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Category: Project
Bridging Disciplines: Reflections on ReAnimate Summer School and Interdisciplinary Approaches in Digital Game Studies
by Sophie Bémelmans and Adrian Demleitner
In June 2024, the ReAnimate Summer School in Montréal brought together a diverse group of scholars and practitioners from all over the world to explore the intersections of digital game history, criticism, and development. This unique event, organized by Concordia University, Université de Montréal, and École de Technologie Supérieure, aimed to bridge the gap between humanities and engineering in digital game studies, and initated by Carl Therrien, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Fabio Petrillo, and their team. As researchers from Confoederatio Ludens, we participated in this week-long program that challenged traditional disciplinary boundaries. The summer school featured a rich mix of academic presentations, practical workshops and collaborative activities, providing a multifaceted approach to understanding digital games as complex cultural and technological artefacts.
This blog post reflects on our experiences at ReAnimate, highlighting key insights gained and exploring the crucial role of interdisciplinary collaboration in advancing the field of digital game studies. Through this reflection, we aim to contribute to the ongoing dialogue about research methodologies and collaborative approaches in our rapidly evolving discipline.
A visit at the Museum for Communication depot
by Yannick Rochat
On 13 June 2024, a delegation from the Confoederatio Ludens project visited the Museum of Communication depot in Schwarzenburg.
The aim was to explore the museum’s collections, particularly its computer hardware collections. Previously, we had had opportunities to talk to one of the museum curators, Juri Jaquemet, notably as part of the Pixelvetica preservation project.
Here are some thoughts related to this visit.
Continue reading A visit at the Museum for Communication depot
“The Feel of Sweaty Fingers” – The CH LUDENS Team’s First Memories of Digital Games
by the CH Ludens Team
How did we as scientists become what we are today? Where does our interest in digital games come from? Join us on a short autobiographical journey to the ludic beginnings of the CH LUDENS team.
Continue reading “The Feel of Sweaty Fingers” – The CH LUDENS Team’s First Memories of Digital Games
CH Ludens Starts Collecting Historical Gaming Magazines
by Aurelia Brandenburg
Researching the history of digital games means, among other things, researching the discourses about games in gaming magazines. For that, the Bern Team of CH Ludens is starting a collection of physical copies of gaming magazines in German (primarily) published in the 1980s and 1990s. This post serves as a living document for this collection, and we will update the list below as we start acquiring individual magazine issues.
There also is a German version of this post which can be found here. Continue reading CH Ludens Starts Collecting Historical Gaming Magazines
CH Ludens beginnt mit der Sammlung von historischen Spielemagazinen
von Aurelia Brandenburg
Die Geschichte digitaler Spiele zu erforschen bedeutet, neben anderen Dingen, auch, die Diskurse über Spiele in Gaming Magazinen zu erforschen. Um diese Forschung zu intensivieren, will das Berner Team von CH Ludens eine (physische) Sammlung von Ausgaben von deutschsprachigen Gaming Magazinen anlegen, die (primär) in den 1980ern und 1990ern veröffentlicht wurden. Dieser Blogpost dient dabei als eine Art Living Document, das wir regelmässig entsprechend unserer aktuellen Anschaffungen aktualisieren werden.
Es gibt ausserdem auch eine englische Version dieses Posts, die hier gefunden werden kann. Continue reading CH Ludens beginnt mit der Sammlung von historischen Spielemagazinen
Confoederatio Ludens at the Games & Literature Festival in Marbach
by Eugen Pfister and Adrian Demleitner
From 28th to 30th June 2023, the German Literature Archive Marbach has organized a conference on “Games & Literature. On the literacity, research, collection, and archiving of computer games”. The idea for this conference came because, since 2019, the Literaturarchiv has been collecting not only German-language literature but also digital games if they “contain narrative structures to a high degree.”1 In the words of the call for presentations: “The substantive reasons for this decision are numerous, but, fundamentally, computer games have long been part of our cultural memory, which must be archived appropriately and examined in relation to established cultural forms.”2 Accordingly, the self-imposed goal of the conference was to discuss with international colleagues issues of collecting and archiving digital games, as well as research questions concerning the nexus between digital games and literature. Even if the claim turned out to be a little too ambitious in retrospect, a very exciting and fruitful exchange took place. Over three days, more than thirty colleagues from three continents presented their research, and we were honoured that our project was represented by four colleagues: The second day was opened by René Bauer and Beat Suter from the ZHdK with their keynote “Considerations for Archiving Games. From the Perspective of Game Design”. And on the third day, Eugen Pfister and Adrian Demleitner from HKB presented our joint historical database of games developed in the DACH region up to 2000: “Why we thought it was a good idea to build a DACH games database.”
Continue reading Confoederatio Ludens at the Games & Literature Festival in Marbach
Working with Amiga Floppy Disks in Historical Video Game Research
by Adrian Demleitner
Like most humanity scholars and historians, we work with historical materials that we compile into a corpus. How does this approach apply to researching digital-born media, such as video games designed for the Amiga computing system?
Continue reading Working with Amiga Floppy Disks in Historical Video Game Research
First CH Ludens workshop: Focus on interview methodologies
by Sophie Bémelmans
As the inaugural host, we prioritized interview methodology due to widespread interest among project members in conducting oral history. We collaborated with the Swiss Museum of Games, under the direction of Selim Krichane, who graciously hosted this workshop.
Continue reading First CH Ludens workshop: Focus on interview methodologies
Our delegation in Seville for DiGRA 2023
by Yannick Rochat, Larissa Wild, Pierre-Yves Hurel, Sophie Bémelmans and Eugen Pfister
A project like Confoederatio Ludens requires that we regularly attend conferences in order to present our results, gather constructive feedback, and keep an eye on what our international colleagues are discovering. This year, the annual conference of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) – the main research community in game studies – happened in Seville, Spain, on the site of the universal exposition of 1992. We sent 6 delegates to the conference: Sophie Bémelmans (UNIL), Pierre-Yves Hurel (UNIL), Mela Kocher (ZHdK), Eugen Pfister (HKB), Yannick Rochat (UNIL) and Larissa Wild (ZHdK). Here is an overview of their week.
Continue reading Our delegation in Seville for DiGRA 2023