Game Design Studies

It has been almost a quarter of a century since Espen Aarseth proclaimed “year one” of computer game studies in the first issue of the Game Studies journal (Aarseth, 2001). During the intervening decades, game studies has expanded tremendously, with multiple journals, conferences and books emerging every year on a countless variety of topics related to games.

Game studies as a field has expanded in leaps and bounds. It first grew rapidly through the entrance of scholars from a wide variety of disciplines. In time, this highly multidisciplinary field brought up a new generation of scholars, trained in game studies from the ground up, teaching now-institutionalised courses in game studies and game design. Yet, even with this rapid expansion, the field has “suffered” from an embarrassment of riches – given the even faster expansion of games and game culture, there are always more topics and more games than researchers available to explore them.

In parallel to, but separately from scholarly game studies, and with an almost twenty-year head start, game designers have been publishing numerous works dealing with the theory and practice of game design. The two sides are aware of each other’s outputs, and certainly there have been some very notable cross-efforts, with designers such as Chris Crawford, Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen, Richard Bartle, Ernest Adams, Tracy Fullerton, Gonzalo Frasca and Jesse Schell, among many, applying their design expertise to enrich game studies; in turn, scholars like Ian Bogost, Jesper Juul and Clara Fernández-Vara have at times ventured into game design. Such efforts at cross-pollination have the potential to develop into an additional subdiscipline in game studies – that of game design studies.

Game design studies as a focal point for research means combining the theoretical backdrop and sensibilities of game analysis with an interest in better understanding the practice of game design. This is still a very broad frame. Within it, we will certainly find examinations of game design as theory and practice, its historical developments, current challenges, and related theoretical frameworks such as game design patterns (e.g. Björk & Holopainen, 2005; Lankoski & Björk, 2007; Barney, 2020) and core mechanical building blocks (e.g. Engelstein & Shalev 2022). We may also find concentrated efforts to analyse specific games at greater depth, whether through the framework of gameplay, narratology, or otherwise, as well as explorations of game analysis methodologies (e.g. Aarseth, 2003; Fernández-Vara, 2024). Finally, we may also examine longer-term trends, searching for stylistic, authorial and industrial influences across groups of games, or analogously, patterns and practices local to a specific country, geographic area or culture.

The SVI Conference, as always, aims to be a bridge between the academic and industrial worlds. Having originated at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad in Serbia, this year the conference is being co-organised with Kazimierz Wielki University, and will be held in Bydgoszcz, Poland. What connects these two institutions is their concentration on practical training; our students learn to design and to make games first, with game studies an important but secondary concern, allowing the practical to feed on the theoretical. Design feeds on analysis. We invite, therefore, analytical scholarship concerning game structures, design philosophy, gameplay, game narrative and worldbuilding, as well as current and historical analyses of design and development practices – all with an eye towards providing insights for a new generation of game designers and developers.

Committee

Organizing Committee

• Jakub Majewski –Faculty of Cultural Studies / Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland
• Dušica Dragin  – Academy of Arts / University of Novi Sad, Serbia
• Jagoda Kościelniak –Faculty of Cultural Studies / Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland
• Miłosz Markocki –Faculty of Cultural Studies / Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland
• Paweł Stachowiak –Faculty of Cultural Studies / Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland
• Krzysztof Chmielewski –Faculty of Cultural Studies / Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland
• Piotr Siuda –Faculty of Cultural Studies / Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland
• Irena Čučković – Academy of Arts / University of Novi Sad, Serbia Academy of Arts / University of Novi Sad, Serbia

Programme Committee

• Jakub Majevski –Faculty of Cultural Studies / Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland
• Manojlo Maravić – Academy of Arts / University of Novi Sad, Serbia 
• Jagoda Kościelniak –Faculty of Cultural Studies / Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland
• Miłosz Markocki –Faculty of Cultural Studies / Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland 
• Piotr Siuda –Faculty of Cultural Studies / Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland 
• Filip Jankowski –Faculty of Cultural Studies / Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland