2025 Abstracts & speaker bios

The devastating future outcomes of today’s climate crisis not only produce radical activism: numbness, fatalism, hopelessness, and paralysis are arguably even more prevalent reactions, and they stand in direct opposition to concepts like agency and self-efficacy. Nonetheless, depictions of environmental collapse are a central part of contemporary video games – a medium that thrives on the player’s power to control spaces as well as futures. A recurring point of criticism is that games habitually display “escapist power fantasies in which positive outcomes are achieved when heroic individuals do battle with evil” (Condis) and that games therefore sometimes distract from the “slow violence” (Nixon qtd. in Condis) of climate change. However, what if we conceive of games as sites where players perform and experience agency, self-efficacy, and radical hope (following Jonathan Lear) in the face of environmental destruction, thereby critically engaging with the hopelessness they experience outside of the game in the context of climatecrises?

This paper offers an ecocritical reading of Horizon Zero Dawn (2017) and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (2023) and argues that these games position the player as an agent of environmental storytelling by allowingthem to reclaim spaces that have already been taken over by environmental destruction. They not only address the problems of climate change in their larger narrative contexts but foster agency and selfefficacy in players by showing them the direct results of their intervention in the game environment. As players gradually stop and even reverse the ‘corruption’ of the land in both games, they are encouraged to engage in the radical hope that “something good will emerge” (Lear 94; original emphasis), even if we “as yet lack the appropriate concepts with which to understand it” (103). These games engulf the player in this hope by endowing them with agency, and this self-efficacy is more than escapism: it can give them the strength to battle the hopelessness of the looming apocalypse.

Bio

Sarah Beyvers teaches British literature and culture at the University of Passau, Germany. Her research interests include neo-Victorianism, fandom, video game narratology, and queer play. She has published articles on unreliable video game narration, fanfiction and collective creatorship, contemporary film as well as queer representation. Her PhD project is concerned with the role of spatial explorability and interactivity in video games that reimagine the Victorian age. In Walk Like a Victorian: Spatial Engagement and Embodied Mobility in Neo-Victorian Video Games, Sarah Beyvers examines the neo-Victorian potential of games based on their spatiality. She argues that the player’s exploration of neo-Victorian gamespaces allows them to engage with reworkings of Victorian spaces of class and gender through embodiment and mobility in a critical as well as playful manner.

This presentation explores how game environments can function as emotional architectures, spaces that do not just represent trauma, but embody it. In particular, I examine how digital environments can reflect fractured relationships to memory, identity, and home. I propose a twofold approach: a critical reading of trauma in environmental storytelling, and a participatory design method grounded in co-creation and lived experience.

First, I examine how games such as Silent Hill 2 use space to externalize grief, memory, and emotional fragmentation. These environments are not just settings, they are structured by loss. They invite players to navigate emotional landscapes through movement and embodiment, instead of exposition.

Second, I reflect on my research-creation work with people who have experienced forced migration, in which we co-design adaptive environments that shift in response to memory, emotion, and identity. I would like to introduce a dual-role framework: Survivors, who shape and embed memory traces into environments; and Witnesses, who explore these spaces with limited agency. This distinction reflects different relationships to trauma: those who have lived it, and those invited to listen. This model invites reflection on authorship, the emotional labor of sharing trauma, and the ethics of game design. It also challenges dominant design assumptions, suggesting that withholding agency can be a powerful act of care. This work argues that trauma-aware environmental storytelling offers a way to reimagine home, not as a static setting, but as a shifting, layered space where pain and longing coexist.

Ultimately, this approach makes space for grief and displacement not just thematically, but architecturally. What remains are not just spaces, but traces, of memory, of home, of stories that ask us to listen more deeply to others, and to the pasts we carry with us.

Bio

Kseniia Harshina is a PhD student at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. Her research investigates trauma-aware design and participatory storytelling in games, with her PhD focusing on co-creating emotionally reactive environments with people who have experienced forced migration. She draws on both theoretical and practice-based approaches to examine how grief and memory can be embedded into environmental storytelling. Kseniia also co-founded Games Intersectional, a local community supporting video games marginalized researchers, and creators based in Klagenfurt. Her academic work is grounded in video game ethics, empathy, and the potential of games to engage with difficult personal and political narratives.

At its core, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood (2023) is a game about freedom and confinement. Banished to a tiny rock in outer space for a thousand years, the protagonist, Fortuna, takes drastic measures to escape her isolation. The player shares her journey of political intrigue and gathering power to attain her freedom, and spends the largest part of the game with her on her tiny asteroid. Meanwhile, flashbacks, the background art for her tarot – an important part of the game mechanics – and the ending cards show expansive, beautiful landscapes and friends’ homes, providing glimpses into the sense of beauty, freedom and connection that Fortuna so sorely misses, and strengthening the weight of that imprisonment whenever the camera returns to the present.

As such, CWS presents an interesting study of game environments mirroring and expanding on a character’s psyche. The spaces’ carefully composed colour palettes deliver a strong emotional impact, and the freedom to design and reconfigure environments in Fortuna’s tarot cards wistfully mirrors the actual freedom the protagonist longs for. While the power dynamics in this situation initially seem clear-cut – others control the space that in turn controls Fortuna – the protagonist’s journey and discoveries about her own abilities eventually complicate that relationship, too. Working with a framework building on Henry Jenkins’ theories of narrative architecture and Bo Ruberg’s ideas on how queer (usage of) game spaces can resist normative structures, this presentation will engage with questions of places and/in memory, space as an expression of ethical questions, and how (non-)navigability and game controls enhance the theme of confinement in CWS. In the larger context of the conference, this presentation will contribute to the overall discussion of micro- and macro-spaces in dialogue, as well as how game landscapes shape and represent mood and atmosphere, provide characterisation and communicate narrative themes.

Bio

Dr Sarah Faber’s central research areas are game studies, the fantastic, and 19th-century British literature, united by an overarching interest in narrative technique and constructions of identity and belonging. She was an associate at JGU Mainz and Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences, and is currently an independent scholar. Her most recently published work is the collection Rethinking Gothic Transgressions of Gender and Sexuality (Routledge, 2024), co-edited with Dr Kerstin-Anja Münderlein.

This paper considers the visual strategies used to represent virtual worlds in three Chinese popular television series about gaming, all produced by Tencent Video (a subsidiary of the world’s largest game company). You Are My Glory (2021) and Cross Fire (2020) both adapt existing video game IP, whereas King’s Avatar (2019) is a live-action adaptation of a popular web novel about a fictional esports league and its star players. Rather than taking a unified approach, they offer a range of aesthetic strategies to adapt a feel (or experience) of gameplay.

The three dramas engage in a diegetic negotiation with how video games are represented on the television screen, and specifically in the nature of the gaming landscape as a distinct and yet not fully separate space to the ‘real world’ inhabited by the players. In King’s Avatar the camera moves through a computer screen into an animated fantasy diegesis where players interact as their avatars, whereas in Cross Fire the in-game diegesis is a live-action adaptation of a first-person shooter map intercut with players at their PCs. Finally, in You Are My Glory visual elements from a mobile battle arena game appear as graphical overlays in the players’ diegesis. These diverse approaches do not offer consensus about how to adapt games; rather, they explore the boundaries of remediating games into television.

These offer an interesting contrast to television programmes such as Fallout and The Last of Us where narrative and characters are adapted into a linear narrative, with the game’s storyworld translated into a televisual diegesis arguably without players. With this paper, I explore how these Chinese television programmes fold representations of a virtual world into narratives where the pleasures and social value of gaming are foregrounded in a cultural policy environment that is often hostile to games and gaming.

Bio

E. Charlotte Stevens is Lecturer in Media and Communications at Birmingham City University, where she co-leads the Game Cultures research cluster. She is author of Fanvids (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), and editor of three forthcoming collections that variously cover alternativity, audiences, and ‘the other’ in video games. Her current research focuses on Chinese television: cultural heritage discourses in tomb-raiding dramas, predatory kinaesthetics of drone-camera filming, and remediation of games into television. She has also published on videogame fan histories, 1980s television fanzines, and screen vampires. She holds a PhD in Film and Television Studies (2015) from the University of Warwick.

This paper investigates how Electronic Arts’ The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle, released in 2020, serves as a setting for environmental storytelling as well as a pedagogical tool for simulating sustainability in classrooms for young adults.

Set in the fictional world called ‘Evergreen Harbor’, the game’s expansion pack places a special emphasis on environmentally conscious living through the interactive system that responds to the player’s choices dynamically. From pollution levels to a collaborative community that shares resources and actively shapes the neighbourhood to upcycling décor, the game offers a variety of options to explore sustainability (EA n.d.). The game’s mechanics embed ecological causes and effects into the fabric of gameplay which do not only visualise environmental decay and recovery, but also allow players to see the long-term effects and consequences of their Sims’ (and with it their own) individual and collective behaviour, thus also offering a powerful form of environmental storytelling in which environmental change unfolds through player agency.

These elements make the simulation video game particularly suited for classroom use, especially in EFL classrooms where language learning goes hand in hand with education for sustainable development. This paper thus presents a lesson plan to be integrated in Austrian upper secondary schools to teach students about sustainable living and help them develop ecoliteracy and vocabulary particularly useful to talk about issues surrounding environmental topics after engaging critically with the game’s systems. The pedagogical approach emphasises reflection on in-game decisions, linking the mechanics of the simulation game to real-world environmental issues. This paper, for that reason, argues that simulation games like The Sims  4 Eco Lifestyle prove to be a valuable tool to combine educational content, environmental narratives and game mechanics to offer an interesting and powerful opportunity for learners to develop ecoliteracy.

Bio

Tamara Urach is a Pre-Doc Assistant in English Didactics at the University of Klagenfurt. She is  working on her PhD project, which explores how simulation video games can foster ecoliteracy and environmental awareness in Austrian upper secondary schools. Her research combines interests in language education, environmentalism, and game-based learning. Recent publications include studies on using Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey in history education and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla to discuss historical xenophobia. She holds a teaching degree in English and history, with her diploma thesis focusing on Germanic influences in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

One of the most effective ways they achieve this is through storytelling, particularly environmental storytelling, which not only conveys narrative elements but also deepens the emotional and psychological impact of the horror experience. It invites curiosity while simultaneously fostering dread, allowing players to piece together fragments of a story through their surroundings.

With this research, I explore how environmental storytelling is used across different subgenres of horror and how it intensifies the player’s emotional engagement. Therefore, to achieve this, I will analyse distinctively different horror games, including: If On A Winter’s Night, Four Travelers (Dead Idle Games, 2021), a rather linear, pixel-styled, point-and-click horror game; and Darkwood (Acid Wizard, 2017), a top-down roguelike survival horror game.

Despite their differences in mechanics, narrative structure, and aesthetic style, these games all make strategic use of environmental storytelling to create a sense of fear that feels personal and immersive. The analysis focuses on the existence or the explicit lack of storytelling and narration through the environment, and how this amplifies the feeling of fear and uneasiness in the player.

Environmental storytelling depends heavily on the player’s attention and willingness to interpret subtle cues. When done well, it allows horror to emerge not from what is explicitly shown, but from what is implied. This ambiguity encourages interpretation, which can amplify fear, especially in anxious or tense players, where interpretation bias plays a key role.

This analysis demonstrates how environmental storytelling functions as a powerful tool in horror game design, one that shapes emotional response not through overt narrative but through atmosphere, ambiguity, and player-driven discovery. By leaving room for interpretation, a unique player experience is created, and intensive.

Bio

Claudia Leitinger is a Master’s student in the program Game Studies and Engineering at the University of Klagenfurt. After graduating with a Bachelor’s in Managing Information Systems, she is now fully invested in the beauty of the interdisciplinary nature of game studies and dives into unknown waters for her, be it certain game genres or study fields. Having a broad interest when it comes to research topics, she is currently especially interested in cognitive gaming experiences, innovative game designs and everything that the horror genre has to offer

In horror genre video games, landscapes are defined by their intimate relation to players as they feel horror through acts of discovery. With spatial narrative elements, these landscapes can achieve greater unity, contrasting moments of safety and danger, isolation and connection, the known and the unknown. Recently, there have been more indie developments exploring the boundaries of genres to create landscapes of intimacy and horror. One example is Voices of the Void (mrdrnose, 2022), a game that takes place in an isolated research lab in the mountains of Switzerland. The goal is to monitor and analyze signals coming from outer space. While the game centers on creating a routine of a data analyst, working inside a base, it also gives players a chance of exploration in the forest, leading them into the unknown. As the routine goes on, players grow a sense of familiarity with the base as they create a place of their own (by cleaning, organizing, and decorating their surroundings), while associating outside as a space of the unfamiliar.

With this premise, this study explores the emerging environmental storytelling trends between cozy and horror genre video games while understanding players’ construction of place in the gaming landscape of Voices of the Void. As a concept, this study uses Yi-Fu Tuan’s theoretical distinction between space and place to contextualize players’ relation with the base, and gameplay emotions by Bernard Perron to understand how the emotion of fear shapes players’ behavior when making this distinction. The study employs textual analysis to analyze the games’ visual aesthetics, spatial structure, and gameplay loop, while conducting netnography to examine player experiences and feedback in fan communities. We observe that the mentioned duality intensifies players’ feelings of horror as the game creates a strange coziness over the (un)known safety of the gaming landscape.

Bio

Çağla Cengiz graduated from Doğa College Science High School in 2020. She started her undergraduate education in the Computer Science program at Özyeğin University and currently works as a UX/UI designer in a software company. She is interested in game studies, narrative design, and player experience within the horror genre. In addition, she has been focusing on stage design and 3D modeling to discover new visual and environmental
storytelling methods. Beyond her academic interests, she is also involved in indie game development as a game designer for two different horror games, where she explores creative ways of storytelling and gameplay.

Dr. Atanur Andıç is an Assistant Professor in the department of Communication Design at Özyeğin University. Dr. Andıç completed his masters with a graduate scholarship at Kadir Has University’s Communication Sciences and earned his doctorate from the Department of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication at the University of Texas at Dallas in the United States with his thesis titled “3D Modeling Theories and Public Structuring”. Between
2014 and 2022, he worked as a lecturer at Kadir Has, Bilgi, and the University of Texas at Dallas. He served as a researcher and artist in various academic and creative projects and organizations.

The post-apocalypse retains a perennial popularity across all media, but it is proving of particular importance within the context of video gaming, where the range of games situated within post-apocalyptic worlds suggests a complex appeal and interplay of narrative, space, and interaction. In recent years, there have also been a number of significant adaptations of post-apocalyptic video game narratives, most notably perhaps HBO’s adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us and Amazon Prime’s Fallout, based on Bethesda’s franchise. Moreover, Blue Twelve Studio’s Stray (Annapurna Animation), Kojima’s Death Stranding (A24), and Bend Studio’s Days Gone (Sony PlayStation Productions) are post-apocalyptic video game adaptations currently in early development.

In this paper, using the post-apocalyptic setting as my analytical focus, I will examine the specific challenges of adapting video games and their environmental storytelling, focusing particularly on aesthetics, affect, and narrative. Post-apocalyptic narratives often combine anxiety, loss, and a reflective nostalgia that contemplates the past in ways which create a continuous oscillation between two points in time, and narratives within this genre frequently rely heavily on visual and environmental storytelling to create affect. Video games, through the creation of ‘affective arrangements’ (Slaby 2019), often allow players to form intimate emotional connections through the exploration of these evocative environments, which in turn is needed to ‘fulfil’ the narrative (Tobeck and Jellerson 2018). However, this ‘lived’ and exploratory experience of interactive landscapes can prove difficult to translate into non-interactive adaptation.

With specific reference to the adaptations of The Last of Us and Fallout, I will discuss the adaptation of interactive visual narratives by considering the role of affect within gameplay and the particular challenges of translating environmental storytelling, spatial meaning, and emotional landscapes from interactive to linear media forms.

Bio

Iris Kleinecke-Bates is a lecturer in Screen at the University of Hull. She teaches and researches in film, media, video games and cultural studies. Her specialisms are visual narratives, memory and nostalgia, with a particular interest in the intersection of identity and material object reality. Iris has published on period drama, adaptation, representation of the past, memory and nostalgia, and more recently on material cultures of television. She is currently working on video games, affect, and post-apocalyptic visual narratives.

In an era marked by global crises – pandemics, climate emergency, and sociopolitical instability – examining dystopian narratives offers critical insight into how media reflects and processes collective anxieties. Dystopias serve as sites for exposing the systemic roots of social and ecological breakdown (Moylan, 2018), contributing to broader academic discourse on how games mediate our engagement with societal upheaval and ethical responsibility. This paper explores how Pathologic 2 (2019) portrays the tension between individual agency and broader societal decay to examine player responses elicited by the game’s environment and mechanics.

In Pathologic 2, players assume the role of a surgeon in a remote, plague-ridden town on the Eurasian Steppe, trying to uncover the truth behind the mysterious outbreak. Players must navigate complex relationships, manage dwindling resources, and make difficult moral choices within a time-sensitive system where every decision carries weight. These mechanics are not merely tools for survival but metaphors for the psychological and ethical burden of responsibility in a crumbling society. The game blurs the boundary between diegetic experience and meta-commentary, repeatedly reminding players of their constructed role as “actors” in an uncanny stage production.
Death is not an endpoint but a recursive dramaturgical moment, repositioning the player into the “script” with increasing constraints. Gameplay thus becomes a self-conscious performance and existential negotiation with futility, repetition, and the ethics of care.

Through autoethnography, this paper foregrounds affective player responses to explore how Pathologic 2 elicits both a compulsion to act and a desire to retreat. The self-reflexive analysis centres on the embodied tension of being caught between ethical responsibility and emotional exhaustion, immersion and detachment. In doing so, the work engages the paradox Tulloch and Johnson (2024) identify as central to dystopian media: the simultaneous need to confront present realities and the desire to escape them.

Bio

Dr. Laura Arnott is a UK-based interdisciplinary researcher specialising in media and cultural studies. Her doctoral research focused on the reception of Japanese role-playing games among anglophone players, examining concepts of embodiment and transcultural identity. She has presented at Bangor University (2019), and the Video Game Cultures conference at Klagenfurt University (2023) and Birmingham City University (2024). Her forthcoming publications explore queer identity performance in Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VII Remake, as well as monstrosity in the dating sim Sucker For Love. Laura’s broader research interests include affect theory and using autotheory to articulate gaming experiences.

For several decades, Prague has been a key hub in the European game industry. In addition, several video games have been set in this cosmopolitan city, such as ‘Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’, ‘Civilization: Call to Power’, ‘Call to Power II’, ‘Osman, Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption, Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, ‘Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness’, ‘Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb’, ‘Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon’, ‘Still Life’, ‘Metal Gear Solid 4’, ‘Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’, ‘Forza Motorsport 5, 6’, and ‘Deus Ex: Mankind Divided’, among many others (Wikipedia, 2025). In this way, the rich and complex history of this city, from Bohemia to the present day, has been creatively used to build game worlds and suggest stories through virtual environments to millions of players worldwide.

Drawing from Walter Benjamin’s essays ‘The Storyteller’ (2006/1936) and ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1969/1935), this paper firstly presents an exploratory study on how the city of Prague has been consistently experienced through environmental storytelling and virtual environments in video games. Moving forward to present and future times, this study then reflects on the ways through which this practice of environmental storytelling may change with emerging AI-led inventions and interventions in game design, and how this can significantly impact the ongoing climate and social crisis.

Bio
Daniel Riha, Ph.D, is a scholar and researcher at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He has received his Ph.D. (2002) in Interactive Media and Information Science from the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. His research includes issues on Serious Games, Interactive and Digital Arts and Multi-User Virtual Environments Design. He is also an award-winning digital media artist (Kunst am Bau/Net-Art).

Diogo P. Henriques has worked for international organisations, universities and practices in urbanism, design, mathematics and software, in Europe and Asia. Since 2019, he has been the social media manager of the Nexus Network Journal, published by Springer. More recently, he has been involved with the Open Data Charter, European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and UNESCO.

This paper uses analysis of Hinterland Studio’s The Long Dark (2014) to examine the ways in which permadeath works with environmental, spatial, and temporal design to amplify the sense of vulnerability that permadeath mechanics are poised to offer. Typical death mechanics in role-playing videogames see players/avatars enter a loop of play-die-reload-replay, something which has been noted to trivialise death and render it meaningless (Wenz 2014; Schott 2017; Maycock 2025 [forthcoming]). This has resonances beyond games with how real deaths may go unmarked in ways that dehumanise living subjects to the point at which they become living dead; divested of their status as humans to the point at which the biological fact of their death (when it comes) is immaterial as they have already been exiled from the living community. Theorising how this might be countered, I argue that permadeath game mechanics have potential to reconfigure play experiences of game environments and restore a degree meaning to simulated game deaths.

Looking to Judith Butler’s (2004) usage of Levinas’ theory of the ‘face-to-face encounter’ – the ethical demand of the other – this paper proposes that permadeath games may allow players to rehearse recognition of the dying; something that is essential to side-stepping the necropolitical moves and structures that frequently dehumanise those killed or let to die in necropolitical projects. Investigating game design aspects that are legible in player experience, I present an autoethnographic reading of The Long Dark that has been critically analysed with necropolitical theory and other literature on permadeath game experiences (including Abrahams 2013; Keogh 2013; West et al. 2022) to assess how space, place, and temporal experience converge to offer a compelling playful alternative to the frequent trivialisation of death seen in many RPGs.

Bio

Heather Maycock (she/her) is a second-year PhD student at the University of Dundee. Her doctoral research concerns the grammarisation of death in single-player RPG videogames with a particular focus on the various necropolitical implications that can be identified in the ways in which death can be encountered in gameplay experience. Heather achieved her MA with distinction in Digital and Public Humanities from Edinburgh Napier University in 2020 and before that completed her BA in English in 2019, also from Edinburgh Napier. She hopes to complete her PhD in 2027.

Examining the Rogue-Like Hoplite (2013), a basic arrangement of hexagons highlights the procedural generation typical of such games. Each level is distinct, creating a clear division between solid ground and perilous lava, which fosters anticipation while maintaining complexity. Environmental storytelling on the other hand aims for narrative richness by incorporating details suggesting a historical backdrop for immersion. This focus often shifts towards high-definition graphics, instead of the tactical opportunities within the coarsely stylized game environment (Dubbelmann 2017).

Familiar cinematic imagery influences player movement choices, yet narratives can also be expressed more overtly. However, does this notion of player engagement lean towards a theatrical interpretation (Abdulwahab et al. 2025), where relevant information is culturally emphasized for display rather than actively engaged with? A truly ludological viewpoint would emphasize the interactive and spontaneous nature of gameplay, highlighting how players construct their own narratives through decisions and strategies rather than recognizing the patterns within the environment that allow for interaction nudging them into the right direction. This perspective acknowledges player agency, transforming the game environment into a vibrant arena for exploration and meaning creation, as it is well-known from titles like Minecraft. The central inquiry revolves around how play, game mechanics, and narrative design are modularized, facilitating diverse player experiences and interpretations. In terms of cultural techniques, the narratives and landscapes within environmental storytelling are not merely objects for gaming (Dünne et al., 2020); games need to be landscaped in the first place to be identified as possibility space (Yong-Set 2016). Then they allow playful interactions that renegotiate themes like climate crisis or apocalypse. This contribution will trace the historical development of game design strategies, where developers utilize specific spatialization techniques in the creation process. Within these pre-designed spatial modules, playful potential emerges through level designs relying on these building blocks. Just as cultural techniques precede the abstract concepts that arise from them, a game must be landscaped before it can support gameplay activities. This perspective uncovers the complex relationships between cultural representation and ecological consciousness, shaped differently in interactive media (Winthrop-Young 2013). By exploring these relationships, we gain insight into how game design influences players’ perceptions of their environments and interfaces as spaces for interaction, leading to educational outcomes rooted in the gameplay experience itself (Linderoth 2012).

Bio

Simon Huber studied history and educational science; teaches and researches the visual culture of playful knowledge visualization, currently at the department of Cultural Studies at the University of Applied Arts. His dissertation „Die Emergenz der Anschaulichkeit in Comenius’ Orbis pictus (1658)” received the State Prize „Award of Excellence” from the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research in 2022. It uncovers the invention of game-based learning in a pictorial encyclopedia. He heads the „Ludological Investigations” research project funded by the INTRA program (for inter- and transdisciplinary projects in art and research). His observations of the every day culture of drinking coffee can be accessed on www.secondsunrise.at, a newsletter in espresso format.

How Isolation and Forced Companionship Can Result in Outbursts of Violence and Psychotic Episodes and Create a Unique Sci-Fi Horror Game Experience

In Wrong Organ’s 2024 video game Mouthwashing, players are thrown into the space freighter Tulpar which crashes into a meteor and leaves its five-person crew stranded in space. As the four men and one woman struggle to stay alive amidst scarce food and water supplies and the air on the ship running out, one person’s violent tendencies doom everyone on board to a gnarly fate.

A mixture of horror and science fiction elements, Mouthwashing (Wrong Organ 2024) manages to encapsulate both the hopelessness of being trapped in a spaceship aimlessly floating through space and man-made atrocities such as sexual assault, murder, and torture. Connecting all those aspects are horrifying images displaying the captain’s slow loss of control not only overthe crew but himself. The further players progress in the game, the more intense the alleged hallucinations of the protagonist become with the Tulpar turning more dilapidated matching the captain’s descent into madness.

To outline the potential darkness of the human disposition in a secluded environment such as the Tulpar, the increase of violent tendencies of male persons in small spaces will be used as a foundation (Male Violence by John Archer from 1994). The intricacies of science  fiction horror in comparison to other horror genres shall also be discussed to show how the former evokes fear with different aesthetic tools than the latter. Furthermore, the neglect of humans in favor of technological success and the emotional impact on human workers replaced by machines will be highlighted with the turmoil the crew of the Tulpar face in Mouthwashing.

Since sexual assault and the physical and emotional agony of two distinct crew members are substantial to the game and its design, the moral and ethical dilemma of keeping a person alive in a cryostasis pod and the question of blame will be contrasted in terms of gender, age, and bodily autonomy will be debated. As both victims are trapped with their abuser on the spaceship, the Tulpar becomes their own personal dystopia.

Bio

Currently a student at the university of Klagenfurt in the Game Studies and Engineering program, Sabrina M. Größing enjoys diving into various fields of horror and the fantastic. With a passion for psychology and affective experiences, they can typically be found either researching representations of mental illnesses in video games and movies or aspects of gender and self-expression. Occupied with the depiction of children in the current media landscape, their master thesis centers around the characterization of underage girls in the banned survival horror game Rule of Rose published by Punchline in 2006. Additionally, they are writing a paper about the Sorbian legend of Krabat and its portrayal in rock music and young adult literature in which they once again combine their love for horror, fantasy, and their interest in the portrayal of children in their research.

The paper will focus on the aesthetic-philosophical analysis of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video game series, which represents a unique taxonomy of the dystopian realities of Central and Eastern European (post)Soviet space. In this context, the paper will introduce the idea of the “third form of ruin,” implicitly manifested by the aesthetics of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

In short, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. uniquely exposes Central and Eastern Europe’s ongoing struggle with the legacy of Soviet influence, which manifests itself, among other things, in the distinctive aesthetics of decaying places and environments that seem to be in systematic conflict with any notion of a hopeful future. We are talking about the remains of insensitive architecture or the whole zones of “monumental” decay representing peculiar “lagoons of despair” that seem to be sending a subliminal message to those around them: failure is inevitable, it is pointless to strive for anything, just accept your inevitable “lame fate.”

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. represents a systematic and no less critical encyclopedia of these environments and provides a taxonomic analytical tool to reveal the logic and basic operators of this characteristic (post)Soviet dystopian aesthetic and its tendency to present the future, democracy, and hope as unrealistic categories.

Methodologically, the paper draws on several sources: it relies on the theses of forensic aesthetics, for which “aesthetics is that which defines the environment, the atmosphere, the unspoken consensus of sensation,” which in turn “urges those who perceive [material objects] to take action” (or to remain passive) (Franke 2014). It also draws on the late Bruno Latour’s analyses concerning narratives of territories and the political implications of “reordering of our emotions” on a territorial and aesthetic basis (Latour 2018). Thirdly, it considers selected novels by the Strugatsky brothers and their still topical analyses of the surviving dystopian qualities of (post)Soviet space. Last, but not least, it draws on contemporary ruin philosophy (e.g., Edensor 2005, Žižek 2000).

Bio

Ondřej Váša, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University in Prague (Department of Theory of Art and Artworks). He has long focused on the interdisciplinary intertwining of philosophy, art, and science; he is particularly interested in modern topian/dystopian visions of “man’s place in the universe”. He is the author of a number of scholarly studies and co-author of five books, in 2023, he edited a special issue of the Philosophical Journal, devoted to the ideas of a “world without people”, and co-edited a special section of the American journal Semiotica dedicated to the phenomenon of inhumanity.

This paper will look into how the video game Little Learning Machines (Forms 2023) converts the complex reinforcement learning process into a reasonably understandable and emotionally interesting experience. Using a no-code system based on two emotionally symbolic inputs, Love (positive reward) and Fear (negative reward), players assume the position of AI trainers guiding miniature robot companions, called Animos. The game portrays this as an act of care and involvement rather than a technical challenge, letting players over time alter the personality and conduct of every AI. The way the game emphasizes realtime observation, individuality, and introspection makes it emotionally charged.

Watching their Animos struggle, adjust, and thrive, players name, decorate, and raise them. Resetting an AI’s memory, when learning fails, becomes a significant choice rather than only a gameplay reset. At the same time, the game gives players a high degree of agency: they design the AI’s environment, shape behavior through rewards, and decide how learning unfolds. To what extent does this sense of control foster empathy and responsibility in the player?

We will also look at how the game supports this emotional learning process with regard to space and environmental design. Training takes place in “The Cloud,” a controlled simulated space. Performance takes place in whimsical, themed “Islands.” These settings reflect several phases of development and exploration, and support the emotional tone of every contact. Though the game lacks a conventional storyline, its settings softly direct the player’s perspective over design, architecture, and progression, what we define as “soft environmental storytelling.” Inspired by ideas from game studies, artificial intelligence ethics, and emotional design, we will argue that Little Learning Machines is a special illustration of how spatial design, feedback systems, and emotional framing could coexist to teach AI principles while generating a personal, ethical player experience.

Bio

Ajla Abdukić and Samantha Thurgood are currently pursuing their Master’s degrees in Game Studies and Engineering at the University of Klagenfurt. Ajla holds a BSc in Game Design and Development, and her academic work focuses on the practical applications of Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in games. Samantha earned a Bachelor of Engineering Science in Digital Arts (cum laude) from the University of the Witwatersrand and has explored themes of accessibility, representation, and grief in games. Their co-authored research explores how emotional design, player agency, and spatial environments can communicate AI concepts through interactive storytelling.

With the development of artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive warfare can collect and analyze a wide range of data and information on different target groups and specific individuals through the use of big data analytics and computing power, smartphones, social media platforms, etc. in an attempt to simulate and calculate cerebral thinking, mental and emotional cognition, social behavior and public opinion. Game design is increasingly recognized for its potential in a variety of applications beyond entertainment, including education, social change and even psychological warfare. Since certain tactics are known to steer populations towards single-minded thinking mechanisms (Khan, 2000), China, among others, no longer conceals its desires and actions to achieve its ends towards Taiwan, Tibet or the Uighur peoples. The growing use of artificial intelligence and social networks for control and propaganda purposes is no longer a secret, and companies such as the popular ByteDance and Tencent, quietly invested by the Chinese Communist Party, are working to develop the best tools and quietly take possession of the biggest developers in order to gently neutralize individuals, peoples and countries unsympathetic to the regime. In 2024, over nine hundred million Chinese are connected to Douyin, helping to refine the world’s most powerful AI prototype. But what happens when watching nice little videos isn’t enough to keep users hooked on their tech app? Will an even more powerful tool be needed? Could game design become the next tool to keep an entire population captive to a force bent on changing minds?

Bio

Louis Martin Guay, professor at the University of Montreal, School of Design. Louis-Martin Guay’s fields of interest include applied game design, game design methodology, games and education, the history and universe of video games and their links with culture. He is particularly interested in interaction and scenic games, 2nd-person game design, spontaneous theater and improvisation, and videogame disciplines in general.

Recently, he has been involved in projects focusing on education through games, in particular with colleagues in neuroscience, artificial intelligence and criminology. He is preparing a book on games for children aged four to eight, and is trying to set up research on ethics in game design (unethical game design).

(bio for Delphine Duplain TBA)

Generative AI is reshaping video game worlds by providing developers and designers with quick and easy access to assets, as well as by allowing for the dynamic creation of environments, dialogue, and narrative during gameplay. While generative AI brings increased potential for creativity and accessibility, it also brings many new issues and questions. We highlight the ethical implications and problems of AI-native games (video games using real-time generative AI as a core part of their design) by focusing on their environmental impact.

Following a short discussion on the ethics of generative AI, we frame the topic within the ongoing climate crisis and investigate the energy demands of models used for and within video games. By comparing the costs of various approaches, we highlight the potential for the use of smaller models in video games, which can run on local end-user machines, such as PCs or game consoles, while using less power. This approach also helps with other issues, such as online dependency and data privacy.

To ground these arguments, we present a case study of our game, One Spell Fits All, an AI-native video game prototype that runs offline on consumer laptops. Preliminary findings show the potential of this approach, showcasing reduced energy consumption while maintaining a high-quality game experience.

Based on these critiques and findings, we propose guidelines for more responsible AI-native video game design, such as prioritizing low-power models and client-side inference, selecting appropriate models for each task, and monitoring the energy consumption of games during the development process.

By looking at AI-native games through the lens of climate ethics, this work contributes to our understanding of the novel field of generative AI in games while also offering best practice approaches for designers, developers, and players committed to greener virtual worlds.

Bio

Tom Tuček is a doctoral student at the University of Klagenfurt and is teaching and researching video games. His research interests cover the use of generative AI in the context of serious video games, representation, ethics, Japanese games, and microtransactions. He has a background in computer science, Japanese studies, game studies, and game engineering. In his free time, Tom enjoys playing competitive trading card games.

This practice-based research explores the potential of autobiographical digital games as a medium for self-expression and self-reflection by adopting the auto-ethnographic approach to design and RtD(Research through design) method. In this study, I will present a 2d puzzle game entitled Do Not Open My Diary, it is an adaptation based on my personal diaries in order to demonstrate the impact of the family of origin on a child’s development. The game presents itself in the form of a diary (more like a digital pop-up book or a zine), inviting players into an intimate glimpse of my childhood experience. Beyond personal expression, the game aims to create a space for healing among individuals with shared experiences, offering a reflective medium that fosters empathy and emotional connection. The assumption of this project is that video games can serve not only as a means of healing personal trauma through self-expression but also as a medium for addressing and processing collective trauma.

This study explores the use of autoethnography in game design as a prospective form of self-exploration. In this study, the game prototype functions both as a research tool and as a tangible artifact that embodies my creative and reflective process. By creating the game as an artifact, it is transformative and communicative and can be disseminated to a wider audience. Through this project, I hope to bring comfort to young individuals who are also hurt by guilty induction from their parents. I want players to know: I have been there before and I survived, you are not alone. And most importantly, it is not your fault.

Bio

Yizhen Gao is a master’s student in Game Design at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research¨focuses on the application of autoethnography in game design, with an emphasis on personal narrative, cultural expression, and interactive experience.

This presentation will focus on how video games across several genres approach self-medication and healing of the protagonist(s) in relation to the environment and the social context created by game’s worldbuilding. It will also make a point to display that video games quite notably and symptomatically often do not include medical professionals when healing is required. If fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic, video games are no exception to this. Naturally, video games span many genres which all put the player(s) in many highly different contexts. One thing that connects various video games across genres is the fact that the player character often has to protect his/her own life and sometimes (or often) heal themselves. The systems of self-medication and overall healing often balance between severe oversimplification and a surprising amount of freedom, experimentation and requirement of self-reliance. This freedom is quite often granted during an exceptional situation, as many, if not most games, take place during an emergency or an exceptional event of some kind. The presentation will feature cross-genre examination of several self-healing examples (spanning from severe oversimplifications to nuanced, deeply and perhaps frustratingly realistic approaches) as well as (bio)ethical, social and environmental contexts associated with the mentioned self-healing. Games covered include, but are not limited to, titles such as Half-Life, Red Dead Redemption 2, Disco Elysium, Kenshi, Kona etc. Presentation will include perspectives from contemporary philosophical authors such as Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Judith Jarvis Thomson, while also taking into account Kantian morality tradition deeply rooted in Western thought. Potential activity for audience participation: design, suggest and combine your own healing items to be introduced in an RPG/FPS/adventure/survivalist/other type of video game.

Bio

Slaven Lendić, PhD candidate (born in 1989, currently a PhD student at Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek). Currently living in Brussels, with experience in EU institutions. Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in English Language and Literature (Translation studies) and Philosophy. Translated literary works of Veronica Roth (Divergent series), Lorna Byrne and Ajahn Brahm. Strong interest in digital humanities, game design, applied ethics, political theory and philosophy of law in digital and physical spheres.

This contribution explores the creation of video games as a potentially therapeutic process for their designers. I examine how this creative act intersects with aspects of art therapy, particularly in relation to fostering self-compassion. While the use of digital games as therapeutic tools for patients has been increasingly studied, much less attention has been given to the therapeutic potential for their designers. A few recent projects utilise the idea in game jamming workshops to cope with ongoing trauma (VitaGames 2022) or examine the connection between playing games, making games or art, and art therapy (Kardamis 2014). Rather than focusing on others’ creative processes, however, I examine my own as a point of departure.

Therefore, I am going to first summarise relevant parts of my Master’s thesis Fostering Compassion for Ourselves through Playing Games: The Affective, Radically Soft, and Therapeutic Game Design of Our Life: Beginnings & Always (Schütz 2024a). This allows me to contextualise and reflect on the development of my own prototype An Afternoon At Home (Schütz 2024b), as it was majorly impacted by the research outcomes of my Thesis. I then juxtapose Schouten et al.’s (2015) conception of art therapy with my own development process to identify overlaps and differences. I argue that the intersection of video game design and art therapy holds potential for fostering self-compassion among game creators – particularly through small-scale, individual projects that allow space for introspection. Future research could focus on devising workshops or frameworks that prioritise personal reflection and a designer’s own connection to the process and product of video game development, rather than technical skill-building alone.

Bio

This paper explores the minimalist approach to horror in David Szymanski’s indie game, IRON LUNG, within the context of dystopian and apocalyptic narratives prevalent in contemporary video game culture. IRON LUNG distinguishes itself by its stark, low-fidelity visuals and audio, creating an atmosphere of profound dread with minimal resources. This study examines how these limitations, rather than hindering the player’s experience, amplify the sense of isolation and claustrophobia, core tenets of effective horror design. The analysis delves into the game’s setting: a desolate, rust-covered ocean on a moon entirely submerged in blood, where the player navigates a submarine using rudimentary sonar. This environment, rendered in a limited colour palette and simple geometric shapes, evokes a sense of vast, unknowable danger. The paper argues that this
minimalism forces the player to engage their imagination, filling in the gaps with their own fears, thereby intensifying the horror experience.

Furthermore, this paper discusses how indie game development allows for unique,
experimental concepts that often diverge from mainstream titles. IRON LUNG exemplifies this, showcasing how creative constraints can lead to innovative gameplay and narrative design. By eschewing high-fidelity graphics and complex mechanics, the game focuses on psychological horror, relying on atmosphere and sound to create tension. This study concludes that IRON LUNG’s success lies in its ability to maximise horror through minimalism, demonstrating the power of restraint in video game design.

The science-fiction horror that began with Alien (Scott 1979) has long since evolved into a transmedia universe spanning a diverse set of media artefacts (cf. Heinze 2019). Its unique selling points – dark, confined environments and the clearly defined protagonist/antagonist conflict of alien Xenomorphs and human Colonial Marines taking place within them – make the setting an especially favourable topic for game adaptations. Intense digital survival horror games, such as Alien: Isolation (Creative Assembly 2014), have received a fair share of
academic attention in game studies (cf. Švelch 2020). Analogue Alien games and their unique mechanic potential on environmental storytelling, however, yet deserve more attention. In my talk, I focus on the analogue interpretations of the Alien universe and how they differ from the digital. I identify the opportunities and demands of digital and analogue game spaces that capture the essential experience the universe provides – a storytelling world deeply laden with political, gothic, and evolutionary horrors – and illustrate their manifestation in twodimensional cardboard and table spaces.

After introducing the universe and the parameters for game design set by its pivotal spaces, I establish a dialogue between spaces of play and represented spaces. Relying on the foundational works on transmedia adaption theories (cf. Hutcheon 2006 and Rauscher 2012), cross-sectioning them with environmental storytelling concepts (cf. Rauscher 2015) and a look at horror in gaming (Perron 2018), I provide an overview of key Alien game adaptations, analysing how said parameters define game mechanics. I focus on the differences in how digital
interfaces and systems, as seen in video games such as the already mentioned Alien: Isolation or the recent Aliens: Dark Descent (Tindalos Interactive 2023), compare to the material and social interactions demanded by analogue forms. These observations include rarely discussed works such as the Aliens Predator Customizable Card Game (Ackels et al. 1997), the tabletop war game Aliens Vs Predator: The Hunt Begins (Ewertowski and Olesky 2015), and the board game Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps (Haught 2020).

My outcome is a nuanced understanding of how analogue games adapt an established cinematic universe/environmental storytelling world, revealing specific design strategies employed to evoke shared yet medium-specific, universe-encapsulating space. I ultimately offer insights for debate into the mechanic translation required for cross-platform IP adaptation.

Bio

Dr Felix Schniz BA MA is co-founder and director of the Game Studies and Engineering master’s programme at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. An interdisciplinary game studies scholar at heart, Felix has drawn on – and cooperated with colleagues in – philology and literary studies, theories of modernity and cultural studies, philosophy, and psychology. He currently operates from the Department of Information technology at the University of Klagenfurt. After asking ‘What is a Videogame Experience?’ in his dissertation, his current
research focuses on the meaning of experience, genre theory, and the importance of subjectivity in research on video games, analogue games, and virtual worlds.

Video games with a dystopian environment often captivate players as they allow them to play in a setting that shows extreme situations that could also occur in real life. This setting also confronts the player with fears (for example fear of death, fear of loss, existential fear) that actually exist, but in a controlled manner, as the game can always be paused or canceled by the player. City building games, on the one hand, tend to be based on a game strategy that focuses on transportation or logistics in order to build the largest, most successful or utopian virtual cities possible. The video games in the Frostpunk series, on the other hand, focus on life in a post-apocalyptic world that is characterized by cold, snow and frost due to the consequences of climate change. The only way for the city’s inhabitants to survive is to ensure that the generator in the center of the city never shuts down. In order to examinate characteristics of living in a dystopian environment, I refer to the games Frostpunk (11 bit studios 2018) and Frostpunk 2 (11 bit studios 2024) and identify a number of aspects that occur when dystopia is combined with a city building game. Thus, I focus on the topics of what makes dystopias so interesting to players and how dystopias play with the themes of fear and hope, as well as how they differ from “usual” city building games by using mechanics such as decisions that are morally ques5onable and actions that inspire hope in the surviving citizens. Based on this approach, I conclude that the Frostpunk series addresses the topic of living in a dystopia by showing the elements of a post-apocalyptic environment in which the surviving citizens must stick together to preserve their city and thus their lives. The moral choices to be made challenge the player, as each decision has corresponding consequences. There is also a time factor, as the generator must be saved from shutting down. It can therefore be assumed that the themes listed above in particular offer players a completely different experience of the game environment compared to regular city building games and challenge the player significantly, leading to a new and slightly different environment.

Bio

Bettina M. Münzer, BA MA is a Master student of the Game Studies and Engineering program at the Alpe-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Austria. After comple5ng her BA in Applied Cultural Studies with the thesis topic “Gendered Gaming”, her academic interest is centered on the humanistic areas of the program such as the depiction of women in games, experience and spirituality as well as the meaning of play. She also actively contributes to the program by tutoring the KCGL, contribu5ng to the development of the three hats model and currently writing a paper about spirituality in the anime series Naruto and Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. Furthermore, she plans to continue her research at the Alpe-Adria University in the field of Game Studies and to deepen her knowledge in the areas mentioned above.

What makes a world feel alive? In video games, players have the unique opportunity to explore worlds and environments on their own terms. The world is not just a set piece, but a playground in which players can experience and enact their own roles and stories (Schrier et al. 2018, 250). However, the mere act of interaction is not enough to make these fictional worlds feel authentic—in fact, it is sometimes a detriment, as players will be able to seek out the inevitable gaps present in any fictional world. Players may be able to take actions that seem unrealistic (such as entering a stranger’s house unbidden) or may be asked to perform tasks that other characters ought to be able to do themselves, which can create a sense of ludonarrative dissonance (Seraphine 2016). How, then, can video game worlds feel authentic and lived-in without sacrificing a player’s sense of autonomy and agency? And, how can players be allowed to feel in control without sacrificing the authenticity of the game’s world? This paper will examine in particular Disco Elysium (ZA/UM 2019), a game built on multiple years’ worth of detailed worldbuilding (Keenan 2022), and explore which game and narrative mechanics allow it to strike a balance between player agency and an authentic world. Furthermore, I will discuss what can be learned from these mechanics, and how other games such as In Stars and Time (insertdisc5 2023), Outer Wilds (Mobius Digital 2019), and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo 2017) either succeed or fail at employing these techniques and the resulting effect on player experience. Through these discussions, I will identify key areas that a game designer can address through both the gameplay and story in order to create a world that feels authentic without limiting agency.

Bio

Eileen Carette is a Master’s student in Game Studies and Engineering at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria. They have a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Western University in Ontario, Canada. While their background is in technical sciences, they have long held an interest in the humanities, and have done work in subjects ranging from literature studies to anthropology to musical theatre. Eileen is particularly interested in how mediums can shape narratives, and hopes to apply a technical and detail-oriented lens in order to delve into how creators can craft effective stories.

Video games can offer spaces that explore the environmental crisis of the present and give an idea of their future. In the post-apocalyptic world of Season: A Letter to the Future [Season] (Scavengers Studio 2023) players can explore lost places of the post-catastrophic world with memories that are left behind, while trying to make sense of the next cataclysm that is about to come. Players can search the space for any clues and artifacts that draw a picture of a throw-away and overconsumption culture, which did not see the warning signs of environmental and societal collapse about to happen at the time being (ibid.). The game can be seen as an allegory for the Anthropocene Narrative (Bonneuil 2015, 17-18) on the climate crisis (Lidskog and Waterton 2018, 29-31). The paradoxical phenomenon that comes with it, is lacking information, while being aware that it is happening, but also denying it at the same time (Norgaard 2011, 1-2). This research will highlight how Season (Scavenger Studios 2023) uses environmental storytelling as an Architectural Narrative (Jenkins 2004, 121-129) to create an immersive experience that explores how the current climate crisis is reflected in a post-apocalyptic game world. After the introduction I will discuss how the post-apocalyptic world impacts the humans in it: psychologically, through trauma and psychic numbing leading to a notion of absurdity and denial (Lifton 1982, 619). In a short analysis of the gameplay I will examine how post-traumatic growth, and recovery can be discovered in interactions with vital memories, community, and practice of spirituality (Pargament et al. 2006, 121-123). This research will be concluded by considering if experiencing post-apocalyptic game spaces offer another argument for the Global Suicide of Humanity (Kochi and Ordan 2008) as an avoidance of the climate crisis.

Bio

Sara Skubiszewski has a bachelor’s degree in cultural sciences, in her thesis she researched how video games can create emotions like longing. During her undergraduate she worked for Prof. Daniel Illger at the faculty of popular cultures as a student assistant at the European university Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). She is currently a postgraduate student in the Games and Engineering program at the university of Klagenfurt in Austria, while also working as a tutor and student assistant for the program. Presumably in the fall she will start her master thesis on video games as gendered narrative experiences.

The devastating floods in Lower Austria (September 2024), in the Ahr Valley (July 2021), and in North Bohemia (August 2010) have been attributed to global warming. In each of these catastrophes, inhabitants died, many buildings were damaged or destroyed, infrastructure (railroads, roads, bridges, electricity, etc.) became non-existent, and severe economic hardship ensued. In some cases, a collapse of the warning systems occurred; in others, insufficient precautions had been undertaken; in all, emergency measures were insufficient. For future calamities of this sort, serious gaming provides an opportunity to devise betterment. Consider a game wherein heavy rainfall occurs in a region and the gamer has to attempt to react with a plethora of tools (boats, sandbags, emergency tents, water pumps), albeit in limited supply. Algorithms can generate further mishaps during the rescue operations, at the same time awarding points to successful actions by the gamer. The goal of the game is to achieve a maximum number of points (we note that there is no single optimal strategy). One possibility is for a gamer to repeatedly attempt to maximize his/her points; another is for several gamers to compete against one another. The damaging effects of the flooding and the success (or not) of the rescue undertakings need to be visualized. Not only to evoke a realistic experience by the gamer(s), but also to guide the gamer in how to proceed as the calamity takes its course and for him/her to literally see the effects of his undertakings. Modern tools of generative AI allow landscapes to be rendered: before, during, and after flooding, as well as the consequences of the interventions by the gamer(s). Serious games can contribute to improvement of infrastructure that help to mitigate flood damage.

The project IASTIJL offers an alternative to the dystopian futures often portrayed in video games. Instead of survival in a post-apocalyptic world, IASTIJL imagines the domestic environment as a playful, responsive interface for preventing ecological collapse through real-time feedback and behavioral adaptation. Built as a functioning apartment, the space is designed to act as a joystick: every light switch, faucet, and device serves as a sensor, turning daily activities into a form of ambient gameplay. A digital avatar represents the user’s sustainability score, which changes in response to consumption patterns.

This paper positions IASTIJL within the framework of environmental storytelling, not through narrative or text, but via spatial interaction and continuous play. Drawing from both game design principles and sustainable architecture, the system encourages users to reflect on their habits, compete cooperatively in eco-goals, and receive symbolic rewards such as local discounts or cultural tokens. The project raises questions about where gaming ends and architecture begins — and whether a home can narrate an ecological story without words.

IASTIJL’s core contribution lies in shifting the dominant virtual narrative from passive apocalypse to active sustainability. This paper reflects on how games can be designed to not only simulate destroyed environments but cultivate behavior that avoids them entirely — thus redefining environmental storytelling as an everyday, embodied practice rooted in physical space.

Bio

Dr. Katerina Goryczka is a researcher and practitioner in sustainable living and gamified architecture. She holds a Ph.D. in Interactive Architecture and focuses on integrating behavioral science, technology, and spatial design to promote ecological responsibility. Her research explores how residential spaces can function as interactive systems—“joysticks”—that quantify everyday behavior and motivate users toward sustainability through ambient gameplay. Dr. Goryczka’s work includes developing systems that reward environmentally conscious actions with digital incentives. With a background in architecture and building design, she aims to bridge academic research and practice to foster sustainable innovation in both domestic and urban environments.

There is considerable interest in applying and using Large Language Models (LLMs) in various contexts, utilizing these machine-learning-based systems to generate responses that are remarkably similar to those of humans when prompted with human-generated text. The textual outputs are so uncanny that engineers believe this software can serve as a functional replacement for writers and designers of digital games (Lanzi and Loiacono 2023). These LLMs, will create text that are plagued with errors, creating outputs that can charitably be described as bullshit (Hicks and Slater 2024).

Nevertheless, as these technologies see wider and wider deployment and increased volume of errors, so do the research and insistence of their use (Kocoń, et al. 2023). This analysis, based on the design and development of two small game prototypes, explores that not only do these models create bullshit, but the work they produce for human interaction is ultimately nonfunctional or dysteleological (Haeckel 1892, 331). This paper describes how AI-focused game design practice not only fails to engage with fundamental code (Malhotra and Malhotra 2022) and design practices (O’Grady and O’Grady 2017), it also fails fundamental understandings of games (Juul 2005), play (Suits 1978), human engagement broadly (Csikszentmihalyi 2008) and engagement with games (Baron 2012) specifically. This paper further argues that describing LLMs as dysteleological more accurately describes the output of these systems and their effectiveness in human-centered design processes.

Bio

Stephen Russell Mallory, Ph.D.
Stephen Russell Mallory is an Assistant Professor of Game Design and Co-Director of the Game Design Program at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan. A professional game designer and developer for over a decade, Stephen’s research occurs at the intersection of game studies, game design and development, and games as informal learning technologies. He has published works on engagement and play through games as effective teaching and learning technologies, streaming as sites of informal education and apprenticeship learning, and deploying games in the service of critical pedagogy.

R. Tucker Koepp
Tucker Koepp is a 4th Year Game Design student at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan. Tucker is a two-time award-winning student game designer, serving as Game and System Designer for the IndieCade 2024 Climate Jam game At Least I’m Rich and co-developer of Life Morph for the Alt-F4 Conference Game Jam. His goal as a game designer is to create games with deceptively complex gameplay loops but approachable enough that his mother would enjoy playing. His games can be found here: https://www.rtuckerkoepp.com/

Many investigations on environmental storytelling in digital games focus on the ways it can add context and background information on the story by integrating meaningful objects or
enhance the mood or atmosphere through lightning, colours and sound. For my contribution to this conference, which stems from my ongoing dissertation, I want to take a slightly different approach by considering and analysing space in its direct interference with the narrative of the game. Game worlds are not only scenery but can be shaped to actively (mis)guide the player
while following the narrative. Examples that showcase this can be found in genres like Open World Adventure, in which signposts are often determinant, as well as Escape Games, in which reading the space correctly is key. Furthermore, in Walking Simulators space is explicitly used to narrate, through various objects to make the players discover the story on their own. In my talk, I will firstly give a brief overview of current methods in Digital Game Studies to analyse environmental storytelling, followed by an investigation of my own of selected examples to demonstrate the different ways the game world can convey (parts of) the story. To do so, I will analyse different spatial aspects of the game, e.g. constructions like roads and buildings, indexical signs left to be interpreted like marks in nature, or elements of game mechanics and the interface like maps and other displays. I would like to submit this proposal for a conference talk but am also inclined to add a live demonstration of the effects of environmental storytelling on the player by asking for participants on site to act as my test subject. The goal will be to determine which spatial structures lead the player – who, ideally, has not played the selected game yet – to the next part of the story without actually telling them where to go. This approach, mixing traditional scientific research with elements of interactivity, might fit well with the topic of environmental storytelling, which I would like to determine prospectively.

Bio

Anja Gödl studied comparative literature and linguistics and is now a PhD-student at the University of Innsbruck. In her dissertation, she investigates the connection between space and
narrative in digital games through the umbrella term of environmental storytelling. Her focus lies on the ways space can actively intervene and shape the narrative, leaving the player mostly independent from any information and task conveyed through language. Anja Gödl is cofounder of Ludobande, an interdisciplinary network of young academics in game studies, which offers networking opportunities and scientific exchange to BA-, MA- and PhD-students in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Since the late 1990’s, the Pokémon video game franchise has been inescapable for many players, parents and critics, with the franchise now onto its ninth generation of titles. The Nintendo game series has been credited by audiences and researchers as having a formative role in knowledge acquisition and skills development (Coroller et al, 2022; Buckingham et al, 2004) and features environmental and ecological messaging at the core of all its releases. This has included discussions of the relationship between the people and wildlife (Pokémon), ecological breakdowns or climate catastrophe, with the game reality returning to the status quo upon the conclusion of the story. Whilst there is some research on Pokémon’s role in teaching skills to players, there is very little research regarding the impact the narratives have on players.

This work explores the environmental discourses within Pokémon games and analyses them using Preisinger and Endl’s Categorisation and Analytical Framework models (2023). The models help to determine whether these games are more likely to inform players of environmental signifiers or provide solutions to environmental problems. Through this analysis and exploration of the cultural verisimilitude of Pokémon Emerald (Game Freak, 2004) and Pokémon Sword and Shield (Game Freak, 2019) the author seeks to evaluate the significance of how environmental messages are presented to audiences and whether these presentations impact on their understanding of environmental issues.

Bio

Rosa Iris McQueen is a PhD student at Robert Gordon University (Aberdeen, Scotland) whose doctoral research is in analysing environmental discourses within video games and examining whether these presentations have an impact on audiences and players. Through her undergraduate studies at Robert Gordon University, Rosa became interested in how video games portray salient issues such as Climate change and living conditions under late-stage capitalism. Her research has since focused on how audiences view these discourses when portrayed in video games.