EXTENDED EDUCATION SEMINAR (in Turin)

The University of Turin (department of Philosophy and Education Sciences), is organizing a 2-day congresso (symposium) on the themes of education and transformativity in virtual worlds. Together with some known faces and long-time friends of the IDG, such as Prof. Riccardo Fassone and Prof. Andrea Gaggioli, our very own Prof. Stefano Gualeni is among the invited speakers for this event.

The symoposium will take place between the 22nd and 23rd of February (2024), and the complete program (and lists of speakers) can be found here: https://en.unito.it/sites/sten/files/convegno_extended_education_dfe.pdf

Prof. Gualeni's talk will focus on the conceptual and transformative use of video games and self-reflexive videogames in particular. Leveraging his most recent philosophical game titled Doors (the game) (2021), he will talk about the potential of small experimental games to function as 'playable academic outputs'.

Find the abstract for his contribution below!

ON CONCEPTUAL GAMES

Can games be used to communicate theoretical knowledge that is relevant to game studies? Like conceptual works of art, some games are designed to convey intellectually significant ideas in ways that are not exclusively linguistic. Drawing from art theory, this talk argues that the kinds of ideas one can experience practically and firsthand through ‘conceptual games’ can be of three kinds: socio-political, philosophical, or self-reflexive. Conceptual games that take a self-reflexive stance in particular communicate knowledge about games themselves, about their expressive conventions and their relationships to players’ expectations. While the quality of being self-reflexive does not by itself grant a game the status of a theoretical contribution to game studies, there are self-reflexive games that explicitly address theories and texts in the field. Among the few existing examples of self-reflexive games that were deliberately developed as scholarly contributions to game studies, Doors (the game) is discussed and analyzed as a particularly relevant case study.