Digital Gaming Research

Digital games are no longer a peripheral phenomenon in society. Computer and console games, as well as mobile games, are now an integral part of deeply mediatized lifeworlds across generations. As such they are are both carriers and accelerators of media change, serving as an interface between media industries, technologies, cultures, and practices. This makes them an ideal case to analyze contemporary societal and media-cultural transformation processes resulting from mediatization, digitization, and datafication.

The research focus “Digital Gaming” suggests a holistic perspective that switches from the analysis of games to a broader notion and understanding of gaming in a deeply mediatized society. It goes beyond reducing games to mere playing, examining their placement and connection within digital media environments as gamevironments to research how our communicative practices and their contexts/situations transform through games, as well as how these games are reshaped through communicative practices. This positions computer games and gaming as a comprehensive subject in communication and media studies, demanding transmedia, diachronic, situational, and long-term transformative perspectives of (dis)empowerment and (in)equality.

Journal GAMEVIRONMENTS
Book Series “Routledge Critical Studies in Video Games and Culture”
Cooperation with the International Academy for the Study of Gaming and Religion (IASGAR)

Weitere Research areas

Value Formations in a Video-Game-Franchise. A Comparison of Value Formations in “The Last of Us” (2013) and “The Last of Us: Part II” (2020) (seit 2020)

The video games “Last of Us” (2013) and “Last of Us 2” (2020) caused heated discussions during their release periods. While the first game prompted players’ to reflect on their moral compass through depictions of (…)

Lab Media and Religion

Active

Communicative Figurations of Informal Learning in Digital Gaming (CoFi ILDG)

With the rise of participatory media over the past decades, a ‘new culture of learning’ (Gee 2008; Thomas and Brown 2011) has been described, in which people develop expertise in domains outside formal education, vocational (…)

2017
Prof. Dr. Karsten D. Wolf

Lab Media & Education

Completed

Community Formation in Digital Games

Post-Doc Project Much research in game studies has focused on game communities and their effects on people and society. But with this project I argue that we need a better theoretical grounding for how game (…)

2023 – 2026
Dr. Dom Ford

Lab Media and Religion

Completed

Research field esports – Negotiating the notion of the nation and discussing value formations

Postdoc project Video game cultures are central parts of contemporary societies. In addition to economic interests, due to the economic significance of the video game industry, this also involves socio-cultural and political discourses. Video games (…)

Lab Media and Religion

Completed

Gaming the Nation. An intersectional approach to nation, identity and gaming

The research project deals with the multiple entanglements of gaming and constructions of national identity by linking two research perspectives that are often perceived as contrary to each other - media aesthetics and communication studies. Particular attention is paid to the question of the extent to which concepts of national identity not only formulate "the own", but also "the other" in contrast to it, in order to find out to what extent constructions of nation within games can possibly transmit or even consolidate social inequalities in times of profound mediatization.

2022 – 2025
Dr. Kathrin Trattner

Lab Media and Religion

Completed

Video Game Development in Asia Cultural Heritage and National Identity: The Philippines

Project management: Prof. Dr. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler (ZeMKI-Lab “Medien und Religion”) Research network/cooperation: University of North Carolina, Dalhousie University, University of Helsinki Funding institution: University of Helsinki Future Development Fund The role of media for the (…)

2014 – 2018
Prof. Dr. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler

Lab Media and Religion