Exploring New Horizons in Video Game Cultures

Nick Webber is Professor of Game Studies, and Director of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, at Birmingham City University, UK. He is co-convenor of the Historical Games Network and his research focuses on (video)games, cultural history and identity. His recent work explores the historical practices of player and fan communities, the impact of games and virtual worlds on our understanding of the past, and the relationship between national cultural policy and video games. Ewan Kirkland has published extensively on video games, focussing on survival horror and the Silent Hill series. Exploring such issues as storytelling, gender representation, genre and concept art, Ewan's work has appeared in Games and Culture, Convergence, Gothic Studies and Camera Obscura. Routledge Advances in Game Studies recently published his study examining the influence of Gothic literature on games design, which contains chapters on Bioshock, Gone Home, What Remains of Edith Finch and Night in the Woods. Other research interests include animation, children's culture and fandom. Ewan's current research project explores UK fan conventions surrounding Hasbro's My Little Pony series. Rene Reinhold Schallegger was trained in English and American as well as French Studies, with a focus on literary and cultural criticism at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria), Anglia Ruskin University (UK), and Birmingham City University (UK). He is Associate Professor at the University of Klagenfurt, and his main areas of interest are media cultures of the fantastic, normative ethics, affect theory, Citizenship-, Gender-, Queer-, Canadian-, and Game Studies. He is President of the Gesellschaft fuer Fantastikforschung (Association for Research in the Fantastic), and his most recent publication is the monograph A New Virtual Ethics: Interconnectedness and Interrelationality in Videogames (2024).