Culture at Play: Avatars, Players, and Others

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March 10-11, 2023 | Zoom

Scholarly work on video games has often located a major part of the player experiences within the exploration of gameworlds. This was one of the main frameworks under which the last year’s conference, Culture at Play: Spaces - Colours - Stories, offered a platform for an interdisciplinary discussion of video games.

In this follow-up, Culture at Play: Avatars, Players, and Others, we aim to focus on the characters as interlocutors of these much-investigated environments by shifting the debate on the relationships between players and the characters they take the roles of, as well as those they encounter during play.

Keynote speakers:

Richard Bartle (University of Essex), Lena Falkenhagen (UE Hamburg), Sarah Stang (Brock University)

Conference program:

Friday, March 10

10:00-11:00	Keynote Richard Bartle (University of Essex) “Anti-Social Consequences of Social Play”
Panel 1: Limbo is Other People - Game Design and Tools for Affect and Immersion Chair: Undine Remmes
11:00-11:20	Angelina Skuratova (Paderborn University) “Re-living the Eternal Present: An Exploration of (Narrative) Loops in Video Games”
11:20-11:40	Zlatko Bukač and Emilia Musap (University of Zadar) “Fear and Anxiety in Louisiana: Affects and Immersion in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard”
11:40-12:00	Alesha Serada (University of Vaasa) “Not Actual Gameplay: Affective Non-Playable Characters in Match-3 Game Advertising”
12:00-12:30	Panel Discussion
12:30-13:30	Lunch Break
Panel 2: Cistemic Spectrum - Topics of Gender and Fluidity Chair: Maria Sulimma
13:30-13:50	Anja Gödl (University of Innsbruck) “A Female Rabbit Called Bonbon and a Male Lion Called Elvis: Gender Theoretical Analysis of the Naming of Characters in Animal Crossing New Horizons”
13:50-14:10	Rebecca Käpernick (University of Oldenburg) “Girls who Run the (End of the) World - Female Protagonists and Side-Kicks in Post-Apocalyptic Video Games”
14:10-14:30	Jasmin Bieber (University of Konstanz) “Who is Controlling the Heart?”: Non-Binary Identities and Troubled Player Agency in Deltarune”
14:30-15:00	Panel Discussion
15:00-15:30	Coffee Break
15:30-16:30	Keynote Sarah Stang (Brock University) “Identity, Embodiment, and Monstrosity: Playing as the Nonhuman Other”
16:30 - 17:00	Coffee Break
Panel 3: The Borderlands - Fleeing (into) Society Chair: Jennifer Howard
17:00.17:20	Marie Zarda (Philipps-University Marburg) “‘There Was No Country For People Like Me!’: Ideologies and Identities of Bioshock’s Rapture”
17:20-17:40	Carolin Becklas (University of Oldenburg) “Playing ‘Climate Refugees’ in Frostpunk”
17:40-18:00	Marko Jevtic (University of Konstanz) “Between Interactivity and Activism: Identity Tourism and the 'Playful Translations' of (Radical) Resistance”
18:00-18:30	Panel Discussion
19:00-21:00	Two Simultaneous Sessions Workshop 1: Creating Desired Characters. Host: Florian Schäfer Workshop 2: Let’s Play Multiplayer ‘Party’ Games. Host: Janna Kaiser

Saturday, March 11

10:00-11:00	Keynote Lena Falkenhagen (UE Hamburg) “‘Who am I?’ Player-collaboration in Digital Games”
Panel 4: “Despite everything, it’s still you.” - Tropes of Character Development Chair: Andreas Rauscher
11:00-11:20	Fiona Schönberg (Mainz University) “‘This is my Story, and it will go the way I want it!’”
11:20-11:40	Ted Richthofen (University of Bonn) “Niko Bellic: ‘The Gangster as Tragic Hero,’ Criminal Embodiment and Capitalist Escapism in Grand Theft Auto IV”
11:40-12:00	Carmel Anne Abela (Nagoya University) “Rethinking the Player Character as an Outsider: a Different Perspective on the Playing Experience and Its Implications”
12:00-12:30	Panel Discussion
12:30-13:30	Lunch Break
Panel 5: Bravely Default - Breaking From or Adhering To Normativity Chair: Ece Ergin
13:30-13:50	Agata Waszkiewicz and Robin Longobardi Zingarelli(University of Lublin/Institute of Digital Games, Malta) “Emergence of Non-Binary Identities in Video Games: a Discourse Analysis Approach”
13:50-14:10	Xuan Truong (University of Freiburg) “The Feminine Alternate: An Examination of ‘Default’ Avatar Genders in Role Playing Video Games”
14:10-14:30	Aska Mayer (Aalto University) “Transmutation and Mimicry. Shapeshifting Avatars as Spatial Reaction and Modes of Alienation”
14:30-15:00	Panel Discussion
15:00-15:30	Coffee Break
15:30-16:30	Kübra Aksay, Andreas Rauscher, Undine Remmes (University of Freiburg) “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Virtual Spaces”: Poster presentation followed by roundtable discussion
16:30 - 17:00	Coffee Break
Panel 6: Choose your fighter! - Representation and Perspectives as Design-Tools Chair: Sarah Busch
17:00-17:20	Tobias Weißer (PH Ludwigsburg) “Nikolay Dybowski's Pathologic as a Hypertextual Contemplation on Modernity and Progress”
17:20-17:40	Nour Habib (University of Freiburg) “Gender and Race Representation in Tekken”
17:40-18:00	Panel Discussion
19:00-21:00	Conference Dinner (On-Site, in Freiburg)

PDF-Version

To register as an audience member please send an email to cultureatplay@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de indicating your name and institution.

Presentation abstracts:

Please find the PDF-Version of the presentation abstracts here.

About the conference:

Culture at Play: Avatars, Players, and Others is an international conference organized by the English Department at the University of Freiburg, and a follow-up to last year’s Culture at Play: Spaces – Colours – Stories in Digital Games. The conference series aims to open up a space that allows for sophisticated, critical analyses of video games and the cultural field that has emerged around them using an interdisciplinary approach that includes cultural, literary, and media studies.

The conference will take place on March 10 - 11, 2023 via Zoom.

Organizing Committee: Kübra Aksay, Janna Kaiser, Florian Schäfer

Previous iterations:

The conference proceedings of Culture at Play: Spaces – Colours – Stories in Digital Games were compiled by Sofia Guimarães, Dion Weidenhammer and Larissa Rell and published in Paidia - Zeitschrift für Computerspielforschung on April 27, 2022. You can access the proceedings (in German) here.