Game Studies Conference CEEGS breaks attendance record

The largest Central & Eastern European Game Studies Conference (CEEGS) to date took place this weekend in Macromedia Leipzig. The academic conference had a practical focus in 2023. In addition to game studies legends like Espen Aarseth, the focus was on designers and writers from "Horizon: Zero Dawn" and "Baldur's Gate 3", local gamedevs and interdisciplinary workshops.

An international audience consisting of 160 doctoral students, games students and developers, plus over 50 speakers from research, industry and the media. These are the conclusionary numbers of the Central & Eastern European Game Studies Conference (CEEGS) 2023, which took place last week under the motto "Meaning and Making of Games" from Thursday, 18 October to Saturday, 21 October 2023 at the campus of the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Leipzig. This makes CEEGS 2023 the largest iteration of the conference to date according to the on-site evaluation of the organisers. CEEGS takes place annually in a different major Eastern European city. This year, the conference focused on combining academic game studies with a practical game design perspective.

"The CEEGS is primarily for networking and knowledge exchange. This is the only way we can stay up to date and pass on this knowledge to the students. Especially in such a rapidly developing field as game design and game studies, a meeting like this is indispensable," explains Dr Gerald Farca, Professor of Game Design and Game Studies at the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Munich. He, together with his team, had organised this year's conference. "CEEGS has mainly taken place in Eastern Europe so far and is now moving towards Central Europe for the first time. We are definitely looking forward to being able to involve the German game community. For Macromedia, the Leipzig location and our games programme, a conference like this is a great and enormously important thing, and we are truly honoured to be hosting CEEGS. Our students, who all participate in the CEEGS, at least online, also have an enormous benefit. Where else can you get an extra three days of pure gaming knowledge and discussion to go with your studies?" continues Farca.

Focus on the work behind the games

The unusual daily schedule of the Thursday programme already reflected the conference's much stronger focus on the practical side of the games industry. After a day programme full of practical workshops and discussion panels, of which GamesMarkt also contributed a workshop, Jana Stadeler, world designer at Playground Games in Birmingham and former city designer at Guerilla Games in Amsterdam, opened the academic part of the conference in an evening keynote in front of a full hall. Another prestigious keynote speaker was Víctor Navarro Remesal from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, who gave the opening talk on Friday, "Video Games as Animation: Inquiries into the Animatic Nature of Playable Images" from the perspective of animation research. The Saturday was opened by Charlene Putney, game writer at Larian Studios on "Divinity Original Sin II" and "Baldur's Gate 3", who delivered 23 tips on how to deliver your best creative work and at the same time not only identify with the work, including yoga and breathing exercises with the enthusiastic audience.

Game Studies celebrities full of enthusiasm

The talk by Espen Aarseth late on Friday afternoon could probably be considered the unofficial fourth keynote. The Norwegian, who currently teaches at the IT University of Copenhagen, laid the foundation for Game Studies in 1997 with his doctoral thesis Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature and is considered one of the forefathers of the research movement.

Aarseth, who had already attended previous CEEGS conferences, describes the conference in an interview with GamesMarkt as one of his favourite academic gatherings. "CEEGS is probably my favourite computer games conference, because it’s such a nice way of meeting people that you not necessarily meet elsewhere in the world. You know, really brilliant scholars and researchers from Eastern Europe and Central Europe. It’s a really nicely organised and a great place to meet some of the best researchers in Europe in this field. And it never disappoints. This year, the keynotes have been really great. That is a huge success for this year’s conference here in Leipzig as well. It’s a conference I really enjoy," said Aarseth directly after his talk in Leipzig.

Platform for local gamedevs and student projects

The Leipzig campus enabled students in the university's Game Lab to present game projects to participants during the event. At the conference party on Friday evening, regional studios from Central Germany were also on hand with their commercial game projects from exhibitors: Rat King from Halle with "Patou", Moonlit Monitors from Magdeburg with "Germinal", Pandabee from Leipzig with "Tilt Frog", Gaia Games from Leipzig with "Sumsalabim", "Ecogon" and "Fish and Flips", HYBR Games from Leipzig and Dresden with "Ungeheuer hungrig" and "Houston, we have a Dolphin!" as well as the sustainability association Gamedevs for Future.

Macromedia received financial support from the City of Leipzig's Economic Development Department for hosting the conference. The next CEEGS will take place in 2024 in Nafplio, Greece, the date has not yet been finalised.