[Commlist] cfa: Video Game Studies Conference (SVI2025) – Game Design Studies

Kazimierz Wielki University, Faculty of Cultural Studies,

The University of Novi Sad, Academy of Arts,

  invite you to the Fourth International Video Game Studies Conference
(SVI2025)

Bydgoszcz, Poland December 1st-2nd 2025

  GAME DESIGN STUDIES

The fourth edition of the SVI video game conference seeks to return to 
topics of game design and game analysis. Game design studies as a focal 
point for research means combining the theoretical backdrop and 
sensibilities of game analysis with an interest in better understanding 
the practice of game design. Within this frame, we include examinations 
of game design as theory and practice, its historical developments, 
current challenges, and related theoretical frameworks such as game 
design patterns and core mechanical building blocks. We may also find 
concentrated efforts to analyse specific games at greater depth, whether 
through the framework of gameplay, narratology, or otherwise, as well as 
explorations of game analysis methodologies. Finally, we may also 
examine longer-term trends, searching for stylistic, authorial and 
industrial influences across groups of games, or analogously, patterns 
and practices local to a specific country, geographic area or culture. 
The SVI Conference, as always, aims to be a bridge between the academic 
and industrial worlds. Having originated at the Academy of Arts in Novi 
Sad in Serbia, this year the conference is being co-organised with 
Kazimierz Wielki University, and will be held in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Our 
two institutions are connected by a focus on practical training; our 
students learn to design and to make games first, with game studies an 
important but secondary concern, allowing the practical to feed on the 
theoretical. Design feeds on analysis. We invite, therefore, analytical 
scholarship concerning game structures, design philosophy, gameplay, 
game narrative and worldbuilding, as well as current and historical 
analyses of design and development practices – all with an eye towards 
providing insights for a new generation of game designers and 
developers. Suggested themes include, but are not limited to:

Game analysis

●Game mechanics, rules, and games as ludological constructs

●Game narratological analysis

●Game settings as worlds

●Case studies of games as works of art

●Comparative studies of games

●Formal, stylistic, thematic and generic analyses of games

●Longitudinal analyses of game series or groupings

●Game analysis methodologies

Game design

●Design-centric game analysis

●Game design patterns as objects of analysis

●Game design methodologies

●Game design history

●AI-assisted game design innovation

●Game design across game forms and genres

●Analysis of game design discourse

●Multidisciplinary aspects of game design

Industrial & artistic contexts

●Game designers as auteurs

●Game studios as collective auteurs

●Consoles, platforms and technological influence on game design

●Local, national and international game industry histories

●The search for national “schools of game design”

●Game design education, past, present and future

●Games as objects of memory and cultural or technological heritage

●Political contexts and their influence on game development past and present


  Confirmed keynote speakers:

  Clara Fernández-Vara

Associate Arts Professor, the Game Center
New York University

  Bruno Faidutti

Freelance boardgame designer of more than 40 board and card games

The official language of the conference is English. Abstracts of up to 
300 words, with up to 5 keywords before September 30th, 2025 should be 
sent to (conference.svi /at/ gmail.com) 
<https://webmail.sbb.rs/imp/dynamic.php?page=mailbox> 
<mailto:(conference.svi /at/ gmail.com)>

<https://webmail.sbb.rs/imp/dynamic.php?page=mailbox> Please visit our 
website for detailed information https://sviconference.org


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