Talk @ Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung

The Book, the Board, and the Lantern in the Dark
Violence, Vulnerability, and Intermedial Player Immersion in Kingdom Death: Monster

Where: Cologne University

Conference: Annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung, September 17-19

 

Immersion is often understood as an enthralling concept, reserved for complex virtual worlds that veil reality behind an integral mediated experience. I challenge this assumption and argue that analogue games can cultivate immersive experiences, even when they are played with clearly separable material components. Using the narrative boutique board game Kingdom Death: Monster (Poots 2015) as a case study, I demonstrate how the game fosters immersion across different analogue media components by the perpetual evocation of violence against a frail player community.

Relying on the theoretical observations of Paul Wake, who highlights the importance of a board game’s play-performance that fills all indeterminacy with player-created meaning (cf. 2023, 49) and by focusing on the game’s intermedial connotations (via Wolf 1999, Rajewski 2010, and Ellenström 2021), I portray how Kingdom Death: Monster creates immersion between different media artefacts in a reliance on violence. The game at first fosters intimacy through a shared reading moment that leads to a co-op bonding survival gameplay segment, then it effectively exploits both sensations by forcing players into violent discomfort to evoke vulnerability. Both rulebook and play-sequence interact with one another under this shared leitmotif, upheld across two different media artefacts and the metaphoric-aesthetic driving factors of Eros and Thanatos in the sense of a discomfort between deadly threats and uncomfortable intimacy (following Freud [1920] 1955). Ultimately, I thereby demonstrate how the game evokes immersive qualities typically not connected with the abstract, engaging-rather-than-affective, physical medium.

A concluding discussion of the presented findings questions the adequacy of common observations on immersive traits in specifically analogue game studies. By discussing opportunities for methodological finetuning, my presentation’s outlook, in turn, resonates with the idea of a ‘painful playthrough,’ as worked with by Blackburn and Timmell (cf. 2024, 113) and shows how self-experienced stress in a discomforting game moment must be endured for the sake of analysing violent play.

 

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5 Talks @ Replaying Japan 2026 – Kseniia,Tom

Kseniia & Tom gave talks at the Replaying Japan 2026 – August 2026

Replaying Japan 2026 also released “conference proceedings”, which include all extended abstracts of talks presented in the conference: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rwx0uaOOsluPYUPUlin4Wa-ugW8yRnDW/view

 

  • The Character and the Card: Affective Database Consumption and Ludology in the Japanese TCG Market
    • by Tom Tucek and Shivi Vats
    • August 20, 2026
    • This talk explains the structural differences between the Japanese Trading Card Game market, which heavily relies on transmedia intellectual properties, and the Western market, which is traditionally more focused on game mechanics. Drawing on theories of the Japanese Media Mix and affective database consumption, the presentation explores how franchises like Pokémon and Weiß Schwarz monetise player attachment to characters rather than competitive utility. It then contrasts this character-driven trend with the game Flesh and Blood, demonstrating how a mechanics-focused title can carve out a space in Japan by focusing on in-person community building within local game stores.
  • Recontextualizing the King: Gender-Bending and Transmedia Storytelling in Japanese Video Games
    • by Tom Tucek
    • August 20, 2026
    • This talk explores how Japanese video games often happen to use a form of “reverse exoticism” and gender-bending to transform Western mythological figures, such as King Arthur, into female heroines. Using the Fate franchise as a case study, the talk argues that this reimagining can simultaneously deconstruct traditional patriarchal historical narratives and optimise the character for commercial database consumption. By removing these figures from their historical context and repackaging them as aggregate character tropes, Japanese creators turn Western myths into fluid, interactive transmedia assets.
  • I Pose, Therefore I Man: How JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R Challenges the Myth of Masculine Neutrality
    • by Kseniia Harshina
    • August 20, 2026
    • This talk explains how the fighting game JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R challenges the assumption that masculinity in video games is a natural, neutral default. By analysing the title’s stylised combat, fashion, and integrated posing mechanics through the comparative lenses of professional wrestling and drag king theory, this analysis demonstrates how masculinity is actively staged as a visible, assembled performance. Focus is placed on how the game transforms virtual combat into a theatrical spectacle in which masculine power is communicated through aesthetic excess and constant self-display.
  • “For Me, It’s Always Like This”: Gendered Catharsis in Silent Hill Across Game and Film
    • by Kseniia Harshina
    • August 20, 2026
    • This talk explains how the Silent Hill franchise externalises the trauma of female characters by physically manifesting their suffering into the environmental design of the games and film adaptations. By comparing the original 1999 game, its 2006 cinematic adaptation, and Silent Hill 2, this talk analyses how narrative perspective dictates whether protagonists can fully witness or comprehend these materialised spaces of abuse, using feminist game studies to consider whose viewpoint guides players in a horror world based on women’s pain.
  • The Gacha Paradox: Gambling Awareness and Regulation Attitudes Among Japanese University Students
    • by Tom Tucek
    • August 21, 2026
    • This lightning talk presents findings from a mixed-methods study exploring how Japanese university students perceive the gambling elements of gacha systems in mobile games. The results reveal a contradiction where nearly 70% of surveyed students recognise gacha as a form of gambling, yet the majority simultaneously oppose legal regulations or age restrictions. Qualitative follow-up interviews suggest that the cultural normalisation of quasi-gambling institutions, such as Pachinko, frames such spending as a matter of personal freedom rather than a consumer-protection issue.
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Video Game Cultures 2026 Talks

Four Talks Presented at This Year’s VGC in Klagenfurt, 3–5 September 2026

  • Demystifying the Black Box: Teaching Generative AI Literacy Through Interactive Prototypes
    • by Tom Tucek
    • September 3, 2026
    • This talk explains the black-box system of generative AI, argues for the need for genAI literacy education, and shows various prototype video game implementations that aim to increase genAI literacy. A self-made prototype demonstrates how the ludic and interactive nature of video games is uniquely suited to explaining generative AI mechanisms.
  • Building Energy Literacy Through Minecraft
    • by Mathias Lux
    • September 3, 2026
  • Lab Hazards
    • by Felix Schniz and Sabrina Größing
    • September 5, 2026
  • Ludic Autoethnography
    • by Kseniia Harshina
    • September 5, 2026

 

 

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Game Design workshop @ Kwadrat

On September 11, Dr Felix Schniz held a game design workshop at Kwadrat youth centre in Klagenfurt. Modelled after the successful Game Jams initiated by Mathias Lux, the workshop introduced young adults to teamwork, game design basics, and interested them in modes of digital game design.  A workshop on video games is already in the planning.

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Video Game Cultures Meet and Greet

On September 2nd 2026, Dr Felix Schniz organised a Video Game Cultures Meet-and-Greet event. Supported by ITEC and the Förderverein technische Fakultät, this newly conceptualized event was supposed to create a bridge between students in technical master’s programmes, on PhD tracks working with technology, and even later career steps that are, in one capacity or another, involved with video games. Attendees, especially from bachelor’s programmes or those not studying yet, had the opportunity to meet, mingle, and ask questions about how to find their way into the technical sciences. With around forty people joining us at the Nexus coworking space, the event was well attended.

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Paper accepted @ International Conference on Game Jams, Hackathons and Game Creation Events 2026

Title: Who Gets to Make Games? Rethinking Tools for Community-Based Game Jams

Conference: International Conference on Game Jams, Hackathons and Game Creation Events 2026

Author: Kseniia Harshina

Abstract: Game accessibility is often discussed in relation to players, but access to game-making is also unevenly distributed. This short paper examines how authoring tools shape participation in community-based game jams. Drawing on a one-day storytelling game jam with adults with migration and/or displacement experience, the paper shows how Twine enabled participants to create short playable prototypes within a supported workshop setting, while also revealing limits around templates, visual storytelling, and continued access after the jam. The case highlights a key distinction: low-barrier authoring is not the same as mobile-first authoring. The paper contributes a case-based argument for understanding game-making tools as part of what makes participation possible, and for treating mobile-first authoring as an important direction for community-based game jams.

 

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Papers accepted @ CHI Play 2026

Title: You have a long way to go”: Migrant and Displaced People as Authors in a Storytelling Game Jam

Conference: CHI Play 2026

Authors: Kseniia Harshina, Ameneh Safari, Tom Tucek

Abstract: Games about migration and displacement are often framed through empathy: they invite players to understand experiences of border crossing, bureaucracy, loss, or uncertainty from a safe distance. Yet this framing can become extractive when people with lived experience have little control over how their stories are told, interpreted, or shared. This paper examines a one-day, migrant-led participatory storytelling game jam with adults who had migration and/or displacement experience. We analyze seven shared participant-created game prototypes together with participant reflections, mentor reflections, and process documentation. Our analysis shows how small prototypes used interactive form to express migration as lived constraint, unequal possibility, ongoing change, and layered belonging. It also shows how the workshop conditions shaped what participants could make and how they chose to share, withhold, or continue their work. We argue that participatory storytelling jams should be understood not only through the artifacts they produce, but through the conditions that make authorship possible: participant control over form and disclosure, playtesting as community recognition, and institutional support for the labor behind migrant-led facilitation. The paper contributes an artifact-centered account of a migrant-led storytelling jam and a coding framework for analyzing compact autobiographical games across cases.

 

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Title: Worth the Grind? Player Experiences of Grinding Activities and Mechanics in Games

Conference: CHI Play 2026

Authors: Johannes Ladurner and Kseniia Harshina

Abstract: Grinding is a common but controversial mechanic in video games. Players may criticize grinding as unfair or manipulative; however, they can also experience it as rewarding when it supports meaningful progression and player agency. This work-in-progress paper explores how players describe experiences of grinding in public Reddit discussions. We collected posts and comments from four gaming-related subreddits and analyzed player statements that explained why grinding felt enjoyable, frustrating, or exploitative. The findings suggest that grinding is context-dependent: the same repetitive activity can support or undermine player engagement depending on how it is designed. Based on these themes, we propose six preliminary design implications for player-centered grinding mechanics. These implications have also informed the design of a prototype game, which will be evaluated in future work through playtesting and player interviews.

Networking for the Future of Game Studies in Austria

From June 18-19, Dr. Felix Schniz participated in an Austria-wide networking event for scholars working in the field of game studies. Organized by the FG Game Studies, the event brought together researchers from various institutions across the country, including the University of Vienna’s Game Lab, departments of history and sports sciences in Innsbruck, as well as independent researchers.

The event clearly highlighted two main points: the interdisciplinary nature of game studies within larger academic frameworks, and the exemplary role of the University of Klagenfurt in national game research. As the only institution with a dedicated curriculum explicitly focused on games and a strong hybridisation of technical and humanities topics, the work of Dr. Felix Schniz and his colleagues contributing to the Master’s Program in Game Studies and Engineering was recognized as pioneering and set a strong precedent for the future development of game research in Austria.

In addition to exchanging best practices and discussing local and national strategies, the formation of an Austrian research network dedicated to game and play-related studies was also on the agenda. Dr. Felix Schniz expressed his intention to organize a future meeting to bring together interested members.

 

Felix @ Rock my Worlds of English Podcast

Dr Felix Schniz participated in the podcast “Rock my Worlds of English” to promote the Master’s Programme in Game Studies and Engineering.

The full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4f4wSWb8SD48yFIsTDnG1I?si=Ha53h2m8Txe1LZuiTjJ-EA

 

Felix explores @ AAU´s Media Club

On 10 June 2026, Dr Felix Schniz hosted a session on the video game Bloodborne for AAU’s Media Club. Following this semester’s Media Club leitmotif of ‘the fantastic,’ Felix delved into the game’s depiction of arcane architecture, dream spaces, and the sublime in virtual realms. With 15 attendees and even guests from Salzburg on campus who came by just for this specific date, the session was a fantastic conclusion to this semester’s Media Club schedule.