DiGRAA 2026 Program

DiGRAA 2026 will take place in the Auditorium at University of the Sunshine Coast Moreton Bay Campus in Petrie, the City of Moreton Bay, Queensland.

The Auditorium is located on the ground floor of the A1 Foundation Building at UniSC Moreton Bay. Please see the delegate guide for maps, travel information and more. Please read the guide carefully before attending and ideally before registering and making travel plans.

The program uses Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) AKA Queensland time.

Please register here to attend the conference in-person. The deadline for in-person is January 9.

Please register here to attend the conference online. The deadline for online is February 2.

Day 1 Monday 9th February 2026: Focusing on Doing.

8.30-9.10	Registration Located near the Auditorium in MB A1 The Foundation Building.
8.30-9.10	Coffee Feel free to grab a coffee at the café and meet with your fellow delegates before the start.
9.10-10.00	Welcome to Country and Opening Addresses Auditorium	TribalLink, UniSuper, UniSC DVRC Professor Ross Young and Conference Chair Dr Jacqueline Burgess
10.00-10.40	Keynote 1: Including Q&A	Professor Anjum Naweed
10.40-11.10	Morning Tea Provided
11.10-11.30	Practice Track 1:	Chair: Dr Alexander Muscat
	Lacanian TTRPG	Dr Antranig Sarian
	Thick Aesthetics in Artist Game Fantastic STIs 18 to 81	Tengchao Zhou
	Pipeline Protocol	Dr Joel Bennett and Rik Lagarto
11.30-12.30	Session 1: Streaming	Chair: Dr Sidney Irwin
	Australian Game Live Streamers and Viewers on Twitch	Dr Mark Johnson and James Baguley
	“She is one of the lads”: VTuber Gender Construction and Audience Empowerment	Zoe Li
	Performative Authenticity: Examining Masculinity and Labour of Vietnamese Game Livestreamers	Nguyen Do Doan Hanh
	Q&A
12.30-1.30	Lunch Not provided unless you have pre-ordered.
1.30-2.10	Session 2: Tabletop, Card and Board Games	Chair: Dr Taylor Hardwick
	Ludocharacter Resonance: Documenting Queer Play Strategies in Tabletop Role-Playing Games	Emily J. B. Morris
	Exploring Hybridised Storytelling in Story-driven Boardgames	Sasha Soraine and Dr Melissa J. Rogerson
	Q&A
2.10-3.10	Session 3: Art and Sound	Chair: Dr Hugh Davies
	Nothing Beyond the Sea: Facing the Videogame Void	Dr Max Coombes and Gabriella Stead
	Four design patterns for playful sonic interaction with place	Uyen Nguyen and Matthew Riley
	All Video Games Are Animation, and Here’s Why It Matters	Will Mu
	Q&A
3.10-3.40	Afternoon Tea Provided
3.40-5.00	Session 4: Industry	Chair: Assoc Prof Brendan Keogh
	Capital Games: Creativity, Commerce, and Control in China’s Videogame Clusters	Dr Hugh Davies
	All Talk, Some Action: The Complicated Trajectory of DE&I in Games	Dr Alayna Cole and Isabelle Brown
	Observing Indie Game Devs on Discord: The Scroll-Up Method	Dr Taylor Hardwick, Prof Dan Golding, Assoc Prof Brendan Keogh
	Understanding Small Video Game Developer Contexts in Australia and Japan	Dr Jacqueline Burgess and Assoc Prof Douglas Schules
	Q&A
5.00-5.05	Day 1 Close
5.05-late	Social drinks and dinner at the Petrie Hotel Own cost.

Day Two Tuesday 10th February 2026: Focusing on Thinking.

8.50-9.20	Coffee Feel free to grab a coffee at the café and meet with your fellow delegates before the start.
9.20-9.30	Day 2 Welcome
9.30-10.10	Keynote 2: Including Q&A	Professor Kristy de Salas
10.10-10.30	Practice Track 2:	Chair: Dr Alexander Muscat
	Liminal	Ka Kei Lee
	Bird-RPG (Sunshine Coast Edition): Situated Experimental Game	Cuauhtemoc Moreno
	Translating Folktales into Interactive Media through the Game Adaptation of “Fragrant Water”	Rebecca Livia Hamijaya
	Dance Dance Deception	Lou Fourie
10.30-11.00	Morning Tea Provided.
11.00-12.15	Session 5: Loss and Failure	Chair: Dr Stephanie Harkin
	Pleasurable Punishments:  Examining Masochistic Play and “Bad” Endings in Otome Games	Kelly Li
	Divine and Sublime: A Gothic Examination of Impossible Hero’s Journeys in Eternal Ring	Dr Jacqueline Moran
	A failure beyond words: Baba is You’s Formalization of Player Subjectivity	Dr Benjamin Nicoll
	“We could call it a homecoming, or homeward bound maybe?”: The disappearing home in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024)	Dr Max Coombes
	Q&A
12.15-1.15	Lunch Not provided unless you have pre-ordered.
1.15-2.15	Session 6: Games and the Environment	Chair: Dr Jacqueline Moran
	Only a Third Place? Rethinking Gaming Venues through Playable Public Ecologies	Taoyue Wang
	Environmental Hostility and Regional Specificity in the Post-Apocalyptic Noongar Landscape of Broken Roads	Ambrin Hasnain
	Ecomon Go: Cultivating an Ecocritique of the Pokémon Franchise	David Harold ten Cate
	Q&A
2.15-3.15	Session 7: Culture and Education	Chair: Dr Cassandra Barkman
	“Are babies worth it?”: Mediated Representations of Children in Digital Gaming	Dr Amy Brierley-Beare
	“The games-as-an-art-form argument is dead”–Exploring Expressions of Games in Australian Museums	Nellie Seale, Prof Wally Smith and Dr Melissa J. Rogerson
	A Messy Endeavour: Unravelling English Students’ Experiences of Ludonarrative Empathy	Gerard Altura
	Q&A
3.15-3.45	Afternoon Tea Provided
3.45-4.45	Session 8: Capitalism	Chair: Dr Mahli-Ann Butt
	IP Production and the Capitalist Logic of Games World-building	Finn Dawson
	Capitalist Games: Disco Elysium’s Critique of Capitalist Logics of Play	Sebastian Morrison
	Theorising Immediacy Through Videogames	Heather Blakey, Finn Dawson and Dr Cassandra Barkman
	Q&A
4.45-4.55	Day 2 Close
5.30-late	Social drinks and dinner at Netherworld in the Valley. Own cost.

Day Three Wednesday 11th February 2026: Focusing on People.

8.50-9.20	Coffee Feel free to grab a coffee at the café and meet with your fellow delegates before the start.
9.20-9.30	Day 3 Welcome
9.30-10.10	Keynote 3: Including Q&A	Mr Dylan Bennett
10.10-11.10	Session 9: Communities	Chair: Dr Jacqueline Burgess
	The Boundaries of Competitive Discourse: An Esport Perspective Between Banter, Trash Talk and Toxicity.	Dr Sidney Irwin
	“This Trophy… Is For you”: Participatory Cultures in Esports	Geoffrey Lee
	Sustainable Sociality: Managing Behaviour in Videogame Communities on Discord	James Baguley
	“We’re Friendly… Not Your Friends”: Balancing Brand Management and Authenticity in Gaming Podcasts	Dr Ryan Stanton
	Q&A
11.10-11.40	Morning Tea Provided.
11.40-12.55	Session 10: Gender and Games	Chair: Dr Erin Maclean
	Critical Femininities & Feminine Play	Dr Stephanie Harkin, Dr Xavier Ho and Dr Mahli-Ann Butt
	Gendered Arenas: Understanding Esports and Videogame Participation Under Sports Infrastructure	Chrysanthe Liontis
	Creating Worlds, Becoming Selves: Gender and Indie Game-Making on itch.io	Nik Tan-Mishra
	Games as Feminist Artefacts: Towards an Analytical Framework for Game Design	Neema Iyer
	Q&A
12.55-1.45	Lunch Not provided unless you have pre-ordered.
1.45-3.00	Session 11: Avatar and Character Design	Chair: Erix Verkaaik
	Types of Fear: Using Video Game Character Design to Evoke Uncertainty, Apprehension and Disgust	Tiana Toussaint
	Developer Agency in Navigating Gender-Inclusive Design: Insights from Avatar Customization	Yisong Han
	NPCs as performers of community testimony: using Unity game engine for social simulation in Habit Habit (2022)	Alexandra Chalmers Braithwaite and Kalanjay Dhir
	Attraction & Repulsion: The Abject Player in Pathologic 2 & Clair Obscur: Expedition 33	Kate King-Smith
	Q&A
3.00-4.00	Session 12: Genre	Chair: Dr Jacqueline Burgess
	A Phenomenology of Breakdown: Avatar, Tools, and Ontological Friction	Dr Andrea Andiloro
	The Discursive Past, Present and Future of the Microgame	Rory Manning Graham
	Interface Games as Microgenre: Definition and Thematic Investigation	Dr Cassandra Barkman and Finn Dawson
	Q&A
4.00-4.20	Awards Best Conference Paper (Extended Abstract) Best Practice Track People’s Choice DiGRAA Distinguished Scholar	DiGRAA Executive
4.20-4.30	Conference Close	DiGRAA Executive
4.30-late	Social drinks and dinner at the Petrie Hotel Own cost