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conference
All workshops are held on Monday 30th June at the University of Malta Valletta Campus.
All-day workshops
Avatar Aesthetics
Rune Klevjer, John Richard Sageng, Anita Leirfall
The workshop invites scholars from philosophy, game studies, media studies, and related fields to discuss the characteristic properties of avatar-based videogames as an art form. Phenomenological and ontological perspectives on avatarial self-embodiment are also welcome.
Queer/Trans Game/Studies at a Crossroads: Reflections, Challenges, and Futures
Robin Longobardi Zingarelli, Mark Maletska, Merlyn Seller
The workshop seeks to critically assess the current state and future directions of queer and trans game studies amid increasing global political hostility toward queerness and queer communities. It is designed to open the discussion regarding the state of the art of transgender and queer representations in games. Bringing together scholars, creators, and activists, the workshop aims to examine the intersections of queer and trans identities within video games, game design, and academic discourse, while addressing its limitations. Prioritizing contributions from marginalized and underrepresented voices, it offers a platform to reflect on the game studies field’s developments and the changes in game production, foster interdisciplinary dialogue, and consider the role of game studies spaces in supporting queer and trans lives.
Morning sessions
“Animal Crossing”: Human-Animal Communication in Games
Mathias Fuchs, Hanna Wirman, Sebastian Möring, Aphrodite Theodora Andreou
What are the roles non-human animals are given in games? This workshop integrates insights from ethology, anthropology, and game studies to examine non-human animal behaviour in games, identifying, where interspecies interactions are made tangible (i.e. aesthetics, mechanics, design, subversive play) and how the players’ actions frame this digital exchange and affect one’s gameplay. Fictional environments allow more levels of dialogue whether they were designed or not, featuring exploitation (Deer Hunter 1997) and its undoing (Modified Big Buck Hunter) anthropomorphic animals (Animal Crossing 2001), obedient assistance (Far Cry 2018), companion/vehicles (Shadow of the Colossus 2005), cyberpunk machines (Horizon Zero Dawn 2017), empathy amplification (Stray 2022), care (Neva 2024). Will human avatars/ NPCs be replaced and representational re-imaginings of interspecies interactions bound to go extinct Tokyo Jungle (2012)? What can we learn by connecting with fictional others? What is the value of accurate representation in these interactions? What emotions emerge? Care? Defiance? Lust?
Fictional, Fake, Nonexistent, Nonactual, Imaginary, Impossible and Unplayable Games
Riccardo Fassone, Dom Ford, Nele Van De Mosselaer
Some games were never meant to be played. So far, these have mostly been looked at as fictional games, but this workshop broadens the scope to include similar kinds of games: fake, nonexistent, nonactual, imaginary, impossible, and unplayable games. Though these categories overlap, they also have meaningful differences worth exploring. This discussion-based workshop will feature plenary discussions of key concepts and split participants in small groups to examine themes like the boundaries of the concepts of 'games' and 'play,' the significance of fictional games in the real world, and their place in game studies. The purpose is to establish links between the burgeoning study of fictional games and other fields and sites of enquiry, such as media studies, narratology, philosophy of fiction and imagination, literary theory, and speculative design. Additionally, we will explore potential next steps, including the possibility of an edited volume to which participants will be invited to contribute.
Exploring Global Game Work Migration
Solip Park, Jan Houška, Alexandra Maiuga, Elina Koskinen
The game industry is becoming more diverse than ever before. Yet, the stories of these international creators remain largely untold. Who are they, what drives them to relocate, and how does migration influence the games they create? This workshop aims to bring game scholars from various parts of the world to share what we know about migrants in the game industry so far and what more could be done — a groundwork for further research into game work migration.
Game Engine Cultures
Paolo Ruffino, Matteo Bittanti, Valentino Catricalà
The workshop will explore the implications of the widespread use of videogame engines in visual culture, at the intersection of media studies, game studies, platform studies, curatorial practice, and art history. Game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine have transcended their initial confines in videogame development, evolving into versatile platforms that now influence a wide array of creative and scientific fields, such as cinema post-production, contemporary art, architecture, product design, fashion, and military simulation. As these engines standardise aesthetic and functional practices, they simultaneously raise critical questions about artistic authorship, expressive diversity, accessibility, environmental sustainability, and the impact of increased digital consumption.
Gendered Narratives in Japanese Gaming
Keita Moore, Jiayin Yuan, Yasheng She, Mimi Okabe
This workshop seeks to critically examine how gender shapes narratives, mechanics, and cultural perceptions in Japanese video games. Through four key presentations focusing on boyhood and masculinity in early gaming, monstrosity and femininity in otome games, apocalyptic metaphors involving giant women, and the girl detective in mystery games, the workshop will explore the intersection of gender, power, and identity within both local and global gaming contexts. Participants will engage in interactive discussions, reflect on their own gaming experiences, and collaboratively brainstorm innovative character designs and narratives that challenge conventional gender norms. The workshop aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and offer participants a deeper understanding of how gendered configurations in gaming evolve across cultural and historical boundaries.
The Optimization Trap: Designing Against Neoliberal Play
Vincent Roca, Michael Ruo
The Optimization Trap: Designing Against Neoliberal Play is an innovative workshop that critically examines how contemporary digital games mirror and reinforce neoliberal and neofeudal structures. Through case studies of EVE Online and Factorio, the session combines lectures and playful group discussions to explore how game mechanics perpetuate dominant socio-economic systems. During the workshop, we will come together and think of new ways for playful resistance. Participants will engage in collaborative worldbuilding activities designed to deconstruct prevailing models and prototype alternative paradigms for game design.
Responsible Design for Game Fandom
Agata Włodarczyk, Marta Tymińska, Nicolle Lamerichs
Game companies increasingly connect with their communities and fandom. In this workshop, we address the potential of fandom, and how we can make the most of these practices and interventions as researchers, game designers and players. This workshop tackles game fandom through different lenses, namely sustainability, diversity, and emotion. Each researcher leads an element of the workshop by briefly introducing their topic. At the end of the workshop, participants leave with ideas around responsible design for fan communities, for instance in the context of their own company or the cases that they study.
Afternoon sessions
Black and Latine Game Studies Examine Assemblages of Power
Kishonna Gray, Akil Fletcher, Regina Mills, Suiane Costa Ferreira, Carlos Kelly
This workshop/panel centers Black and Latinx/e game studies to interrogate the assemblages of power within several major video games, including The God of War franchise reboot, Spider-Man 2, and Final Fantasy XIV. Carlos Kelly will engage how border optics reveal Odin’s cybernetic border and God of War’s narrative challenges to masculinity. Regina Mills explores the denial of Black rage/grief as she examines the Venom/Symbiote as a construction of what Therí Alyce Pickens (2019) calls “mad blackness/black madness.” Akil Fletcher uses ethnographic data to engage with the implicit biases of Japanese game development and will discuss how Black individuals create representation in FFXIV through a term he coined, “reformatting Blackness.” Kishonna Gray and Suiane Costa Ferreria engage Black diaspora in gaming via Blanka and Eddy Gordo with attention to the inextricable and co-constitutive relationship of racialization, and how concepts of cultural landscapes within economies of the transatlantic exchange, connect Black experiences across the globe.
CultureCraft Model (CCM): A Game Designer’s Guide to Authentic Cultural Adaptation (Or, How NOT to Be Racist While Making a Game Inspired by a Culture!)
Yekta Kalantar Hormozi
Video games are now recognised as powerful cultural artefacts, often serving as the primary exposure to different cultures for many players. At the same time, culturally inspired games are thriving commercially, making them an object of interest for AAA companies. While AAA studios can hire cultural consultants to attempt more authentic representation (emphasis on attempt!), independent developers often lack access to these resources. The CultureCraft Model (CCM) is an open-source, practical framework designed to help both AAA studios and indie creators integrate cultural elements responsibly, avoiding appropriation and stereotyping while balancing authenticity, creativity, and marketability. This interactive, hands-on workshop introduces CCM’s structured methodology, equipping participants with the skills to research, conceptualise, and refine culturally inspired game concepts. Whether you’re a developer, writer, researcher, artist, or simply passionate about the subject, this session will provide actionable insights to create meaningful, inclusive games that amplify underrepresented voices and promote cultural awareness, all while preserving creative freedom and meeting market demands. (CCM is where authenticity, creativity, and efficiency meet!) Join us—let’s make a game inspired by a culture!
Institutional Limits: A Workshop on Experimental Game Labs
Eddo Stern, Danny Snelson
Experimental game labs frequently occupy liminal spaces within university structures. They are sites of creative and theoretical exploration that operate at the boundaries of disciplines, balancing the demands of academic research, creative practice, technological innovation, and institutional bureaucracy. While they provide essential platforms for students, scholars, and artists to develop and theorize experimental, countercultural, and politically engaged games and discourse, their existence is often tenuous, shaped by administrative constraints and assumptions, shifting funding models and political conditions, and disciplinary marginalization. This workshop brings together leaders of experimental game labs to examine the strategies, infrastructures, and politics that underpin their survival, sustainability, and capacity for radical experimentation. In this 3-hour workshop, we aim to bring together scholars and practitioners from a diverse array of game labs to discuss, interrogate, and collectively experiment with the challenges, tactics, infrastructures, politics, and strategies involved in starting, sustaining, and protecting interdisciplinary and experimental game research within university institutions.
The Legal and Policy Game Jam: Towards Engaged Research at DiGRA 2025
Maria O’Brien, Abby Rekas
Law and policy issues impact all aspects of the games industries. However, as legal and policy scholars, we are aware that the language and practice of our discipline can be opaque and inaccessible to those outside of the law and policy fields. The global games industries operate in an ecosystem driven by economic rationales and legal concepts, which can exist in tension with each other. From copyright issues to publisher agreements, from loot boxes to the PEGI system, from state funding for game development to considerations of archiving, each aspect of the games industry is shaped by the complexities of legal, policy and business arrangements.
Given that games are made and played within a global environment, understanding the nuances and implications of regional, national, territorial and global law and policy concepts is fraught with difficulty. This workshop will open discussions of how we might approach academic analysis of games industry law and policies from multiple perspectives, as well how our findings can be best communicated to the relevant stakeholders.
This workshop aims to unravel the concepts underpinning the key law and policy issues shaping the games sector globally, offering a space to exchange ideas, practices and building a shared research agenda on law and policy issues relating to games. We invite participants who are interested in exchanging ideas on any aspect of law and policy of games.
Microhorror: Through the Magnifying Glass
Bernard Perron, Jean-Charles Ray
While survival horror classics like Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil and Silent Hill return to consoles, updated with photo-realistic graphics, independent microhorror games lasting no more than 2-3 hours offer an opposite resurgence, proposing new universes that take up the look or formulas of past generations. We’re seeing the resurgence of point’n clicks, fixed survival horror cameras and the low-fidelity graphics of analog VHS or of PlayStation One, microcomputers and Atari 2600. This preference for the medium’s visibility versus its transparency and for a return to the past that reveals its strangeness, is accompanied by regularly nostalgic, intimate or meta themes. This workshop wishes: 1) to shade light on this very rich independent horror production, 2) to better map its family trees in the horror genre, and 3) to see how the past contaminates the present.
“The Train Parable”: Exploring Identity Through Play
Alexandra Knysheva, Alina Gutoreva, Dmitri Tuchashvili, Aleksandr Mezin, Devon Allcoat
The Train Parable invites participants on an unraveling journey through memory, decision-making, and interactive storytelling at the intersection of roleplay, agency, and cultural identity. This research-driven, gamified workshop challenges players to navigate historical and personal narratives through a shifting game-based framework, where each choice—and each absence of choice—matters.
Through play, discussion, and collective reflection, participants will uncover the unseen forces shaping perceptions and identity in virtual spaces and beyond.
Writing about Gameplay
Rob Gallagher
This three-hour workshop will explore the forms and functions that writing about gameplay assumes within game studies research and teaching. Written accounts of gameplay are found in many places, from poems, memoirs and critical essays to blogs and forums. The production of textual accounts of gameplay - from ethnographic field notes to phenomenological gameplay diaries and survey responses - is also central to many methods of studying games. Assignments that ask students to write about their experiences of gameplay now figure in many forms of games pedagogy too. But historians, literary critics, curators, psychologists and sociologists may read the same texts quite differently. This workshop asks what reading and writing about gameplay can teach us, inviting participants to submit short texts to read through together.
CONTACT US - soha.naveed@um.edu.mt
