Games at the Crossroads

DiGRA 2025 will take place in Valletta, Malta, 30th June – 4th July 2025. A pre-conference will be held one day prior to the official beginning of the conference, on Monday 30th June, with a PhD Consortium and Workshops.

The theme of the conference will be Games at the Crossroads, exploring games and game studies at points of (cultural, disciplinary) encounter and divergence.

Malta has often been characterised as a country at the crossroads. Situated in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, its archipelago lies at the intersection of ancient and contemporary routes of trade and migration connecting north and south, east and west. Culturally as well as geographically, it bridges Europe and North Africa, and has been marked by millennia of cultural interchange, encounter, and currents of trade and migration across the Mediterranean. Moreover, the Malta of the present has also been described as standing at the crossroads of past and future: a country with a rich heritage and tradition that is undergoing rapid change into a cosmopolitan metropolis as a hub in globalised networks of migration and capital. This positions Malta as the ideal location for discussing games at the crossroads: between cultures, between academic disciplines, between media, between different social groups and divergent interests, and between where games (and game studies) have been and where they might go next.

As the academic discipline of game studies concludes its first quarter-century since the launch of DiGRA and the Game Studies journal, it is a good time to pause and take stock of how far game studies has come, and where the academic field can go next. Of course, as an interdisciplinary field (Mäyrä 2008; Taylor 2024), game studies has always been positioned at the crossroads, marking a point of encounter between the humanities, the social sciences, creative practice and computer science. However, we are at a point when a lexicon of concepts, ideas and approaches has come to be established within the field. This necessitates a step back to ask questions about what game studies has achieved, as well as about the blind spots of established wisdom and existing knowledge in the field.

It is not just game studies as an academic discipline, though, that appears to have arrived at a crossroads. Marked by waves of layoffs, studio shutdowns, questionable labour practices, industry consolidation and simultaneous claims regarding the unsustainability of AAA game production and the unviability of independent game production, there is the feeling that games themselves – as an industry and a technocultural practice - stand at a turning point. Where do games and the games industry go from here?

There are other senses in which we can think of games at the crossroads. For historical, cultural and economic reasons, games have tended to be produced within contexts of privilege, and to overwhelmingly represent dominant cultures and values while marginalizing alternative identities. It is still the case that many games offer “white imperial pleasures” (Jayanth 2021). How can we think about games as sites and practices of encounters between different cultures? How can we think post- (and de-)colonially about who gets to make, play, and speak about games (Mukherjee 2017)? How do we ensure that the voices leading such conversations are not the same Western-centric ones that have tended to dominate the field, both as practice and scholarship - furthering DiGRA’s work to widen its international reach and diversity, with regional chapters and attempts to bring the annual conference to different geographical locations? How can we consider the extent to which games and game studies are open to identities and individuals marginalized on the basis of gender, orientation, ethnicity, culture, and nationality, and what happens (or can happen) in the encounter between games and such identities and individuals? (In this regard, it is an enlightening example that Ruberg and Phillips write that “the place where queerness meets games is a site of radical potential” (2018).) Can games serve as places for conversation and discussion, and for the coming together and inclusions of different identities, social groups, cultural and political perspectives – or do they still tend to contribute to entrenched hegemonies?

Finally, we might also want to think about the role games do – or might – play at a historical juncture that has been labeled the age of the ‘permacrisis,’ marked by catastrophic climate change, war, genocide, rising inequality, and politics of austerity, division and exclusion (Janik and Vella 2022). How are games intertwined with these permacrises? Do they contribute to the factors fuelling the crises (e.g. Abraham 2022), or can they meaningfully address them? What role do games have – or can have – at a time when ‘we’ (however we define or draw the boundaries of this ‘we’) feel ourselves to stand at a crossroads?

We want to encourage scholarly reflection on all the diverse ways games and play stand at the crossroads. Suggested themes include but are not limited to:

• The past, present and future of game studies
• The games industry at the crossroads
• Games (and game studies) in a time of crisis
• Games as points of encounter
• Post- / decolonial perspectives on games
• Games, game studies, and identity
• Games and interdisciplinarity
• Games, inclusion, exclusion
• Regional and indigenous perspectives on games and game studies
• Technology and platforms at the crossroads
• Materiality, digital, analogue, and hybrid games
• Games and meaning in a time of crises
• Players at the crossroads
• Neoliberalism and games
• Gamification of work
• Games and human rights

The submissions are invited into seven tracks:

Philosophy and Theory of Play & Games: theoretical frameworks and investigations of games and play phenomena as well as meta-reflection on game studies methods and practices.

Game Analyses, Criticism, and Interpretation: analyses, close-readings, and critical discussions of game texts.

Game History and Cultural Context: explorations of game histories, contemporary game cultures and regional game studies.

Play and Players: empirical research on play and playful behaviour, players, fandom, and game communities.

Game Design, Production, and Distribution: reflections on making and research creation, processes of production and design, and the games market.

Serious Games and Education: research on games and play for learning, education, and therapy, and other applications beyond game studies.

Analogue Games: research on any form of analogue games, including but not limited to board games, card games, analogue roleplay games, and other forms not traditionally contemplated in digital game studies.

There will be several special events associated with the conference, including a PhD Consortium. It will be organised on the pre-conference day and it will allow PhD students to discuss key issues, benefit from peer support, and seek feedback from experienced scholars. It will provide opportunities for further development of research skills that will be of help to emerging scholars in achieving their academic goals.

The organisers also accept thematic workshop proposals (see submission guidelines below).

Important dates

Submission opens: 1st September 2024

Full papers and abstracts submission deadline: 29th November 2024

Announcement of review results: 3rd February 2025

Workshop proposals submission deadline: 10th February 2025

Workshop acceptance notifications: 17th February 2025

Workshop submission deadline: 17th March 2025

Early bird registration & program deadlines: 4th April 2025

Camera-ready papers & abstracts deadline: 15th June 2025

Conference dates: 30th June - 4th July 2025

We are looking forward to welcoming the game studies community to Malta in

Submission Types

Full Paper

Full papers are expected to be 5000–7000 words plus references, submitted as an anonymized pdf on DiGRA Submission Template. Submissions must be original, which means that they have not been published or are not under peer review elsewhere.

Full papers are peer-reviewed publications of original game studies research, presenting mature, complete research. Authors must present accepted full papers at the DiGRA conference. Accepted manuscripts will appear in the Proceedings of the 2025 DiGRA International Conference, which is published in the open access DiGRA Digital Library.

Extended Abstract

The suggested length for an extended abstract is 500–800 words, with a maximum of 1000 words, excluding references (only key references should be included), submitted as an anonymised pdf using the DiGRA Submission Template. Give a short description in the abstract field of the conference management system, but there is no need for extended abstracts to contain an abstract.

The purpose of an extended abstract is to demonstrate a contribution interesting to DiGRA audiences. An extended abstract might describe a study or research program that is underway, but might also describe a pending program of research. It might outline findings, or it might establish and discuss a research question. It might describe the study’s method or methodology, or it might focus on outcomes and results. It might describe work that is planned, work that is in progress, or work that has been completed.

Accepted extended abstracts will appear in open access DiGRA Digital Library.

PhD Consortium Submission

Selection for the PhD consortium will be based on an extended abstract based on an ongoing PhD research project, with a maximum of 1000 words, excluding references (see Extended Abstract guidelines, above). They should be submitted to PhD Consortium track, as NON-anonymised pdf, with a short description in the abstract field of the conference management system (there is no need for a doctoral consortium application to have an abstract).

Submissions must use the DiGRA 2025 submission template.

Workshop

The conference workshops are three to six hours long sessions focused on a particular game-related topic. Workshops provide an opportunity for new ideas, theories and trends to be presented and discussed. Workshops can also be practical tutorials.

Concise workshop proposals of no more than 1000 words (excluding bibliography) should include major objectives and expected outcomes of the workshop, the justification for the workshop informed by current trends and research, the format and activities planned for the workshop, the organisers’ background, the anticipated number of participants and the way they will be selected.

Please note that the submission should not be anonymous as the organisers’ background is very important in the decision-making process for workshops.

Workshops can be open to participants submissions (the standard model) or by invitation only, replacing the old panel format. The proposal should specify if participants can apply or the list of speakers/participants is set, as in the old panels.

Submit workshop proposals directly by email to daniel.m.vella@um.edu.mt by 10 February 2025.

Number of submissions per author

Authors cannot submit more than two papers and/or extended abstracts to DiGRA 2025, including PhD Consortium submissions. An individual can be co-authors on as many full papers and extended abstracts as they like, but cannot submit more than two as main author/presenter. If the limit is exceeded, only the two first submissions will be reviewed.

The limit does not include participation in workshops.