The demise of postmodernism as a dominant cultural mood is no longer the sensational news it once was when Linda Hutcheon, along with other cultural theorists, observed in the early 2000s that this defining buzzword of the twentieth century may have become “a thing of the past”. A wide variety of cultural texts have been brought into the conversation about the possible waning of the postmodern sentiment and its replacement with variously defined post-postmodernism(s), including literature, architecture, music, and cinema. Yet one cultural medium remains curiously underexplored in these debates about the successor(s) to the postmodern paradigm: games.

Our conference seeks to foreground the role of games and game studies in these ongoing debates about contemporary culture’s transition beyond postmodernism. Over the course of two days, researchers and practitioners from various academic and creative fields will explore the emerging field of post-postmodern games and discuss how the presently dominant cultural sensibility structures the ways in which games (both digital and non-digital) are created, played, and analysed.