Two events in Great Britain on September 11.

On September 11, 2025, the Institute of Digital Games's Prof. Stefano Gualeni, will be in the United Kingdom for two events events to speak about his research and creative work spanning philosophy, game design, and literature. He will be keynoting the annual iGGi Conference with a talk on games as conceptual tools and in the evening he will be at Village Books in Leeds to talk with Florence Smith Nicholls - a video game archaeologist and designer - about using “fictional game archaeology” as a worldbuilding device.

On Games as Conceptual Tools

11 September 10am @ University of York (UK)

The first of these events will take place at the University of York, where the annual iGGi Conference (September 10-11) brings together PhD researchers, academics, and the games industry. The conference serves as a hub for innovation and dialogue at the intersection of research and practice in digital games, and it is widely recognized as one of the most significant venues in this field.

This year, Prof. Stefano Gualeni has been invited as one of the keynote speakers alongside Emily Brown, Lead Designer on Monument Valley, and Daniel Hernandez Research Scientist at Sony AI. Stefano's talk, On Games as Conceptual Tools, will explore how games—both existing and imagined—can function as intellectual devices for disclosing and interrogating ideas. Rather than being regarded solely as entertainment products, games can also serve as epistemic artifacts with the power to shape culture and even transform how we think about ourselves and the societies in which we live. In the keynote, Stefano will present how designing and playing games can become ways of engaging with theoretical issues. By examining games as conceptual tools, his talk emphasizes their potential to contribute meaningfully to contemporary cultural life.

Fictional Game Archaeology as a Worldbuilding Device

11 September 6pm @ Village Books in Leeds (UK)

Later that same day at 6 pm, Prof. Gualeni will also step into a different but complementary arena: speculative literature. At Village Books in Leeds, he will present his newly released philosophical novel What We Owe the Dead (Set Margins’, 2025).

The book is set in a dystopian future where humanity has retreated into massive vertical mega-siphons, desperate attempts to cool Earth’s overheated atmosphere. Within one of these colossal structures, Security Captain Elevii A. Tarkka embarks on an investigation that quickly spirals into a profound confrontation with memory, surveillance, and cultural heritage.

At the Leeds event, Stefano will be joined by Florence Smith Nicholls, a London-based video game archaeologist and designer. Together, they will discuss how the novel uses “fictional game archaeology” as a worldbuilding device, highlighting how traces of digital play help define the culture of the imagined future. The presentation will also explore the novel’s portrayal of a society where pervasive surveillance archives every action—an unsettling meditation on how the dead, and their digital remnants, continue to shape the living.

What We Owe the Dead is Gualeni’s second work of speculative fiction, following The Clouds (Routledge, 2023). Both novels exemplify his unusual approach: blending philosophical exploration with narrative fiction, and treating literature as a philosophical and transformative tool.

A Combined Presence: Philosophy, Games, and Fiction

Seen individually, the two events in York and Leeds highlight different facets of Stefano’s work. One showcases his contribution to academic and philosophical research on games; the other emphasizes his role as an author who uses fiction to explore philosophical and cultural questions.

At the Institute of Digital Games, scholarship is not limited to theory, nor is it confined to the design of games as consumer products. Instead, its researchers and educators pursue a wider ambition: to understand and expand how games intersect with culture, society, and human thought.

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