landscape

13:00 Karol Zaborowski
When Player Bites Back. Ecocritical Thoughts on Playing as a Monster

11:30 – 13:30

Session 1C – The Local & The Global

11:30: Sajna A and Dr. Suhail Abdul Rub P.
Redesigning Indian Mythology via Games: Raji: An Ancient Epic as an Ingenious Avant-Garde

12:00: Laura Jungblut
Changing the Game: Challenging the Colonial Paradigm through Indigenous Production and Storytelling

12:30: Olga Kalashnikova and Leonid Moyzhes
Russian digital games made for Russians: The case of Atomic Heart

13:00: Yanchen Zhang
The Sin of Play: The criticisms against the act of play in China

11:30 – 13:30

Session 1D – The Mark of the Auteur

11:30: Beatriz Pérez Zapata
Adapting the meaning of Kenji Miyazawa: pacifism, nature, fantasy, and biography in the video game Ihatovo Monogatari

12:00: Filip Jankowski
A chronicle of a certain cooperation: Muriel Tramis, Pierre Gilhodes and auteur theory

12:30: Bodil Stelter
“Neil can do what he wants, even follow an agenda. He is the creator!” – The persona of Neil Druckmann in The Last of Us value-discourse.

13:00: Alessandro Franzò
Homemade: gaming houses as cultural and productive hubs in the eSports ecosystem

13:30 – 15:00

Lunch break time!

You can shop for food in the mall right across the street, or eat in the many diverse restaurants close to the campus.

15:00 – 16:30

Session 2A – Mechanical Conundrums, Worlds, and Processes

15:00: Hans-Joachim Backe
Worldbuilding through Mechanics: The Case of Escape from Tarkov

15:30: Olli Tapio Leino
Exploring Computer Games as Process Arts

16:00: Espen Aarseth
Meaning from Mechanics: the problem with ‘procedural rhetoric’

15:00 – 16:30

Session 2B – Phenomenology and Ideology

15:00: Ondřej Trhoň
Gacha-interpellation: Genshin Impact and post-phenomenological critique of open-world ideology of the subject

15:30: Alesha Serada
Defining the Genre of a Monster Breeding Simulator

15:00 – 16:30

Session 2C – (Re)productivity

15:00: Václav Janoščík
Behavioural Capital: Reproductive gameplay and capitalisation, playful Marx and Battlepass-communism

15:30: Rüdiger Brandis
Liberalism and its Limits in Mafia 2 – “The Working Man is a Sucker, that’s for sure”

16:00: Lars de Wildt
Producing Worldview at Ubisoft Montréal (a political-economic and cultural-sociological study of the Assassin’s Creed franchise’s workers and worldview)

15:00 – 16:30

Session 2D – Transgressing the UI Boundaries

15:00: Thomas Hessling
How to make a Dragon roar, or Cross-Cultural Sound Scraping: Sounds and Music as Design Elements in Computer Game Culture

15:30: Andrea Mariucci
Expanding the Game Space: Reflections on the Boundaries of the Interface

16:00: Konrad Augustyniak
Abandon the Hotel! Multimodality in Polish Escape Room Design

16:30 – 17:00

The last coffee break for this day!

17:00 – 18:30

Session 3A – Orality, Textuality, Visuality

17:00: Krzysztof Olszamowski
Playing a story or reading a game – Multimodality in the literary experience of ‘Pentiment’

17:30: Małgorzata Majkowska and Tomasz Majkowski.
Play, Goddess! Homeric qualities of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

18:00: Dom Ford
The city, according to city builders: The mythology of city-builder games

17:00 – 18:30

Session 3B – Historical Narratives

17:00: Jakub Šindelář and Angus Mol
Playing in their shoes? Historical empathy and digital games

17:30: Michał Mochocki, Jakub Majewski and Paweł Schreiber
The Heritage Discourses of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in Polish Video Games

18:00: Benjamin Dorrington Redder
„From Historical (Game) Form to Historical Gameplay: Establishing the Multimodal Turn of Historical Representation for Game Research and Scholarship“

17:00 – 18:30

Session 3C – Aesthetics of Representation

17:00: Anna Kożuch and Krzysztof Mroczek
Horizon: Forbidden Hair, or the portrayal of women in video games: intentions and awareness

17:30: Michele Varini
Do Androids Dream of Electric Suit? Fashion co-production in the new digital environment

18:00: Tereza Krobova
What the Hell Are You Wearing? Strategies of Czech Women Working in the Game Industry to Cope with the Gendered Clothing Norms

17:00 – 18:30

Session 3D – Industry Strikes Back

17:00: Jan Houška
Adapt, Experiment, or Improve Within Local and Structural Limits: Labour of Eastern European and Western Game Workers in Czech-based Studios

17:30: Fabrício Fava and Camila Mangueira
Combining critical design and game playing for imagining media

18:00: Jaroslav Svelch
Decentering software: Transmedia strategies in the experimental 1980s game productions by Mel Croucher and Automata UK

20:00

Conference Party @Macromedia Campus.

Please join us for the official CEEGS Party with drinks, food, games, and dance!

October 21st

9:30 – 11:00

Keynote by Charlene Putney (Writer & Experimenter & Co-Founder of writewithlaika.com)

Seeds: 23 ideas for bringing your best work into the world

In this talk, I will offer 23 lessons I’ve learned in my own working life over 20 years as project manager (at Google and Facebook), game writer (at Larian Studios, Die Gute Fabrik, and freelance), and AI startup founder (Write With LAIKA). We’ll look at the practical, the intangible, and the esoteric. Warning: there will be interactive elements, invitations to participate, and a few challenges to bring home too!

11:00 – 11:30

It’s time for a coffee and snacks break!

Some more time to snack, have coffee and talk to each other in real life!

11:30 – 13:00

Session 4A – Non-digital Realms

11:30: Hélène Sellier and Gabrielle Lavenir
Research-creation at the crossroad between game production and game research: how do the design of a roguelite deckbuilder and the theoretical inquiry on queer games fuel each other?

12:00: Justyna Janik and Daniel Vella
Designed Fortune: Usages of Tarot Cards in Board, Tabletop and Digital Games

12:30: Jan Švelch
Crunch as a Punchline? Workplace Comedy and Industrial Reflexivity in the TV series Mythic Quest

11:30 – 13:00

Session 4B – Intentions and Relations

15:00: Mark Maletska
Video Game Mechanics and Queer Gender Identities: Ongoing Project Overview

12:00: Martin Látal and Karel Vranovský
Notes Towards Immersion in Gaming: The Sensory, the Literary, and the Semiotic

12:30: Johan Kalmanlehto
Playstyle Between Habitual and Skilful Practices

11:30 – 13:00

Session 4C – Narrative Boundaries

11:30: Vickie Monthong
“The Recursive Child”: Reimagining Children’s Narratives through the Ludonarrative Design of Puzzle-platformers

12:00: Simon Huber
Squaring Magic Circles: Game Design in terms of cultural techniques.

12:30: Damian Gałuszka
In Between Ordinary Life and the Magic Circle. Designing Impactful Digital Games and VR Experiences

13:00 – 14:30

Lunch break time!

You can shop for food in the mall right across the street, or eat in the many diverse restaurants close to the campus.

14:30 – 16:00

Session 5A – The Avatar Issues

14:30: Josef Tichý
„A Theme of Love“ – Japanese Take on Affection and Domestic Violence in Silent Hill (1999) and Silent Hill 2 (2001)

15:00: Marta Tymińska
Classification of avatar harm

15:30: Daniel Vella and Justyna Janik
Unpacking Objects: Household Items and Characters in Games

14:30 – 16:00

Session 5B – Education & Inspiration

14:30: Michal Mochocki and Yaraslau Kot
Methods and Tools of Game Writing and Story Design in Professional Manuals 2019-2022

15:00: Ramona Srbecky, Wieland Fraas, Simon-Alexander Wetzel, Michael Winterhagen, Jan Dettmers and Matthias Hemmje
Development and Evaluation of a Simulation for a University Course in Work and Organizational Psychology at a German University

15:30: Diego Andrés Mejía-Alandia
Desiring-machines, Utopia and the ludic representations of Soviet space nostalgia in Little Orpheus and The Great Perhaps

14:30 – 16:00

Session 5C – Imaginary Efforts

14:30: Aleksandra Prokopek and Agata Waszkiewicz
Avant-garde Imagery in Arrière-Garde Digital Games

15:00: Emilia Mazur
Animal Presence in Video Games – Creation and Influence

15:30: Shruti Agrawal and Girish Dalvi
Subjective Effort in Games: Understanding Methods and Context

16:00 – 16:30

The last coffee break for this day!

16:30 – 18 Uhr

Final remarks, DiGRA CEE general assembly and board elections

Room plan

Room: 214 (Audimax)
Main Stage
Room: 213
Stage 2
Room: 212
Stage 3
Room: 216
Stage 4
Room: 208
Stage 5
Room: 113
Breakout room for (day 1)
Room: 206
Quiet room
Room: 207
Wardrobe
Room: 104 Games Lab
Chill area
Room: Kitchen (5th floor)
Catering area
Room: Kitchen (5th floor) + 511
Evening event on October 20th
Room: 204
Media center