Thursday, 12 September 2024

09:00 Registration/Coffee, P132
09:30 Welcome, P131
10:00-11:30 Panel 1 – Game Paratexts, P131
Chair: René Reinhold Schallegger
Regina Seiwald – Marginally different: the ludic tendencies of videogame paratexts
Lauren Cook – “What you remember is the illusion”: intermedial characterization and collective memory in the Final Fantasy VII franchise
Nick Webber and Matt Denny – Not actual play: examples of play and expectations of experience in TTRPGs
11:30-12:00 Break
12:00-13:30 Panel 2 – Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonialism, P131
Chair: Charlotte Stevens
Marko Jevtic – Between interactivity and activism: identity tourism and the ‘playful translations’ of (radical) resistance
Marta Suarez – Constructing the refugee in Baldur’s Gate: protection and guidance as the path for “good”
René Reinhold Schallegger – “There lies perdition” – how Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden (2024) uses hauntology to exorcise the spectres of neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism
13:30-14:30 Lunch, P132
14:30-16:00 Panel 3 – Otherness in Play, P131
Chair: Alex Wade
Ellie Chraïbi – Inside: are ‘you’ the player, the avatar, and the protagonist?
Ashleigh Cassemere-Stanfield – Soma, the slave trade, and other inhuman temporalities
Poppy Wilde – Palatable vs. poisonous others: aliens, AI, and mutants, oh my!
16:00-16:30 Break
16:30-18:00 Panel 4 – Games, Play and National Identity, P131
Chair: Felix Schniz
Magnus Andersen – Crazed, cold, calculated: the racial figure of ‘the Russian’ in multiplayer gaming
Kayleigh MacLeod – Harnessing cultural fragrance for meaningful game development
Carina de Assunção – Exploring attitudes towards gender diversity initiatives in Portuguese esports
19:00 Conference dinner, Milan Indian Cuisine (93 Newhall St, Birmingham B3 1LH)

Friday, 13 September 2024

09:00 Coffee, P132
09:30-11:00 Panel 5A – Video Game Industries, P131
Chair: René Reinhold Schallegger
Daniel Riha and Diogo Henriques* – Searching for and reflecting on AI text-to-video landscapes as other
Leon Xiao and Solip Park – Compliance of South Korean mobile games with loot box probability disclosure requirements
Jude Bereton, Bethan Jones, Carlton Reeve, James Zborowski, Anna Bramwell-Dicks – Play your way into production: game-based skills development for the screen industries
Panel 5B – Time, Death and Dark Tourism, P134
Chair: Nick Webber
Kristina Jevtic* – “Time loops and other forms of save scumming”: Outer Wilds and the foregrounding of unnatural ludic temporalities
Heather Maycock – Press F to pay respects: moves of mourning and alienated death in RPG videogames
Iris Kleinecke-Bates – Post-apocalyptic game space as interactive alternative present: Horizon: Zero Dawn (2020), and The Last of Us (2013) and the construction of the Real
11:00-11:30 Break
11:30-12:30 Panel 6A – Local Game Studies, P131
Chair: Will McKeown
Yekta Kalantar Hormozi – Gaming culture in a sanctioned country – the case of Iran
Guillaume Guenat – The (not yet) forgotten history of video game practices: a local approach
Panel 6B – Game Design, P134
Chair: Andrew Bell
Meera Darji – Digital storytelling and creating experimental ‘other’ immersive worlds
Ping-Chung Tsai – Constructing Complexity: Understand Digital Game Mechanics through Luhmann’s Systems Theory

*Presenter joining us online

12:30-13:30 Lunch, P132
13:30-15:00 Panel 7A – Ability and Mental Health, P131
Chair: Harri Charles
Deanna Holroyd and Holly Parker* – Games as therapy? The neoliberal commercialization and therapization of RPG gameplay in Hero Journey Club
Guilherme Magalhães – Video game audio description model: audio introductions for characters, scenarios and objects
Rory Summerley – Modern controls: an autoethnography of motor disability, controllers, and accessible fighting game design
Panel 7B – Resistance in Play, P134
Chair: Reuben Mount
Sarah Beyvers* – Other ways of playing and the political valence of ludic resistance practices
Bettina Bódi – Playing with capitalism: metareference, comedy, and cosiness in Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (Snoozy Kazoo 2021)
Adrienne Mortimer – The ties that bind: killing heroic masculinity in The Last of Us Part II (2020)
15:00-15:30 Break
15:30-16:30 Panel 8A – Fans and Fandom, P131
Chair: Katja Aller
Ashley Guajardo* – What videogame nerds want (romantically)
Iain Donald – View from the (virtual) terraces: football fandom in videogames
Panel 8B – Cowboys and Vampires, P134
Chair: Ewan Kirkland
Erick Verran* – Simulating other-awareness and the limits of the carnivalesque
Rebecca Pearce – “I made you to be consumed”: creating a digital Byronic vampire hero for a new age
16:30-17:30 Drinks reception, P132

*Presenter joining us online

Saturday, 14 September 2024

09:00 Coffee, P132
09:30-11:00 Panel 9 – Other Bodies in Games, P131
Chair: Regina Seiwald
Markus Elvig – Fat adventurers not included: an analysis of how character creators in digital role playing games afford the creation of fat characters
Boyang Liang – Beauty and ugliness: moral dilemmas in game character development in contemporary society
Mareike Stürenburg – The erasure of the other: How modifications are utilized to decrease diversity in video games
11:00-11:30 Break
11:30-13:00 Panel 10 – Fatherhood and Adulthood, P131
Chair: Poppy Wilde
Rebecca Käpernick – Othering mothers, mothering others: mothers and the experience of othering in end of the world game narratives
Ewan Kirkland – Adulthood, prestige gaming and the Little Sisters of Bioshock
Katja Aller, Elizabeth Neumann, and Felix Schniz – Guardians astray: the poetics of parenthood and othering in the Amnesia games
13:00-14:00 Lunch, P132
14:00-15:30 Panel 11 – Political Avatars, P131
Chair: Nick Webber
Nicole Kilzer – The queer potential of avatar creation
Robin Longobardi Zingarelli – Empathy in gameworlds: how design practices shape the relationship between self and other
Laura Arnott – Transcultural affect in gaming: hybrid identities and cultural otherness
15:30-16:15 Plenary discussion and closing remarks, P131