Results and impact

The Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies has now been operating for five full years (2018–2022). There are many research results already available, both for the key overarching research questions related to understanding the key processes and characteristics of meaning making and cultural agency in games and play, and to the four more focused sub-themes: meaning and form of games, creation of games, players of games, and societal frames of games.

Publications

The broad range and coverage of the CoE GameCult reseach should be highlighted on its own terms as an element of scientific, interdisciplinary, and societal impact. During its first five operative years (2018–2022), the CoE has produced 479 publications, both peer-reviewed and directed at expert and general audiences, all of them contributing to the scientific and societal impacts in their own topic areas. Of the 348 CoE publications produced between 2018–2021, 60.6 % are fully open access or hybrid open access, and 58.3 % have open access parallel copies in university repositories.

See our publication list: CoE GameCult publications

Societal impact

CoE GameCult has achieved particular societal impact in the areas of including creating opportunities for inclusive game creation, exploring play in public spaces, examining (e)sports in relation to physical, mental, and social well-being, promoting demoscene as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity, and advancing game cultural literacy and agency in society.

Our impact stories (2018–2021):

  1. Well-being and (e)sports
  2. Creating opportunities for inclusive game creation
  3. Play in public spaces
  4. Recognizing the demoscene as digital culture heritage
  5. Advancing game cultural literacy and agency in society

Media presence

As academic experts of games and play, our researchers are actively participating in public discussions on various game cultural topics.

Selected media appearances (in Finnish):