Games, Heritage, Arts, & Sport: Exploring the Economic, Social, and Cultural Value of the European Videogame Industry Ecosystem (GAMEHearts)

Funded by: European Union (Program: Horizon Europe)
Duration: January 2024 – December 2027
PI: Katharine Sarikakis
Collaboration: Oleksandra Gudkova • Lisa Alfonzo • Lisa Moser

GAMEHearts seeks to maximise the value of the European videogame industry ecosystems (hereafter, EVGIE) within a wider social context of the creative and cultural industries (hereafter, CCI). This will consider the importance of the EVGIE in contributing to economic growth, job creation, physical and mental wellbeing, and social and cultural cohesion, by particularly focusing on how a stronger and closer working relationship between the more traditional and emergent cultural sectors can work better to create more inclusive and socially responsible cultural experiences.

The consortium offers policy recommendations and roadmaps setting out how the EVGIE can and should develop and where it could act as a driver for sustained innovation and economic growth. It utilises an evidence-based approach that focuses not just on videogame development, but rather adopts a holistic ecosystem approach, utilising both established and more innovative methodologies, to consider the competitiveness and development of the EVGIE, and how videogame know-how and technologies could drive innovation in the wider CCI. In doing so, GAMEHearts develops ludic experiences to explore possibilities of more inclusive, engaging, and empowering cultural experiences.

Working across seven work packages, the Universities of Salford (UK), Tampere (Finland), Vienna (Austria), Breda University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands), and Wroclaw University of Economics and Business (Poland) will work in partnership with Ubisoft (France) and other major videogame partners and associations (including the ISFE & EGDF) to explore current and future trends in the EVGIE. Beyond this, we are working with certain cultural case studies partners to consider how game-related technologies and practices are and could be used to increase access to heritage, the arts, and sport.

White Play: Practices of White European Game-Development

Funded by: Austrian Science Fund (Programm: Hertha Firnberg-Stipendium)
Duration: 2021-2025
PI: Sabine Harrer
Co-Applicant: Gerit Götzenbrucker

White Play is a FWF-funded Hertha Firnberg research project which looks at white norms in European video game culture. As part of our everyday life, games also have a social responsibility to address structural problems such as racism and xenophobia. The role of white norms in game development and game culture is still strongly underrepresented in the European research context.

The White Play project addresses this issue by investigating discourses and unconscious biases around whiteness in European game development. This is intended to deepen our understanding of the relation between games, structural racism and white dominance. The goal is to develop critical strategies for challenging these forms of societal oppression. White Play is a politically motivated research project and carried out as a cooperation with activist and research partners, including Anti-Racist Forum Finland.

The research covers four topics, (1) the white bias in European game theories, (2) the representation of white identity in European video games, (3) racial self-narratives of European video game developers and (4) strategies for confronting white dominance in the European game sector.

Ten Years Later. Karrieren, Habitus und Lebensstil von Online-Rollenspieler*innen in Österreich.

Funded by: BUPP – Bundesstelle für die Positivprädikatisierung von digitalen Spielen
Duration: 2008
PI: Gerit Götzenbrucker
Collaboration: Margarita Köhl