New Game Plus
New Game Plus is a recurring conference and project by Hiloko Kato and Andrea-Luca Bossard that highlights the critical examination of videogames as cultural media, not only understood as aesthetic artworks but as embedded in their sociohistorical contexts. This year’s iteration focuses on the practices of “writing, researching and documenting videogames”.
Firstly, videogames are written texts, based on computer languages, audiovisual codes and aesthetic symbols. In this context of writing practices they are also entangled in larger social narratives and political discourse.
Secondly, research is required to create video game worlds and stories. At the same time research needs to be done on the larger societal context surrounding the productive and creative processes, by examining the material realities and cultural discourse surrounding them.
Thirdly, videogames are highly contemporary media that often document the specific cultural moment in which they are produced. Additionally, videogames are being documented as cultural projects by researchers, developers and journalists alike.
New Game Plus 2 therefore aims to place itself at the heart of the current cultural shifts, ruptures and discourse that manifest around this often academically neglected medium. The conference tries to provide perspectives and experiences from the inside, potentially as starting points to grapple with the present crises and conflicts.
Check out the program points of this years New Game Plus here:
Friday
15:00 - 16:00
Meadows and Coal Mines
with: Michel Ziegler Will Todd
Documenting Everyday Lives through Videogames. How can we connect both forms of aesthetic media as ways of understanding the everyday life as well as opening up discussions surrounding those lives?
Friday
10:10 - 11:40
Everything to Play For - Or Is It?
with: Marijam Did
When "Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World" was published in 2024, the videogame industry already seemed to be at a crossroads. Two years on, that crossroads has become even more urgent: consolidation is accelerating, funding is drying up, jobs and critical spaces are disappearing, and the political importance of games is still routinely underestimated. Drawing on the book and on conversations and encounters with game communities around the world since its publication, this talk asks: what has changed, what have we learned, and what would it actually take to build a different future for games?
Friday
17:15 - 18:15
Alternative Studio Organisation: An Anthology of Summer Eternal
with: Aleksandar Gavrilović Argo Tuulik Dora Klindžić
The panel will serve as a deep dive into this radically different approach to fundraising and indie promotion, and how studios should think outside the box when presenting themselves and their games to an audience in an ever-saturated market Also, on the panel, there will be a discussion on the RPG innovations in Summer Eternal's game Red Rooster. Hush hush!
