Nordic DiGRA 2025
26–28 May 2025 in Turku, Finland
Since the field’s beginnings, game scholars have unpicked the complex knots and entanglements of game culture and beyond, from the embodied and intimate (Apperley, 2010; Anable, 2018) to the societal and extremely public (Mortensen, 2018). This work has been undertaken to build better, fairer, and more sustainable game cultures, and, by extension, an overall better world. For many game scholars, creating positive cultural, societal, and environmental impact has been a driving force behind their work.
Over the years, game scholars have become very adept at identifying the problems inherent in game cultures. Systemic discrimination, the hostility of gaming spaces, unhealthy labour conditions, and the environmental strain of highly commercial culture are only some of the troubling game culture phenomena documented and experienced. Examined through a critical, analytical lens, game cultures can appear bleak – and there are many who experience them as such.
However, there is much more to game cultures than their problematic aspects. While often overshadowed by efforts to render problematic phenomena visible, there are nevertheless often other, brighter sides to these dark issues. There is strong, active resistance towards hostility and discrimination (Boudreau, 2022; Gray, 2020). There are developments towards increased diversity and better representation (Forni, 2020; Jørgensen & Lindtner, 2024). There is solidarity and unionisation in the game industry (Hammar, 2022) and more political and ideological ambivalence and struggle in gaming communities than perhaps assumed (Maloney et al., 2019). There are new initiatives for more sustainable game creation and play practices and for imagining better futures through games (Fizek et al., 2023). In a word, there is hope.
Set against the backdrop of current military and culture wars, late-stage capitalism, and the accelerating climate crisis, hope can seem frail. Hope is vulnerable. It is far too easily, and often falsely, dismissed as naivety and unrealistic optimism. Yet hope is the necessary catalyst for creating positive change: it is the driving force behind any fight for a better future.
In the Nordic DiGRA 2025 conference, we invite authors interested in games, play, game creation, and related phenomena, regardless of discipline, to submit their work connected to the conference theme of hope in its various forms. We invite perspectives related to, for example, participant cultures, game design and production, readings of games, gamification and game-related phenomena, and theoretical and methodological development. The topic is also a call for game scholarly self-reflection: do we risk becoming doomsayers to avoid being seen as naïve? What kind of narratives of game culture and the world are we telling and subscribing to? Are we solving, hiding, or exacerbating problems?
The list of possible topics includes but is not limited to:
- Empirical and theoretical solutions to wicked problems in game cultures: what has worked, what might work?
- Critical readings and re-framings of game cultural narratives and phenomena
- The transformative potential of new gaming technologies and tools
- Utopias and the future(s) of games and gaming
- Changing the world through game design and development
- New theoretical and methodological approaches in game research
- Meaningfulness of games and gaming
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion in game cultures
- Historical perspectives on games and gaming
- Crises and rebuilding, activism and resistance in game cultures
- The environmental, social, economic, and cultural sustainability of gaming
In addition to scientific quality, adherence to the conference theme of hope is a key criterion for paper selection.
Nordic DiGRA 2025 is organised on 26–28 May 2025 in Turku, Finland, at the University of Turku by the Finnish Society for Game Research, in collaboration with the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies.
Nordic DiGRA 2025 conference committee has assembled Inclusion and Safety regulations for the conference, which will be followed.
Submission guidelines
You may submit either a full paper (5000–7000 words excluding references) or an extended abstract (500–1000 words excluding references). All submissions will be subjected to anonymous peer-review. Accepted full papers will be published in the conference proceedings openly available in the DiGRA Digital Library. Highest quality full paper submissions may get invited for a special issue.
One author may send up to two submissions, and only one of them as the first author.
All submissions must follow the conference template: https://www.nordicdigra2025.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Nordic_DiGRA_2025_Submission_Template.docx
Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=nd2025
Deadline for all submissions is Friday 10 January 2025 (end of the day anywhere on earth).
Conference fees (preliminary)
The final full fee will be no higher than 200 euros.
All other fees, including discount fees, will be announced at a later time.
The discount fee applies to students without university employment (bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral), researchers not affiliated with any academic institution, retirees, and scholars from Low Income and Lower Middle Income countries according to the most recent World Bank Classification.
Important dates
- Submission deadline: Friday 10 January 2025
- Notification of acceptance: Friday 28 February 2025
- Camera-ready version submission deadline: Friday 25 April 2025
- Early bird registration deadline: Friday 28 March 2025
- Regular registration deadline: Friday 9 May 2025
Conference: 26–28 May 2025
References
Anable, A. (2018). Playing with feelings: Video games and affect. University of Minnesota Press.
Apperley, T. (2010). Gaming rhythms: Play and counterplay from the situated to the global. Institute of Network Cultures.
Boudreau, K. (2022). Beyond deviance: Toxic gaming culture and the potential for positive change. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 39(3), 181–190. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2022.2080848
Fizek, S., Fiadotau, M., Wirman, H., & Garda, M. (2023). Teaching environmentally conscious game design: Lessons and challenges. ACM Games, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.1145/3583058
Forni, D. (2020). Horizon Zero Dawn: The educational influence of video games in counteracting gender stereotypes. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association, 5(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.26503/todigra.v5i1.111
Gray, K. L. (2020). Black gamers’ resistance. In L. K. Lopez (Ed.), Race and media: Critical approaches (pp. 241–251). New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479823222.003.0023
Hammar, E. L. (2022). International solidarity between game workers in the Global North and Global South: Reflections on the challenges posed by labor aristocracy. Gamevironments, 17, Article 17. https://doi.org/10.48783/gameviron.v17i17.195
Jørgensen, K. & Lindtner, S. S. (2024). Dataspillere og maskulinitet: gamermaskulinitet som en hybridmaskulinitet? Norsk medietidsskrift, 30(4), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.18261/nmt.30.4.4
Maloney, M., Roberts, S., & Graham, T. (2019). Gender, masculinity and video gaming: Analysing Reddit’s r/gaming community. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28262-2
Mortensen, T. E. (2018). Anger, fear, and games: The long event of #GamerGate. Games and Culture, 13(8), 787–806. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412016640408