Call for Papers:

“Beyond Play. Aesthetics, Technology, and Design in Videogames as Socio-Cultural Practices”
Special Issue (n. 13/2025) of GAME – Games as Art, Media, Entertainment
https://www.gamejournal.it/n-132025-beyond-play

Edited by Fabrizio Festa, Alessandra Micalizzi, Claudio Pomo, Mario Spada

Deadline for submission of full papers: November 30, 2025

This special issue explores videogames as aesthetic, technological, and design-driven practices that go beyond their function as entertainment or tools. We invite contributions that examine how videogames operate as socio-cultural practices, shaping identities, communities, values, and imaginaries through play, design, and technological mediation.

Videogames are performative experiences and cultural laboratories, where aesthetics, design strategies, and technological infrastructures converge to generate new forms of expression, creativity, and collective meaning-making. Far from being static objects, videogames are lived practices that articulate negotiations between players and designers, human and machine, imagination and computation.

This special issue in G|A|M|E – Games as Art, Media, Entertainment invites scholarly submissions  that critically analyze the practical, aesthetic, and cultural dimensions of videogames and their implications for contemporary societies, encouraging an interdisciplinary dialogue across game studies, communication, design, digital humanities, media studies, philosophy, and the arts.

Suggested topics:

• Videogames as Everyday Practices: How gaming habits, routines, and communities shape socio-cultural identities.
• Design as Cultural Practice: Game design as a site of negotiation between creativity, technology, and player agency.
• Technological Infrastructures and Imaginaries: AI, algorithms, VR/AR/MR, and platform ecologies shaping aesthetics and practices of play.
• Videogames as Participatory and Relational Spaces: Community-building, fandom, streaming, modding, and other player-driven practices.
• Critical Play and Counter-Practices: Experimental, activist, or subversive uses of videogames as aesthetic and cultural interventions.
• Ethics, Inclusion, and Representation in Practice: How design and play reproduce, challenge, or reimagine power, diversity, and identity.
• Methodologies for Studying Videogame Practices: Innovative approaches to researching the interplay between design, technology, and lived experience.

We welcome:

• Empirical studies (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods)
• Theoretical and critical essays
• Case studies in cultural, artistic, or community-based contexts
• Methodological innovations in game studies

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

• Submissions must be original, unpublished, and adhere to the journal’s author guidelines. All papers will undergo double-blind peer review.
• Papers should be 4,000-5,000 words and submitted in English using the .docx or .odt template.
  • Download the paper template in .docx or .odt extension
• Papers will be subject to a double-blind peer review process. Accepted contributions will be published in a 2025 issue of G|A|M|E – Games as Art, Media, Entertainment.
• Full papers should be submitted to cts.milano@sae.edu and editors@gamejournal.it (please use both addresses). For questions about the call and discussion of possible paper ideas, please contact the guest editors on a.micalizzi@sae.edu, claudio.pomo@poliba.it, fabrizio.festa@conservatoriomatera.it

TIMELINE

• Full paper deadline: November 30th, 2025
• Peer review notifications: January 31st, 2026
• Final version due: February 28, 2026
• Expected publication: March 2026

INDICATIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Anthropy, A. (2012). Rise of the Videogame Zinesters. Seven Stories Press.
• Apperley, T. (2010). Gaming Rhythms: Play and Counterplay from the Situated to the Global. Routledge.
• Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. MIT Press.
• Consalvo, M. (2007). Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames. MIT Press.
• Flanagan, M. (2009). Critical Play: Radical Game Design. MIT Press.
• Galloway, A. R. (2006). Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. University of Minnesota Press.
• Gee, J. P. (2007). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Juul, J. (2019). Handmade Pixels: Independent Video Games and the Quest for Authenticity. MIT Press.
• Nieborg, D. B., & Poell, T. (2018). The Platformization of Cultural Production: Theorizing the Contingent Cultural Commodity. New Media & Society, 20(11).
• Ruberg, B. (2019). Video Games Have Always Been Queer. NYU Press.
• Sicart, M. (2014). Play Matters. MIT Press.
• Shaw, A. (2014). Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture. University of Minnesota Press.
• Taylor, T. L. (2018). Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming. Princeton University Press.
• Toivonen, S., & Sotamaa, O. (2011). Digital Distribution of Games: The Players’ Perspective. Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, 5(1).
• Vella, D. (2015). The Ludic Self: The Self and Subjectivity in Digital Role-Playing Games. ETC Press.
• Whitson, J. R. (2020). What Can We Learn from Studio Studies Ethnographies? Games and Culture, 15(3).