2026: Proceedings of DiGRA 2026

Papers

• The Infinite Game in the Engine of Control: Proletarianization, Platform Capitalism, and the Future of Playful Pleasure

  Yizhen Jia

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• Monstrous Desires in Pornographic Videogames

  Petri Lankoski

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• Combat System Design for Action Games: Key Concepts and Styles

  Jiayong Sun, Jose Zagal

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• It's all a skinner box? Typical core loop and Operant Conditioning

  Thais Arrias Weiller

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• Hobbyist Developers: Studying Notable Nintendo DS Homebrew Games

  Jared Hansen

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• A Chronicle of Emulation: Proposed Eras for Video Game Emulators

  Jared Hansen

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• The Impact of Evolving Character Customization on Emotional Engagement and Player Behaviour in RPGs

  Stefan Savic, Matthieu Delaere, Edirlei Soares de Lima

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• Culture as (Extra)ordinary: Authentic Representation of Working-Class Experience in Still Wakes the Deep

  Robin Sloan

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• The Algorithmic Hostess: Social Mediation, Affective Discipline, and Sanitized Pleasures of Generative AI NPCs in Petit Planet

  Neo Xia

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• The Demographics and Motivations of Trading Card Game Players

  Vilma Varismaa

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• The final frontier of space in video games. Spatio-narrative design in Judgment by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio

  Diego Barroso, Zidong Huang

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• Close-Playing War Trauma: The Tension Between Agency and Inevitability in My Child Lebensborn and Bury Me, My Love

  Xingyan Liu, Alex Mitchell

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• Arctictopia' and its Cozy, Casual Climate Catastrophe

  Alena Cicholewski

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• Graphonauts: Introducing a Hybrid Human-AI Pipeline for Text-to-Game Transformation via Knowledge Graphs

  Michael Hoffmann, Jophin John, Jan Fillies, Florent Dufour, Matt Voigts, Adrian Paschke

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• Making and Playing for Catharsis

  Iris Zhang

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• Genshin Impact: Cultural hybridisation, localisation and contra-flow of cultural production in China's open-world role-playing game

  Yaohan Wang

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• The Assemblage of Peripheral Game Development: A Case Study of Dundee

  Stefano De Paoli, Martin Lynagh, Darshana Jayemanne, Jose Gomez, Lynn H. C. Love, Wren O'Regan, Beatrix Livesey-Stephens

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• How General Game Expertise Shapes Player Experience and Problem-Solving Across Different Onboarding Approaches in a Puzzle Video Game

  Zack Carpenter, Nasim Eshgarf, Amreen Reshi, Craig Anderson

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• Epistemic Disobedience in Digital Games: Mega Man X8 16-bit case

  Pedro Wajsfeld

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• Design process of a serious game about domestic abuse in the context of the Vulnerable Avatars Framework

  Emmanuel Guardiola, Jan Stasieńko, Laura Espinosa Ospina

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• From Play to Poetics: Reconfiguring Pleasure through Defamiliarisation in Game Poems

  André Almo, Jordan Magnuson

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• Identifying with a character' but 'embodying an avatar': Differentiating relationships between players and their on-screen representations in video games

  Eugene Kukshinov, Nicholas Bowman

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• Stranger in a Strange Land: A South African Perspective on the Evolution of British Game Development

  Adam Jerrett

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• Rise of the faux pixels. Erasures and extensions of the pixel concept in video game history

  Carl Therrien

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• FINAL BOSS: Videogame as a Technology of Geopolitical Cultural Power

  Thiago Masetto Lima

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• Remembering Play' Beyond Retro: An Analysis of YouTube Videos and Comment Data on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in South Korea

  Sujin Park

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• Remediations of Japanese Cinema and History in Ghost of Yōtei

  Michael Pennington, Corine Gerritsen

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• Time in Digital Games: A Comparative Map of Temporal Constructs

  Thomas Byers, Martin Gibbs, Bjørn Nansen

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• Why Do We Suffer for Fun? Ordeal Pleasure in Souls-like Games

  Flint Xiaofeng Fan

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• Designing Virtual Reality Games About Grief: Reflections from Psychology and Healthcare Professionals

  Amina Kobenova, Thais Alvarenga, Piper Stickler, Ashwin Nagarajan, Sri Kurniawan

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• From Checklists to Playability: A systematic mapping of player reviews to the Game Accessibility Guidelines

  Nadia Di Leo, Antonino Tarantino

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• Translating the Game Space Model from Analytic Framework to Practical Methodology for Game Development and Research

  Adam Jerrett, Peter Howell

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• Between Diverse Industry and Game Characters - An Analysis of Tool-based Representation Design

  Maximilian Brückner, Matilda Ståhl

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• Racial Recursivity as Critical Race Game Studies Methodology

  Austin Anderson

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• Designing Open Dialogue Systems for LLM-Based NPCs

  Kieran McKee, Joshua D. Savage, Vanessa Hemovich

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• Play as Preservation: Folklore and Mythology in The Mooseman

  Caleb Levy

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• The Right to Play, The Right to Pleasure

  Letizia Vaccarella

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• Play in Context: Adapting Game-Based Learning for African Cultural Frameworks

  Amanda Jankowitz, Ane Orchard, Oluwarotimi Randle

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• The Pleasurable Stress of the VRAVG Beat Saber: A Mixed-Methods Study

  Leland Masek, Mun Kuan Chan, Jukka Särkijärvi

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• How to be Non-Human : A Thematic Analysis of Animal Embodiment in VR Games

  Siqi Yu, Shuai Liu, Yiqing Tian, Mar Canet Sola

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• The Invisibility of Women Streamers in Game Studies

  Maria Julia Vieira, Pedro Cardoso, Luciana Lima

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• From Restricted to Shared: The Intersectional Pleasure Mechanisms in Chinese Horror Games (2001-2024)

  Huang Xuanqi

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• The Institutionalization of the Nokia N-Gage as a National Symbol: From Corporate and Fan Heritage to Public Cultural Heritage

  Niklas Nylund, Thomas Apperley, Heikki Jungman, Olli Sotamaa

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• Localized Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Challenges and Solutions in Game Culture Environments

  Essi Taino, Kalle Laakso, Taina Myöhänen, Usva Friman, Olli Sotamaa

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• The Joy of Exploration: A Qualitative Study of Temporal Changes in Player Experiences

  Tushya Sachan, Dinesh Chhabra

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• Exploring VR Shinrin-Yoku Stress Relief: A Comparative Study of Virtual and Multi-Sensory Extended Reality Environments

  Anton Nygaard Petersen, Niklas Hannes Nielsen, Nicolai Reinhold Schøler, Anita Larsen, Lukas Kyster, Ivan Nikolov

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• When a Game Is More Than 'Just a Game': Metanarrative Integration Tools in Video Games

  Filipe Pinto, Filipe Luz

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• The Multidimensional Spectrum of Abstraction, Realism and Cultural Meaning in Serious Games

  Yekta Kalantar Hormozi, Kristina Risley, Liang Xu

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• Gameful disconnection: how digital detox and productivity apps blend play, work, and profit

  Faltin Karlsen

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• Games with Culture: Using Cultural Heritage as Game-Making Material

  Stanisław Krawczyk, Rikke Toft Nørgård, Kim Holflod, Maarten Groen, Paula Lopes

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• Intersectional Pleasures of Anomie: Helldivers 2 and Democracy at Play

  Edward Smith

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• Towards a Political Economy of Gamergate

  Emma Vossen

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• Hoarding, Looting, Consuming: Toward an Ecology of Care

  Hadi Mehrpouya, Robin Sloan

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• Min-Maxxing Relaxing: Playtime and Privilege in the Post-Pandemic

  Adeline Piercy, Pb Berge

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• Reading queer autobiographical games through the lens of memory and identity studies

  Natalia Corbello

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• Neighborhood Making of Story Games: Accessible Joy in Low-Tech Design

  Benjamin Stokes, Eric Schoenborn, Hazel Arroyo, Meagan Couture

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• What strategies for enabling flow-critical play can be derived from the game design of Taskmaster?

  Chris Diffin

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• Identity Play as Identity Work: Representation, Identity Integration, and Possible Selves in Digital Games

  Paige Safyer, Zach Pino

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• Swinging Through History: Rope Mechanics in 2D games

  Radek Richtr, Barbora Kyseľová

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• Glitching Objects as Temporal Mediators: Hyperobject Temporality in NORCO

  Maddalena Grattarola

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• From Hopscotch to Digital Games: The Pleasure and Dilemma of Interactivity

  Huajing Pan

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• Mancala's Eco-Conscious Game Design: Which, if any, Qualities of Mancala Bao la Kiswahili Contain Eco-Conscious Qualities Suitable for Adapting into New Games?

  Jack Alexandroff

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• Six Positive Words for Talking about Theory in Games Research (in Pursuit of Interdisciplinarity)

  Dooley Murphy, Elisa Mekler

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• Welcome to My Crib: Player Creativity in Animal Crossing

  Amanda Curtis

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• Shaping Interactions and Experiences: Investigating the Effects of a Game-Specific Custom Controller on Player Experience in a Digital Game Environment

  Stephen Rockett, John P. Healy

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