Lab Media and Religion

In June 2020, the highly anticipated sequel to “The Last of Us” game was released. Within hours of its release, the game’s Metascore dropped to 3.3, while previous reviews from journalistic media had accumulated to a score of 95. What had happened? – The common reading of this “review-bombing” event is that players, unhappy with (…)

Professor Kerstin Radde-Antweiler explores climate change in relation to video games and gaming practices, analyzing discussions on environmental games and their narratives. Despite the prominence of climate change themes in games, her research reveals a lack of discussions about their content and connections to real-world events on gaming forums compared to other media platforms. However, (…)

This year, the ZeMKI welcomes a total of four Visiting Research Fellows as part of its Visiting Researcher Program. From over 85 applications, the steering committee of the Center for Media, Communication and Information Research at the University of Bremen selected five researchers who will work together with two ZeMKI labs in interdisciplinary research for (…)

ZeMKI member Dr. Dom Ford has been invited to give a talk at the University of Regensburg on ‘A World to Escape to: Gameworlds as Otherworlds in Datafied Society’ at the symposium ‘Videogames as Folkworlds: Nationalism – Democracy – Sustainability’, 11–12 April. About the event: Funded by the Vielberth Foundation and sponsored by the Leibniz (…)

ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler is currently a Research Fellow at UNC Greensboro. Since last year, UNCG has established an E-Sports Center (https://esports.uncg.edu/), which offers study programs as well as research on the topic of digital gaming. During her three-month stay, she will collaborate with the Network for the Cultural Study of Videogaming (https://cas.uncg.edu/ncsv). The stay (…)

The International Academy for the Study of Gaming and Religion (IASGAR)  and the Research Area Digital Gaming at the ZeMKI – Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research is hosting its third IASGAR Research Day. Exclusively for early-stage researchers, graduate students and doctoral students, the workshop welcomes research on media-centered approaches, perspectives of game developers and publishers, and viewpoints (…)

ZeMKI member Prof. Dr. Kerstin Radde-Antweiler takes part in a panel discussion at the hybrid conference “Church History and Game Studies? Explorations of Religion and History in Digital Games” at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. The conference is a collaboration between the Chair of Church History at the Department of Protestant Theology at Goethe University Frankfurt, (…)

Vít Šisler, Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, Xenia Zeiler Game studies has been an understudied area within the emerging field of digital media and religion. Video games can reflect, reject, or reconfigure traditionally held religious ideas and often serve as sources for the production of religious practices and ideas. This collection of essays presents a broad range of (…)