Editorial Team

Redesigning Monopoly to Foster Climate Resilience
On March 6th, 2025, as part of the annual Onderwijsfestival at Utrecht University, Flora Roberts, Larike Bronkhorst and Stefan Werning organized a workshop on how co-designing iconic (board) games like Monopoly can facilitate imagining sustainable futures and help mitigate negative and cultivate positive climate emotions.

In the media: “The game industry emits as much as the whole of The Netherlands”
In the newest issue of KIJK magazine, UU media researcher Joost Raessens was interviewed on his work in the area of games and sustainability.

A new game that opens up your mind
Have you ever received a message from someone who’s number is not in your phone? We’ve all been in that situation before, trying to guess who the mystery sender is. This all-too-common situation is one of three starting points of Open Mind, a creative ‘whodonnit’-type educational game. Players have to talk to various characters –

Journal Special Issue: Games, Books and Gamebooks
A special issue of the Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds has come out titled Games, Books and Gamebooks. The special issue explores the intersections of games and books as sites for interesting cross-disciplinary work.

In the news: About the pleasures of blood and violence in games.
Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant has published a longread article investigating the pleasures of blood and violence in games with two Utrecht researchers reflecting on how violence has become part of the gameplay experience, and how it may affect players.

Game Research @Dutch DiGRA 2024 Symposium
On November 21, game scholars from all over The Netherlands and well beyond gathered at Erasmus University for the Dutch DiGRA 2024 Symposium. Many researchers from Utrecht presented their projects.

Game Research @CHI PLAY 2024!
The Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY) was recently held in Tampere, Finland. Our researchers were strongly involved in the organization (serving as papers chair, student volunteer chair, and workshop organizers) and presented a variety of contributions.

Meet the Makers: Roos Groothuizen
The Transmission in Motion research group is organizing another Meet the Maker event, this time focusing on media artist Roos Groothuizen who works primarily with playful media.

Article: Digital literacy games: a systematic literature review
Frontiers in Communication journal has published the open access article "Digital literacy games: a systematic literature review", authored by the team behind the Digital Literacy Games KIEM GO-CI grant project, a collaboration between Erasmus University and Utrecht University.

Summer School Game Design and Development 2024
From August 19-23, 2024, we had the pleasure of hosting this year’s Summer School Game Design and Development, organized by Dr. Sandes Bakkes and Dr. Julian Frommel and supported by Jens Steenmetz and Philip Tap. We had the pleasure of welcoming 23 students from various countries and a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds to Utrecht.