Category: Guest Lectures

We are pleased to invite you to Gotland Game Hub, featuring a talk at 15:00, organized in collaboration with the Seminar Series at the Focus Area of Games and Creativity, Gotland Research Forum.

📅 When: Wednesdays, 13:00–17:00
📍 Where: H-Building, Campus Gotland (Strandgatan 7, the Old Residence)

This week’s program at GGH:

·       13:00 – Doors Open: Enjoy coffee, snacks, and cookies while networking, playing games, or exploring new ideas.

·       15:00 – Short Talk: Patrick Prax, Associate Professor, Department of Game Design, Uppsala University – “Why Making is the New Playing”

·       15:30 – Open Mic: Share your own game-related projects, events, or collaboration ideas.

·       17:00 – Wrap-Up: Conclude the session inspired and energized.

About the Talk:
Games have long been recognized as a way for players to understand societal systems through rules and experiences. In this talk, Patrick Prax argues that play is only the first step. To deepen understanding, designers should create games that invite players into the designer’s role themselves, enabling a richer, hands-on engagement with systems and their complexities.

About the Speaker:
Patrick Prax is a researcher specializing in the co-creation of game design, focusing on how societal values shape video game design and their broader social impacts. His research explores players’ game literacy and the opportunities and challenges of digital games, including their potential for learning and promoting sustainable policies, as well as risks such as addiction and radicalization.

We look forward to welcoming you for an afternoon of games, ideas, and inspiration!

We’re delighted to announce the lecture “Queer and Mad Readings in Video Game Studies” by Cecilia Rodéhn and Marie Dalby! This event is the next in our series Transforming Games: Behavior, Identity, Culture, and Community (TAG), a research network funded by the Centre for Integrated Research on Culture and Society (CIRCUS) at Uppsala University. The network connects researchers from Game Design, Gender Studies, and Psychology in a joint research agenda focusing on the impacts of society on games and vice versa.

When: Tuesday, October 1, 7-8:30pm CEST

Register here: https://tinyurl.com/5f97chdz

RSVP here: https://tinyurl.com/bdz7wdks

Link will be provided to registrants on the day of the event. Make sure to sign in with the same name you used to register.

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Description:

In this talk, Cecilia Rodéhn will discuss mad reading: a mad studies centred method for analysing games. Mad studies is an interdisciplinary field that critically discusses how the social and medical systems create mental illness. Rodéhn will explore mad reading as (1) a situated reading, (2) challenging sanist representations, (3) reading the explicitly mad, (4) revealing where madness is not clearly visible, and (5) maddening games. As a method, it seeks to illuminate sanist representations, but it also has a more utopian and empowering agenda.

Marie Dalby will discuss Dark Souls (2011), a genre-defying video game that has achieved an almost mythical status and is synonymous for difficulty. For the uninitiated, Dark Souls might appear as an odd choice to put in conversation with queer theory. In this talk, Dalby will not investigate representations of queer subjects or queer modes of play; instead, she will employ a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective to explore what happens to queer readings of games when we abandon identification and look to desire.

Presenters bio:

Cecilia Rodéhn is an associate professor and a senior lecturer at the Centre for Gender Research and Department of Game Design, Uppsala University. Her research focuses on representations of madness and psychiatric hospitals.

Marie Dalby is a Ph.D. student at the Centre for Gender Research and Department of Game Design, Uppsala University. Her research explores the video game Dark Souls (2011) from a queer theory perspective.

This series is hosted by the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University Campus Gotland. The series explores the use of analog role-playing games as vehicles for lasting personal and social change.

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Learn more about the Games and Society Lab at Uppsala: https://www.speldesign.uu.se/research/games-and-society-lab/

Learn more about the Uppsala Child and Baby Lab: https://www.psyk.uu.se/uppsala-child-and-baby-lab/

Learn more about the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala: https://www.gender.uu.se/?languageId=1

Learn more about Transformative Play at Uppsala and join the TPI mailing list: https://www.speldesign.uu.se/…/gam…/transformative-play/

Like Transformative Play Initiative on FB: https://www.facebook.com/transformativeplay

Subscribe to the Transformative Play Initiative YouTube channel: https://tinyurl.com/4hb5kpv3

Design by Kate Blomgren and Daria Shpak.

Join us for our lecture in the Erasmus EDGE Event Series: “Immersive Aesthetics: VR, Larp, and Art” by Nadja Lipsyc! This bonus event is part of our Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership for curriculum development in transformative game design.

When: Monday, June 17 from 7:00-8:30pm CEST
Where: Online on Zoom

Register at this link. 
RSVP at this link.

Link will be provided to registrants on the day of the event. Make sure to sign in with the same name you used to register.

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Description:
This research explores the aesthetics of immersive and interactive storytelling in Virtual Reality, around the development of a role-playing game inspired by the film Stalker (1979) by Tarkovsky. Named Lone Wolves Stick Together, this VR experience borrows from larp (live action role-play), video games, sound installations, and film to explore how to use the full creative potential of digital immersion. As the first larp fully developed as a standalone VR experience, Lone Wolves Stick Together poses as a proof of concept of the viability and intuitivity of the form, but also opens reflections on ethics of technology and co-creation. The wider discussion around VR and larp will bridge towards transformation: through role-play, but also through virtual bodies and prosthetics, and through reality-testing as a mean to seek personal and social change.

Presenter bio:
Nadja Lipsyc is a game designer, artist, and researcher with an education in neuroscience and audiovisual production. She recently completed her PhD in Artistic Research at the The Norwegian Film School. She works with videogames, film, VR stories, experimental theater, installation art, larp and teaches at the Oslo school of Architecture and Design. Her work often stages surreal and symbolic universes tied to contemporary critical questions.

The presenter is a volunteer for Erasmus EDGE, a joint Higher Education Cooperation Partnership project between Uppsala University, Turku University of Applied Sciences, Dragons’ Nest, Chaos League, and Avalon Larp Studio.

This series is hosted by the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design, Uppsala University Campus Gotland. The series explores the use of analog role-playing games as vehicles for lasting personal and social change.

* * *Learn more about Erasmus EDGE here.

Learn more about the Transformative Play Initiative.
Learn more about Turku University of Applied Sciences’ Game Lab.
Like Dragons’ Nest on Facebook.
Like Chaos League on Facebook.
Like Avalon Larp Studio on Facebook.
Like Transformative Play Initiative on Facebook.
Learn more about Transformative Play at Uppsala and join the TPI mailing list here.
Subscribe to the TPI YouTube channel here.
Learn more about the Games & Society Lab at the Department of Game Design.
Like the Games and Society Lab on FB.

Graphic design by Kate Blomgren and Daria Shpak.

Sarah Lynne Bowman, on behalf of EDGE
Senior Lecturer, Department of Game Design
Uppsala University Campus Gotland