Keywords:
Beyond Play, Digital Gaming, Mediatization, Datafication, gamevironments
Abstract
A world with digital gaming in it is different from a world without it. This introduction takes that observation as its point of departure and argues that digital gaming is a relevant, and so far underused, context for studying the transformative power of media in deeply mediatized societies. Building on the editors’ programmatic account of beyond play (Schwarzenegger et al. 2025), we suggest that gaming be approached not merely as entertainment or play, but as gamevironments in which technological innovation, communicative practice and cultural change become observable in compressed form. The special issue grew out of the international conference Beyond Play, held at the ZeMKI, University of Bremen.
Author Biographies
-
Christian Schwarzenegger, University of Bremen
Christian Schwarzenegger is Professor of Communication and Media Studies with a focus on media change at the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI), University of Bremen. He heads the Lab “Media Change and Long-Term Transformation Processes” and serves as programme director of the B.A. in Communication and Media Studies. His research explores how media emerge, transform, and disappear, connecting communication and media history with the study of contemporary digital transformations
-
Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, University of Bremen
Kerstin Radde-Antweiler is a Professor of Religious Studies and deputy spokesperson of the ZeMKI at the University of Bremen, Germany. Her research focuses on religion in times of deep mediatization, video gaming, and ritual studies. She authored several articles and co-edited several volumes and special journal issues, including Minority Churches as Media Settlers Negotiating Deep Mediatization (Routledge 2023), the Handbook on Religion and Journalism (Routledge 2020), and Methods for Studying Video Games and Religion (Routledge 2019). She is editor-in-chief of gamevironments, the first academic journal with a specific focus on video gaming and religion. Her current research is focused on Climate Change and Values in Digtial Gaming.
-
Karsten D. Wolf, University of Bremen
Karsten D. Wolf is Professor of Educational Design of Multimedia Learning Environments at the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI), University of Bremen, a position he has held since 2011. He heads the Lab “Media and Education”. His research explores audiovisual educational spaces such as YouTube and TikTok, the reconstruction of communicative figurations of informal learning, the intersection of digital gaming and education, the potentials and perils of communicative AI for teaching and learning, as well as rubric-based multimodal assessment and feedback.
