Enhancing Effective Media and Digital Literacy through Digital Games – a Report
How we can improve media literacy skills through the use of digital games?
Climate Larps: Environmental Design in Nordic LARP
In an article published in the Journal of Analogue Game Studies Laura op de Beke discusses the role of LARP (Live Action Role Playing) games in understanding the climate crisis. Within the article she explores how the environment is considered and included within the Nordic LARP sphere.
Spationomy 2.0- An Application of Discursive Game Design
In a time where it is difficult to engage with the increasingly fraught world around us, games scholars are continuing to search for new ways to approach difficult topics. One such example, is the application of Discursive Game Design(DGD) as seen in the Carbon Pearl game produced in 2021.
Research Projects
>> All Research ProjectsANTICIPLAY
Making Game Studies’ Research Practical with Discursive Game Design
Co-creation of games, participatory design, open dialogue, and social perspective-taking currently lie at the centre of game research at Utrecht University. All these practices are characteristic of Discursive Game Design (DGD), a method that highlights the processes underlying practice-based game research, rather than a final "fixed" product.
- Education, News:
Take a course, build a video game, change the world
- Insights, Longread:
“Change makers don’t understand games; game makers don’t understand change”
Comenius - Fostering an Open Mind
Open Mind game challenges to look further
From now on, the Open Mind game, a creative educational game in the style of “whodunit”, is available in the Apple App and Google Play store. Students play the game on their own smartphones and receive mysterious messages from an unknown sender. By talking to various characters about their traits, values and beliefs, they have
- Events, Insights, News:
Taking Perspectives with Game Design: Teachers wanted for pilot!
- Insights, Longread, News:
A new game that opens up your mind
Shape2Gether - Erasmus+
Shape2gether: Sharing our knowledge about discursive game design
Last November Aengus, Isabel and Mick visited two conferences to share some of the outcomes of the Erasmus+ hape2gether project with a broader audience.
- Education, Events:
Shape2Gether: Experiencing the Bochum Summer School
- Events:
Shape2Gether – Time for Workshops
Virtual Reality as Empathy Machine
CFP: “VR as Empathy Machine: Media, Migration and the Humanitarian Predicament”
Book Title: Beyond the Empathy Machine: Critical Perspectives on Virtual Reality Editors: Professor Sandra Ponzanesi (s.ponzanesi@uu.nl), Dr. Jenny Andrine Madsen Evang (j.a.m.evang@uu.nl), Dr. Wouter Oomen (w.a.oomen@uu.nl), Laurence Herfs (l.l.herfs@uu.nl), and Lisa Burghardt (l.burghardt@uu.nl) Over the last decade or so, Virtual Reality (VR) has been honed as a new frontier in social tech. From Chris Milk and Gabo
- Events:
Week of the Game @ Utrecht University
- Education, Events, Publications:
History of Game Research at Utrecht University
Themes
>> All ThemesGames Beyond Entertainment
New minor “Games and Play in a Changing Society” open for registration
Cover image (c) Christopher Paul High via Unsplash. The new curriculum, which replaces the previous minor “Game Studies’, is a transdisciplinary collaboration between the Department of Media & Cultures studies (MCW), the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development and the Department of Information and Computing Sciences and enables students to analyze games and play in contemporary
- Insights:
ASS POWER: Gaming at the Theatre
- In the media, News:
Games-related treasures from De Schatkamer
Game Design
ASS POWER: Gaming at the Theatre
A review of Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim's 8 hour revolutionary donkey epic that sits between theatre and videogames. A collective gaming experience that will have you braying heeeee-haaaww while you contemplate issues of labor, automation, violence, and the good life.
- Insights:
Making Game Studies’ Research Practical with Discursive Game Design
- In the media, News:
All Will Rise – crowdfunding campaign now live!
Criticism and Analysis
Games-related treasures from De Schatkamer
On May 26, the Dutch Institute for Sound and Vision launched On May 26, the Dutch Institute for Sound and Vision launched De Schatkamer (‘Treasure Room’), a massive archive of the history of public broadcasting. In it we find a wealth of material related to games. This includes one of the first long documentaries on
Social Games and Play
Open Mind game challenges to look further
From now on, the Open Mind game, a creative educational game in the style of “whodunit”, is available in the Apple App and Google Play store. Students play the game on their own smartphones and receive mysterious messages from an unknown sender. By talking to various characters about their traits, values and beliefs, they have
- Events, News:
Game Research @ CHI 2025
- Events, Insights:
Game Research @CHI PLAY 2024!
Disciplines
>> All DisciplinesMedia and Culture Studies
New minor “Games and Play in a Changing Society” open for registration
Cover image (c) Christopher Paul High via Unsplash. The new curriculum, which replaces the previous minor “Game Studies’, is a transdisciplinary collaboration between the Department of Media & Cultures studies (MCW), the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development and the Department of Information and Computing Sciences and enables students to analyze games and play in contemporary
- Insights:
ASS POWER: Gaming at the Theatre
- In the media, News:
Games-related treasures from De Schatkamer
Geosciences
Shape2gether: Sharing our knowledge about discursive game design
Last November Aengus, Isabel and Mick visited two conferences to share some of the outcomes of the Erasmus+ hape2gether project with a broader audience.
- Events, Insights, News:
Dutch DiGRA Symposium 2025: Futures for Game and Play Research.
- Education, Events:
Shape2Gether: Experiencing the Bochum Summer School
Computer Sciences
Open Mind game challenges to look further
From now on, the Open Mind game, a creative educational game in the style of “whodunit”, is available in the Apple App and Google Play store. Students play the game on their own smartphones and receive mysterious messages from an unknown sender. By talking to various characters about their traits, values and beliefs, they have
- Events, Insights, News:
Dutch DiGRA Symposium 2025: Futures for Game and Play Research.
- Events, News:
Game Research @ CHI 2025
