Author: Stephanie Harkin

DiGRAA 2025 will take place in the Bradley Forum Theatre at University of South Australia, City West Campus, in Adelaide, South Australia

• The Bradley Forum is located on Level 5 of the Hawke Building on the City West campus, 50-55 North Terrace, Adelaide.

Zoom Details TBA

The programme schedule uses Australian Central Daylight Time (ACDT/ UTC+10:30).

Please register here to attend the conference online or in-person.

Day 1: Wednesday 5th February

9:00am	Registration Level 5, Hawke Building
9:30am	Introduction Bradley Forum
10:10am	Morning Tea ☕ (Provided) Level 5, Hawke Building
10:30am	Session 1 – Education & Gaming Bradley Forum	Chair: Susie Emery
	Navigating Narratives and Night in the Woods: Teaching Videogames in the English Curriculum	Premeet Sidhu, Jen Scott Curwood & Marcus Carter
	Making Videogames Available in Higher Education	Cassandra Barkman
	Extra Lives: Game Jam as Extra-curricular learning for University students	Cameron Edmond
	Q&A
11:30am	Session 2 – Tabletop & Boardgames Bradley Forum	Chair: Lauren Woolbright
	Exploring the Use of Tabletop Gaming for Wellness	Alyssia Merrick, Dan J Miller & Amanda Krause
	Commensality as a conceptual framework for TTRPG research	Ruby Edwards, Martin Gibbs, Lucy Sparrow & Tamara Kohn
	Playing with Players: On the Criticality of Critical Play	Melissa J Rogerson & Sasha Soraine
	Q&A
12:30pm	Lunch 🍱 (Not Provided)
1:30pm	Session 3 – Philosophical & Psychological Questions Bradley Forum	Chair: Lauren Woolbright
	Beyond the Ruins: A Heideggerian Analysis of Videogames, Technology and the End of the World	Andrea Andiloro
	The Existential Significance of Goals in Campbell’s Hero’s Journey	Jacqueline Moran
	Industry Perspective on Systems-Driven Moral Game Design	Vedant Sansare
	Q&A
2:30pm	Session 4 – Philosophical & Psychological Questions Bradley Forum	Chair: Larry May
	Integrity and the Gamer’s Dilemma: Self-Directed Moral Emotions in Gameplay	Tom Coghlan
	The subject of videogame addiction	Benjamin Nicoll
	“Even Recovering your Corpse was Lethal”: Exploring Retrospective Lived Experiences of the Corrupted Blood Virtual Pandemic	Anjum Naweed, Lorelle Bowdith, Tania Signal & Janine Chapman
	Q&A
3:30pm	Afternoon Tea ☕ (Provided) Level 5, Hawke Building
3:50pm	Session 5 – Love, Romance & Desire Bradley Forum	Chair: Sarven McLinton
	Love and Other Terrors: Intimacy and Vulnerability in English-Language Dating Simulators and Romance Games	Heather Blakey & Sian Tomkinson
	Ludic Lovers: Locating the Ideology of Romance in Otome Games	Kelly Li
	Fantasy and Finitude in Shadow of the Erdtree (2024)	Max Coombes
	Q&A

Day 2: Thursday 6th February

9:10am	Lightning Talks – Experimental Track Bradley Forum (Experimental works and practitioners are listed below the programme)	Chair: Sophia Booij
10:10am	Morning Tea ☕ (Provided) Level 5, Hawke Building
10:30am	Session 6 – Business & Games Bradley Forum	Chair: Rory Thoman + Doug Kelly
	Exploring Effective Marketing Training for Video Game Developers	Jacqueline Burgess & Anthony Grace
	Dungeons & Dragons for Employment and Work Outcomes	Jesse E Olsen
	Understanding Chinese Players’ Perceptions of Gaming Monetisation and Regulation	Tianyi ZhangShao, Ben Egliston & Marcus Carter
	Q&A
11:30am	Session 7 – Business, Toxic AI & Games Bradley Forum	Chair: Ellie Parker
	“I see what looks cool”: Children and Parents’ Perceptions of Value and In-Game Purchases	Taylor Hardwick, Marcus Carter & Stephanie Harkin
	Co-Designing AI Tools for Inclusive Online Environments	Ren Galwey, Dahlia Jovic, Mahli-Ann Butt, Yige Song, Sable Wang-Willis, Lucy Sparrow & Eduardo Araujo Oliveira
	Explaining Toxicity in Multiplayer Games	Timothy Holland, Lucy Sparrow & Wally Smith
	Q&A
12:30pm	Lunch 🥙 (Not Provided)
1:30pm	Session 8 – Gender, Sexuality, & Games Bradley Forum	Chair: Rory Thoman + Doug Kelly
	Unlocking Gender Inclusivity: Exploring Developer Perspectives on Avatar Customization	Yisong Han
	From Ghost of Sparta to Viking Dad: How the God of War Series Offers Players a Pathway Towards Healthier Masculinity	Evan Woolbright
	“…to log on and always have queer Indigenous interaction…”: problems of representation for queer Aboriginald and/or Torres Strait Islander gamers	Leandro Wallace
	Q&A
2:30pm	Session 9 – Gender, Sexuality, & Games Bradley Forum	Chair: Lauren Woolbright
	Banh Chung AR: Triangulating Technofemininity, Gender Roles, and Vietnamese Cultural Heritage	Quynh Nhu Bui
	VR’s feminist embodiment	Kate Euphemia Clark
	‘I Want Bigger Games with Better Graphics’: Mapping the Response to Tears of the Kingdom’s Graphics in Technomasculine Perspectives	David Harold ten Cate
	Q&A
3:30pm	Afternoon Tea 🫖 (Provided) Level 5, Hawke Building
3:50pm	Session 10 – Heritage Games Bradley Forum	Chair: Erik Champion
	From Fear to Parody: Reinterpreting Tradition Chinese “Weddings and Funerals” Customs in Game Design through a Folkloresque Perspective	Yue Cao
	Exploring Chinese Game production through Black Myth: Wukong	Hugh Davies
	Code, Culture, and Counternarrative: A Diaspora- Driven Virtual Heritage Deconstruction of Orientalist Portrayals of the Kowloon Walled City	Poki Chan
	Q&A
4:50pm	Session 11 – Culture & Preservation Issues Bradley Forum	Chair: Erik Champion
	Feeling out feelings: The rogue archives of WildStar	James Manning & Lawrence May
	Queer Video Game Preservation Through Synthesis & Rewriting the Past	Vincent Haley Moore
	Tino Rangatiratanga in Games: Three Tales of Māori Game Development	Anika Clancy
	Q&A

Day 3: Friday 7th February

9:10am	Session 12 – Esports Bradley Forum	Chair: Brandon Warren
	Play, watch, create: Unpacking community views on esports, game-related content creation, & gameplay careers	Louise H Trudgett-Klose, Sarven S McLinton, Susannah Emery, David H Gleaves, Damien Rompapas
	Tilt in Esports: Understanding the Phenomenon in New Digital Contexts	Sarven S McLinton & Stefan J Pascale
	Parents of Future Esports Professionals: An Exploration of Parental Attitudes	Kerry Todd, Sarven S McLinton & Louise H Trudgett-Klose
	Q&A
10:10am	Morning Tea ☕️ (Provided) Level 5, Hawke Building
10:30am	Session 13 – Game Design Bradley Forum	Chair: Stewart Von-Itzstein
	Designing for Time: Game Developer Insights on Temporality in Digital Play	Thomas Byers
	Can modding change game culture?: Reflections on the Femme Pyro mod	Max Frankel & Tauel Harper
	Mystics and Machines: Automation and Procedural Content Generation	Finn Dawson
	Q&A
11:30pm	Session 14 – Game Design Bradley Forum	Chair: Stewart Von-Itzstein
	Challenging our Ideologies of Play: How Performance in Games Can Help us Interrogate our Rituals of Play	Duncan Corrigan
	Making Sense of Scale in A Short Hike and Assassin’s Creed Mirage	Rory Manning Graham
	Exploring The Story: Using Video Game Spaces to Construct Non-Linear Narratives	Eamonn Harte
	Q&A
12:30pm	Lunch 🥪 (Not Provided)
1:30pm	Session 15 – Game Art & Aesthetics Bradley Forum	Chair: James Manning
	Making Games to Learn Music: An intersection of Twine, activity-centred learning and creative people.	Meghann O’Neill, Malcolm Ryan, Sarah Powell & Cameron Edmond
	Tomorrow’s Nostalgia Today: Splatoon 3’s Tentacular Metaxis	Nikolas Matovinovic
	Cursebending: a playful interaction of misbehaving objects	Lou Fourie
	Q&A
2:30pm	Session 16 – Game Art & Aesthetics Bradley Forum	Chair: James Manning
	SUPER SIANNE NGAI STYLE: Applying Ngai’s aesthetic categories to a study of Supergiant Games’ body of work between 2011-2021	Heather Blakey
	“Congradulations on Owing Me Money!”: Dispelling the Myth of the Magnanimous Flipper in Landlord’s Super	Amy Brierley-Beare
	Q&A
3:30pm	Afternoon Tea 🫖 (Provided) Level 5, Hawke Building
3:50pm	Session 17 – Media & Games Bradley Forum	Chair: Sarven McLinton
	Japanese Game Live Streamers: Practices and Languages	Mark Johnson & James Baguley
	Parasocial Players: Examining “Authenticity” In Gaming Podcast Audiences	Ryan Stanton
	The Indonesian mobile esports as a confluence of game studies and mobile media studies	Haryo Pambuko Jiwandono
	Q&A
4:50pm	Closing

Experimental Track
Hawk Building Level 6 (H6-03 & H6-09)

Courtroom Investigations: Engineering a playful ‘show and tell’ conversation	Antranig Sarian
Particulars: Navigating Morality and Power in a Fictional City	Neema Iyer
Wrapped in Plastic: An exploration of Input and Narrative working in Harmony	Murphy Doyle
Latent Cohort: Centring Imaginative Agency	Sidney Icarus
SITE UNSEEN prototype	Alexander Muscat
First Day: Playing the 1975 Parliamentary Crisis	Sophia Booij, Michele Fulham & Amy Morrison
A highly sensitive experience	Hin Long Yiu
The Convergence of Visual Styles in Games: The Impact of Technological Integration on Creative Decisions and Aesthetic Choices	Ziya Gao (Gloria)
Mini Melbourne	Hsiao Wei Chen
Playing in the Past and Future: A Divination Game	Hugh Davies
Wishmakers	Premeet Sidhu, Logan Timmins, Xavier Ho, Vic Rawlings & Lee Wallace
Re:Collect	Nellie Seale, Ethel Villafranca, Riya Baldawa, Emma Bampton, Bee Montager, Abi Nicholson & Tim Phan
This is Fine: a megagame about heat in western Sydney	Sophie Poisel, Nellie Seale, Tom Lang & Emily Gregg
The Debt	Christian Karakiklas
LateNightDelivery	Matthew Ganther