Game Lab
Project leaders:
Toni Pape, Irene van Driel, Claire Stocks, Karla Zavala Barreda
This Game Lab provides a forum for UvA researchers and students to critically and analytically engage with video games and gaming culture. The core aim of the Game Lab is to understand and promote gaming literacy on three different levels:
Play literacy: By examining modes of interaction, player experiences, and the social dynamics of play, the lab fosters critical and reflective engagement with gaming as a cultural practice. Play literacy also includes an awareness of the positive and negative health effects of play behaviour. Our goal is to promote forms of play that support wellbeing.
Socio-cultural literacy: The lab explores games as expressive forms that shape imagination, identity, and community, revealing their significance within contemporary culture and society. This literacy includes the histories of games and gaming (including issues of access and inequality), the economics and business models of the game industry, and the governance frameworks that order gaming ecosystems (legislation, regulation).
Technological and design literacy: The lab demystifies the tools, processes, and creative collaborations that shape game production, empowering participants to experiment with design and development. This literacy also involves recognizing dark and deceptive design patterns that incentivize excessive play or blur boundaries with gambling.
Our meetings are announced in the ASCA calendar. If you’d like to join the Game Lab’s WhatsApp group and/or present your work during one of our sessions, please contact t.pape@uva.nl.