Call For Papers: Conferences

Call for Abstracts: Designing Monstrosity, Queering the Monster: Design, Implementation, and Experiences of Queer Monstrosity in Horror Gaming

We are delighted to announce a one-day collaborative conference on horror in gaming, hosted by MultiPlay Network and the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Inspired by It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror (Vallese, 2022), this conference is a sister event to the IGDA LGBTQ+ Special Interest Group (SIG) Pride Game Jam happening in June 2025, each event exploring the rich entanglements between queerness and horror in videogames.

Considerations of horror and monstrosity in videogames often reveal complicated interrelations between various social aspects. This is seen in Švelch (2023), where he argues that interactions between players and the in-game monsters that they encounter may indicate normative societal boundaries and the various anxieties of an era. Focussing on queerness, we extend Vallese’s consideration of queer experiences of horror in film to consider how relations in games may reveal aspects of queer subjectivities (see Harrer et al., 2019; Ruberg, 2022). Such an approach connects with various areas of scholarship related to horror in videogames, including the examination of Gothicism and gothic elements (Kirkland, 2021; Mukherjee, 2024), gendered relations and agency in horror games (Krzywinska, 2017), and representations of monstrosity and disability (Carr, 2014). A common theme that is considered in such research is the body, its limitations and how such limitations are challenged through various threats and forms of defilement (Fischer-Hornung and Mueller, 2016; Wilde, 2022).

Engaging with queer gaming communities and emerging scholarship, our conference looks to explore such work and more, providing a space for the exploration of entanglements between queerness and horror in videogames. We welcome proposals from:

Academics presenting scholarly work on queerness and horror in games; but also
Game developers showcasing their work, sharing insights into their design and development practices, or reflecting on the intersections of queerness, monstrosity, and horror in their creations.
Suggested topics for proposals include, but are not limited to:
The processes and experiences of queer game development;
Recontextualizing horror narratives, mechanics, and aesthetics to evoke queerness;
The role of weirdness, oddity, and monstrosity in game design and their impact on ideas of horror and identity;
Deriving meaning from horror narratives for queer players and developers;
Intersections between nostalgia and retro-aesthetics in modern horror games;
The contribution of community to storytelling in horror games; and
Exploring queer boundaries and transgressions through horror.
If you are interested in participating, please submit:
A proposal of 500 words maximum (excluding citations, which should be in Harvard format where appropriate) outlining either your scholarly presentation or the game project/practice you wish to showcase.
A short biography of 100 words maximum.

Submissions should be sent to networkmultiplay@gmail.com by Friday, 28th March 2025.

We encourage creative interpretations of the conference themes and look forward to celebrating the intersections of queerness and horror in videogames!

References

Carr, D., (2014) ‘Ability, Disability and Dead Space,’ Game Studies, 14(2).

Fischer-Hornung, D. and Mueller, M., (2016) Vampires and Zombies: Transcultural Migrations and Transnational Interpretations. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi.

Wilde, P. (2022) ‘Zombies, Deviance and the Right to Posthuman Life’, in Theorising the Contemporary Zombie: Contextual Pasts, Presents, and Futures, ed. by Scott Eric Hamilton and Conor Heffernan. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, pp. 19-36.

Harrer, S., Nielsen, S. and Jarnfelt, P., (2019) Of Mice and Pants: Queering the Conventional Gamer Mouse for Cooperative Play. In: Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York, NY, USA, 2019, p. alt15:1-alt15:11. CHI EA ’19. ACM. Available at: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3290607.3310431 (Accessed 7 July 2019).

Kirkland, E., (2021) Videogames and the Gothic. London: Routledge.Krzywinska, T., (2017) ‘Formations of Player Agency and Gender in Gothic Games,’ in: Horner, A. and Zlosnik, S. (eds.), Women and the Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Mukherjee, H., (2024) ‘“Fear the Old Blood”: The Gothicism of Bloodborne,’ Games and Culture, 19(1), pp. 94–115.Ruberg, B., (2018) Queerness and Video Games: Queer Game Studies and New Perspectives through Play. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 24(4), pp. 543–555.

Švelch, J., (2023) Player vs. Monster: The Making and Breaking of Video Game Monstrosity. Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Vallese, J., (2022) It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror. Feminist Press

Call For Papers: Creative Methodologies: Practical Play and Media Multiplicities

In partnership with MeCCSA, the University of Sunderland is delighted to announce a special symposium on Creative Methodologies: Practical Play and Media Multiplicities, a two-day event, examining methodologies of practice-based media research, from podcasts to games making. Our keynote speakers for this event are: Lance Dann (The University of Brighton), Chloe Germaine (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Nick Lewis (The University of Sunderland).

This symposium aims to interrogate the wide range of creative methodologies in media research as a showcase for the multiplicities of media and cultural studies. This event incorporates a cross-disciplinary and inclusive approach to practice-based research. We welcome papers examining autoethnographies, participant-action-led games jams as a way of video game making, R&D as well as ludological and narratological approaches to game studies, peer reviewed podcasts, the utilisation of video game journals, AI approaches to methodologies. We are also open to proposals on creative methodologies we may not have mentioned as we appreciate the breadth and depth of media’s multiplicities.

The event celebrates the rich diversity of practice-based researchers, and the ways creative methodologies may be applied across media and cultural studies. Practice-based research allows for creativity over research, as well as practical outputs which can result in frameworks for diverse peoples, such as games jams providing opportunities to embed indigenous knowledge (Nijdam, 2022), podcast research publications and projects such as Podcast or Perish Rebel (McGregor, Cook and Beckstead, (2024) and Rebel Women of Sunderland (University of Sunderland) highlighting the voices of marginalised women, and close-textual analysis of media conducted via video creation (through projects such as Games Assist). Practice-based research “is situated in the world-of-concern defined by the practice usually ‘in the field’, that is in a real-world context with real world outcomes” (Candy, Edmonds, Vear, 2022, p.29)

This symposium is led by the University of Sunderland in partnership with MeCCSA. The University of Sunderland has had growth of creative practice focused research in the last few years, and the City of Sunderland has received investments in both film production, with the Crown Works film studios, as well as in Esports with the National Esports Performance campus. Sunderland is quickly becoming a city at the centre of the creative industries, and we look forward to welcoming research practitioners to our event.

We are currently seeking abstracts for this event, to be submitted no later than Friday 28^th March 2025. We are seeking papers – which may be standard papers, podcasts, videos, streams, video journal entries, video/text based games – suggestions for roundtables, games jam proposals and any medium or proposal that you think may qualify under the banner of creative methodologies.

Some prompts for your consideration (but please do not feel limited):

Using Yogscast as a research tool
Podcast journal articles
Participant action research through Twine
Autoethnographies
Applying AI to methodological approaches
Researching place based creative industries (and their relations to local communities)

Abstracts of 300 words and accompanying author biographies of 200 words should be emailed to mediamultipliticies@sunderland.ac.uk and stephanie_farnsworth@sunderland.ac.uk by Friday 28^th of March.

References:

Candy, L, Edmonds, E, and Vear, C (2022) ‘Practice-based research’ in Vear, C. (eds) The Routledge International Handbook of Practice-Based Research (p. 27-41) London, UK: Routledge

McGregor, H., Cook, I., and Beckstead, L. (2024) Podcast or Perish: Peer Review and Knowledge Creation in the 21^st Century, London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic.

Nijdam, E. (2022) ‘Recentering Indigenous Epistemologies Through Digital Games: Sámi Perspectives on Nature in Rievssat (2018), SAGE Journals: Games and Culture, vol. 18. no.1 January 26^th, Available online: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15554120211068086

Rebel Women of Sunderland (2024), University of Sunderland, Available online: https://rebel-women-of-sunderland.captivate.fm/

Call for Abstracts: Women of Branching Narratives, Online Conference Thursday 7^th August 2025

MultiPlay is excited to announce our ‘Women of Branching Narratives Conference’ interrogating themes of womanhood, femininity, representation and agency within video games. The conference will be a two-hour online event examining issues relating to gender and branching narratives.

Branching narratives offer players a sprawling list of options and endings within video game content. They also provide developers unique challenges when trying to enable player agency while balancing constraints with technical limitations and developer time. This conference seeks to interrogate the player and developer tensions and opportunities when representing women.

The role of women in video games has long been debated, whether that concerns representation of women as content, representation of women in the gaming workforce, or actions against women’s safety within the community due to events such as GamerGate. As such, this conference is an opportunity to reflect upon the ways in which branching narratives can contribute to these discourses.

MultiPlay offers several prompts which are designed to inspire but not limit abstracts. The prompts are:

Women as avatars of role-playing games
Union relations to women in the games industry
Analysis of sexual and romantic content of women characters in branching narratives
‘Women in the fridge’ (Simone), consequences and death of women in branching narratives
Reflections on the writing of women characters since GamerGate
Customisation options
The lost history of women in games

While the prompts are broad to encourage creativity, we particularly welcome reflections on the position of marginalised women in gaming such as: women of colour, transgender women, asexual, aromantic or otherwise queer women, depictions of sex working women and depictions of older women.

Abstracts should be no more than 300 words. Author biographies of 100 words should also be included in the submission. Please write author biographies in the third-person. Abstracts should be emailed to networkmultiplay@gmail.com with the subject heading ‘Women of Branching Narratives’.

If you have any further questions please email networkmultiplay@gmail.com

Call for Abstracts: Video Games and The EcoGothic

MultiPlay is hosting our annual Halloween conference on Monday 27th of October at 6pm (GMT) online, with this year’s theme focusing on the ecogothic in video games.

The Gothic has gained greater scholastic attention in recent years, with particular focus going toward Gothic video games. This conference wishes to celebrate this rich academic material while emphasising and reflecting upon the role of the environment in Gothic narratives as climate change becomes an ever-more urgent crisis that the world must contend with.