Unless otherwise indicated, the conference takes place at the University of Konstanz, in Y311. All members of the University of Konstanz, including students, employees, and staff are invited to the events on campus, including the coffee breaks, free of charge – no prior registration necessary.
WEDNESDAY, September 3
18:00
Conference warming
THURSDAY, September 4
8:30
9:00-9:15
9:15-10:30
Registration
Conference opening
Keynote lecture: Timotheus Vermeulen (University of Oslo)
Coffee break
11:00-12:30
Panel I: New Cultural Logic(s) of Play
J. Martin (Mediadesign University of Applied Sciences): Unbounded Play, Bounded Games: From Postmodernist Metafictions to Preruptionist Fictions of Agency
João Pedro Ribeiro, Miguel Carvalhais, Pedro Cardoso (University of Porto): Metamodern Videogames: Between Sincerity, Irony, and Emotional Ruin
Danny Hinrichs (Leuphana University Lüneburg): “Nothing Goes” – Videogames and the Cultural Logic of Post-Postmodernism
Lunch break
13:30-15:30
Panel II: Oscillating Poetics
Carolin Böttcher (Trier University): Narrative Affect, Oscillating Storytelling, and Critical Role’s Metamodernism
Angelo Maria Andriano (Independent Researcher): The Immersive Irony in Videogames: Reliable Unreliability in Dark Souls
Serena Fusco (University of Naples “L’Orientale”): “Love Stories in the End”: Time, Writing, and Romance in the Fallen London Universe
Manvi Singh (University of Delhi): Ludic Decolonisation: Indian Video Games and the Recovery of Epic Narratives in the Post-Postmodern Era
Coffee break
16:00-18:00
Panel III: Affect, Choices & Senses
Ziwei LI (Waseda University): Intimacy as Justice: Metamodern Emotional Labor in Chinese Otome Games
J. Albert Yoo (Eötvös Loránd University): Game as Interoceptive Art: Beyond Relational Aesthetics
Victoria Vestić (University of Split): Baldur’s Circles: A Fractal Analysis of Baldur’s Gate’s 3 Themes and Gameplay
Julia Ludwig (University of Basel): A Linguistic Approach to Video Game Analysis: Relational Work and Queerness in Bioware’s Dragon Age: The Veilguard, 2024
19:00
A Sincere Game Night
FRIDAY, September 5
9:00-11:00
Panel IV: Players Beyond Postmodernism
Stephen Mallory (Lawrence Technological University): Postpostmodernism, Digimodernism, and the Creative Collapse Of the Game Industry
Vilma Varismaa (Tampere University): Love and Digimodernism: Participatory Storytelling in Erotic Fanfiction of Love and Deepspace
Helena Gröblinghoff (Independent Researcher): Unresolved Encounters: Intercultural Ambivalence in Actual Play Storytelling
Richard Bingham (Queen Mary University of London): At the Multiface: Surfacing Depth in the Zelda64 Engine
Coffee break
11:15-12:30
Keynote lecture: Sonia Fizek (TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences)
Lunch break
13:30-14:45
Roundtable: Perspectives from the Game Industry
with Stephen Mallory (Bloodrayne 2, Aeon Flux, Ghostbusters: The Video Game, Section 8), J. Martin (BloodTrail, Coobico), and Aida Navarro Redón (Call of Duty)
Coffee break
15:00-17:00
Panel V: Playable & Playful Environments
Nathan Snow (Utah Tech University): Breathe the Digital Air: Living a Synthetic Ecoscape
Mark Fabian (University of Warwick): Metamodern solarpunk in the Horizon games
Aida Navarro Redón (HEAD-Genève): The Architectural Origin of Arcade: The Game in the Space In-Between
Florian Wagner (Friedrich-Schiller-University): Board Game Ecologies: Storying Planetary Habitability in the Anthropocene
Coffee break
17:15-19:15
Panel VI: Post-Postmodern Politics of Play
Andrei Nae (University of Bucharest): Dialectics of Play in Action-Adventure RPG Video Games
Hannah Puchelt (University of Innsbruck): Systemic Evil: Late-Stage-Capitalism as the Villain in Video Games
Oleksandra Kuzmenko (University of Münster): A New Wave of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone Visits or a Simulation of a Nuclear Catastrophe Outcome: Gamer Reviews of Two Games in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series
Carolin Haša (Goethe University Frankfurt): “Are you there Stanley? I need you to make a choice”: The Stanley Parable and Ultra Deluxe as Neoliberalist Critique and Existentialist Sublation
20:00
Conference closing dinner
