Video Game Cultures

In response to many different threads emerging from our most recent Video Game Cultures conferences in Klagenfurt (2023) and Birmingham (2024), the theme for this year’s conference is Environmental Storytelling. Incorporating all permutations of the concept, this includes varying gaming landscapes, utopian and dystopian virtual environments, unseen, unimaginable and unwanted virtual spaces and places. We also seek to explore how the current and upcoming climate crisis is reflected in gaming environments’ spaces and places.

We seek proposals for papers exploring all possible forms of virtual worlds in games and virtual environments. What do they promise, how do they function, and what are their aesthetic points of reference? More importantly, with recent developments in AI procedures in Text to 3D or Text to Animation, how might these gaming spaces be constructed in the future, and what is the role of the human designer in this process?

Video Game Cultures 2025 will investigate how video game cultures, technologies, practices, communities, paratexts and genres develop within the framework of five thematic tracks. As digital games encompass an expanding range of highly complex and variant phenomena, this often leads to an overlap of issues across themes. In response to the diversity of these digital experiences, we are inviting participants of all backgrounds to submit proposals to this traditionally interdisciplinary event.

Find full CFP here: https://videogamecultures.org/2025-call-for-papers/

See you in Prague!

Thank you to all presenters and attendees of VGC24! From the conference chair perspective it seemed like a successful conference: good presentations, good conversations, and a good atmosphere. On behalf of the local committee: we’re grateful for your participation, and enjoyed welcoming you to Birmingham and to BCU.

Presenters will have received an email about proceedings (to be hosted on this site), edited collection (TBC), and other matters: please respond by 30 Sept 2024 so we know whether to follow up about publication.

From here, the 2024 BCU LOC will start handing over to next year’s organisers. The theme and call for 2025 will be posted in due course, and circulated around the usual networks. Until then – thank you once more!

Great news: registration is open for presenters, who will have received emailed instructions. For the moment we are keeping registration to presenters only.

There are also a handful of new pages on this site to share information about the conference:

• Code of Conduct
• Presenters’ abstracts
• Local information, including:
  • Travel information
  • Accommodation suggestions
  • General information about Birmingham, things to do while you’re here, etc.

The schedule is in progress, and we hope to be adding that in the next few weeks, too.

Thank you to everyone who submitted abstracts for VGC 2024! We were overwhelmed with the response, and we have expanded the draft schedule to make sure we could accept a greater proportion of submissions.

All decisions have been communicated via OpenConf. The local committee is working hard to pull together local information, hotel recommendations, schedules, etc. Watch this space!

We have extended the deadline by a week, with a new deadline of 7 May 2024. 🎉

Call for papers: https://videogamecultures.org/2024-cfp/

All abstracts must be submitted via openconf: https://videogamecultures.org/conference/

Drawing on threads emerging from last year’s Video Game Cultures conference in Klagenfurt, the theme for this year’s conference is other in all its permutations: other, others, othered, othering, otherness, and beyond. We seek to centre marginal practices, marginal identities, peripheral national traditions, and consider researcher positionality in/as other. Let us reflect on other spaces and sites of gaming, discuss other approaches and methods to studying games, players, and gaming cultures. What can we learn from (or about) other researcher practices, other player practices, other design and industrial practices? How do video games create or recognise difference, what does alternative embodiment look or feel like, and what worlds are possible in games?

Video Game Cultures 2024 will therefore investigate various ways in which video game cultures, technologies, practices, communities, paratexts and genres develop within the framework of five thematic tracks. As digital games encompass an expanding range of highly complex and variant phenomena, this often leads to an overlap of issues across themes, so we are inviting participants of all backgrounds (academic, developer, producer, player, fan etc.) to submit proposals to this interdisciplinary event.

Find full CFP here: https://videogamecultures.org/2024-cfp/

Hope to see you in September! 

We are in the final stages of preparation for the conference and look forward to welcoming you all next week in Klagenfurt.

The conference will take place in the meeting rooms z.1.08 & z.1.09; please note that you can enter the University only through the main entrance – see the map below (click for a larger image)

You can now register for our conference and find a tentative schedule under programme.

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: 24.08.2023 – 23:59

More information regarding our panels, speakers, and dedicated events will be made available as soon as possible.

The deadline for Video Game Cultures 2023 has been extended until 22 April. We are eagerly awaiting your submissions.

The registration fee for the event is going to be € 65.
Currently, we are searching for options to support students who would like to attend with the fee.

You can find our call for papers here.

We are very much looking forward to your submission!