April 9th and 10th, Tampere University, Hybrid event in Paidia Space (Tampere, Finland) and online.

What are the roots of role-playing? This conference opens up a space for scholars to come together to discuss the foundations of role-playing in a game: Historical, Cultural, Theoretical, and Critical.

Historically, it is common to describe a shared history where Lord of the Rings and Wargaming came together to create a fantasy combat game genre typified by titles such as Chainmail and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. However, several elements of role-playing in games, including interactive theater, role “taking” in psychological drama, historical re-enactments, costume parties, and imagination play, have long histories of documentations and as a part of human society. We invite alternative historical trajectories of other critical lines, events or ideas that came together to form role-playing in games as we know it.

Culturally, role-playing in games has a notably Western-focus in its past literature. We invite papers, research works that target alternative cultural histories, foundations and works that incorporate or fill in theories of role-playing. We invite alternative foundations across culture, drawing from performance studies, interactive dance, trance, and Līla. In addition, we invite analyses of role-playing focusing on diverse aspects of games and players, including the social roles, structure and activities of player communities, and the political economy of role-playing games.

Theoretically, there is a lack of work on why, how, or in what way role playing in games manifest. There is a long history of theory-building within role-player studies done by role-players themselves. We invite foundational approaches to role-playing, whether psychological, sociological or more game design-oriented. This may include overarching theories of role-playing but also theory building-focused analyses of specific role-playing games and formats.

Critically, we invite papers that challenge norms of what is “role-playing” in games at all. Whether it is foundational theories taken for granted that should face greater scrutiny, or “edge-case” scenarios of role-playing in games that are actually very widespread and deserve discussion, this invites those critical approaches. Examples: queer theory and role-playing, sports philosophy, professional wrestling/performative role-play, dark role-play, technologically enhanced role-play, serious role-play, pervasive role-play.

Submission Process

Articles should be 4000-6000 words with references formatted in any accepted citation style. All submissions and any questions can be sent to info [at] gamesasartcenter [dot] com with the title “Role-Play in Games Conference”.

Authors will submit full articles by the submission day. Conference organizers will select attendees to the conference through a non-anonymous selection process. After authors are chosen, each will be given 2 other articles to review before the conference. These reviews should be submitted one week before the conference. On the conference day, presenters will have 10 minutes to present their work and each reviewer will have 5 minutes to provide a response, in addition to their written comments. Then, there will be a 10-minute discussion with the audience. In addition, conference texts will be made available to other attendees for comments.

This conference will be free for all attendees and hybrid. Submissions will be asked to mark whether they are likely to attend in person, or online. There is no requirement for any accepted authors to attend in person.

After the conference, based on peer-reviews, select participants will be invited to submit for a special issue on the topic, possibly with the International Journal of Role-Playing.

Article submission date: January 15th 2025

Acceptance notification date: January 29th 2025

Peer-reviews submitted: April 2nd 2025

Conference days: April 9th and 10th 2025

Organized in collaboration between the Tampere University Game Research Lab (https://gameresearchlab.tuni.fi/), The Games As Art Center, Leland Masek, Daniel Fernández Galeote, Antonio Pomposini, Ian Sturrock, Jaakko Stenros, Sarah Lynne Bowman, Laura Op De Beke, Felipe Garcia Soriano.