Seminar: Hanna Wirman 09 Feb 2026 Social criticism through video games has been explored since the early 2000s, when game designer and theorist Gonzalo Frasca (2001) poignantly borrowed approaches from experimental theatre and proposed that “the goal of these games is not to find appropriate solutions, but rather to trigger discussions […] games would work as metonyms to guide those discussions and explore alternative ways of addressing real-life issues.” By drawing together

Seminar: Dr. Feng Zhu 21 January 2026 Many digital gameplay practices involve the player being reflexive about their own actions. They may attempt to bring non-conscious dispositions to awareness as part of transforming their own play – an essential aspect of the askēsis (training, practice, or development) involved in improving play. If Foucault remarked that “it is the forms of reflexivity that constitute the subject as such”, we may ask: what are the features of these form

8-9 October 2025 “Game mechanics” is a frequently referenced yet contested term in game studies. There have been some efforts to define it, of which perhaps the most widely known is Sicart’s (2008) definition of game mechanics as “methods invoked by agents interacting with the game world.” The term has also been explored for its tangled relationship to game rules as well as narrative, while for certain game genres (e.g. MOBAs, FPSs, Soulslike) it can refer to the player’s abi