The aim of this workshop series is to create meeting places for Nordic scholars and students in game studies and philosophy, with a view to establish future collaboration in the form of supervision schemes, guest lectures, seminars, publications and research proposals. The workshop series will also be open for participation from an international audience as long as the main emphasis for the programs is on Nordic scholars.

The philosophy of games is an emerging field that comprises research done in game studies, the philosophy of computer games, the philosophy of sport and traditional aesthetics. Themes such as play, game rules, interactive representation, virtuality, immersivity, transgressive morality, and participatory aesthetic appreciation raise a number of important issues in philosophical disciplines such as metaphysics, semantics, phenomenology, aesthetics and ethics.

The workshops will define their problems in a manner that will enable the participants to directly discuss the same problems as seen from both philosophical and game-studies perspectives, using their respective expertise and research traditions.

The intended outcome is that the game studies researchers shall explore how the concepts of gaming are concretely attached to existing philosophical discussions, while the philosophers will be confronted with how digital games constitute contrasting cases to those they know from aesthetics, ethics, semantics, phenomenology and metaphysics.

The workshop series is a collaboration between University of Bergen, IT-University of Copenhagen, University of Jyväskylä, and Game Philosophy Network. 

The workshops are:

Action in Games. Regenbogenfabrik 19-20 May in Berlin 2023

Representation in Games.  IT-University in Copenhagen, to be held towards the end of August 2023.

Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Existentialism for Games.  University of Jyväskylä 18–20 October 2023

This website will be updated with calls, program committees and other information as we approach the workshops.

Workshop Series Organizing Committee

Project leader: Ass. prof. Rune Klevjer (University of Bergen) 

Project coordinator: Researcher John R. Sageng (Game Philosophy Network).

Assoc. prof. Anita Leirfall (University of Bergen)

Researcher Jonne Arjoranta (University of Jyväskylä)

Researcher  Pawel Grabarczyk (Center for Computer Games Research, ITU)