Workshops

3rd Eudaimonia in Digital Games Workshop

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/eudaimonia-in-games/home

Organizer: Tom Cole, University of Greenwich, London, United Kingdom

The concept of eudaimonia in the study of video games has been of increasing interest in recent years, especially as juxtaposed to the idea of hedonia which is often assumed as lying at the heart of most video game play experiences. However, there is a lack of consensus on what eudaimonia exactly is, how it manifests in the player experience, and what effect it could have on the emotional experience of game play. Discussion of this topic is often focused within the areas of psychology, HCI and media and communication studies. This workshop brings researchers from across a broader range of fields, such as those represented at FDG, to discuss this emerging and important concept and create a cross-field research agenda that can further investigate this concept within the field of digital games. This workshop builds upon workshops successfully run at FDG 2023 and 2025.

Games and Archaeological Play FDG 2026 Workshop

Organizers: Florence Smith Nicholls, Queen Mary University of London, UK, Michael Cook, King’s College London, UK

Video game archaeology, also known as “archaeogaming,” is a field that began to gain traction in the 2010s. It is an umbrella term referring to several complementary strands of research regarding the archaeological study of video games. The first of these strands can be defined as reception studies: the ethics of how archaeology and heritage is represented in games [Dennis(2019)] [Politopoulos et al.(2019)]. A second strand is the development of archaeological games, whether for educational purposes [Hiriart(2020)] or engaging with game design to develop new approaches to archaeological storytelling [Copplestone(2017)] [Smith Nicholls and Cook(2025)]. A third strand could be defined as code archaeology, and often constitutes reverse-engineering games [Aycock and Biittner(2024)]. Finally, there is ”practical archaeogaming” that involves applying archaeological methodologies to video games to study and preserve their culture [Reinhard(2024)]. Over the last few years, FDG has published several papers that come under the umbrella of archaeological game studies; an archaeological survey of Elden Ring [Smith Nicholls and Cook(2022)], a code archaeology study [Aycock et al.(2022)], developing location-based cultural heritage games [Haahr et al.(2025)], designing historical tabletop games [Petousi et al.(2025)], and new methods for citing games [Franuˇsi´c et al.(2023)]. The aim of this workshop is to bring together interdisciplinary research broadly relating to what we call ”Archaeological Games Studies” in a workshop for the first time at a games conference.

17th Workshop on Procedural Content Generation (PCG2026)

Website: https://www.pcgworkshop.com/

Organizers:  ARASH MORADI KARKAJ, New Jersey Institute of Technology, THOMAS VASE SCHULTZ VOLDEN, IT University of Copenhagen, BOJAN ENDROVSKI, Delft University of Technology Breda University of Applied Sciences

Procedural Content Generation (PCG) attracts significant interest from both academia and the games industry. PCG has the potential of substantially reducing the authorial burden in game creation, improving the theoretical understanding of game design and realizing its automation, and enabling entirely new forms of games and playable experiences. This workshop aims to advance knowledge in PCG by bringing together researchers and developers, and facilitating discussion. Towards enabling fruitful discussion and feedback for work in all stages of completion, we will host four modes of submission and delivery: the standard full paper, the short papers, the position paper, and the demo format also accompanied by a short paper.

Second Workshop on Game Research Software System Re-use

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/grssrworkshop/home

Organizers: Seth Cooper. Northeastern University, USA, Samuel Hill, Northwestern University, USA

The concept of eudaimonia in the study of video games has been of increasing interest in recent years, especially as juxtaposed to the idea of hedonia which is often assumed as lying at the heart of most video game play experiences. However, there is a lack of consensus on what eudaimonia exactly is, how it manifests in the player experience, and what effect it could have on the emotional experience of game play. Discussion of this topic is often focused within the areas of psychology, HCI and media and communication studies. This workshop brings researchers from across a broader range of fields, such as those represented at FDG, to discuss this emerging and important concept and create a cross-field research agenda that can further investigate this concept within the field of digital games. This workshop builds upon workshops successfully run at FDG 2023 and 2025.

Researching Game Making: Current Themes and Challenge

Organizers: JOHN P. HEALY, Technological University Dublin, Ireland, ANNAKAISA KULTIMA, Aalto University, Finland, RILLA KHALED, Concordia University, Canada, CLARA FERNANDEZ-VARA, New York University, USA

In recent years there has been significant growth in the volume of scholarly work investigating game making from a variety of perspectives. While the multidisciplinarity of this work showcases a breadth of approaches it can also become siloed into disciplinary dialogues. For those entering the field there is a lack of awareness of the breadth of approaches and emerging research trends in relation to game making research. Additionally, researching game design and development allows game makers to understand how others have approached similar and/or different design spaces. As part of an artistic practice, this represents an important factor in the development of the field and our role as educators.

The growth of games making scholarship coincides with an increase in academic game design and development programmes offered in higher education. Many of these programmes attempt to bridge the theory of game studies with the craft of game development. However, the approaches educators take are often based on individual academic backgrounds and departmental structures. As a result, students may struggle to identify where their research interest in game making fits within the broader research landscape and its relationship to practice. This workshop proposes to bring together researchers who are interested in understanding and elucidating the game making process. We want to facilitate discussion on what current themes and topics are important, but also what are the most critical gaps in knowledge. It is hoped that by sharing our approaches we can start to develop larger and more ambitious collaborations as well as reach towards methodological strategies that embrace the diversity of approaches employed to study how games are made. The workshop may be of interest to anyone engaged in or interested in researching game making practices, in particular those from game design research, game production studies, games education and related fields.