Do we play video games or do video games play us? Is nonhuman play a mere paradox or the future of gaming? And what do video games have to do with quantum theory? In the talk based on her book Playing at a Distance (MIT Press 2022), Sonia Fizek will engage with these questions, proposing new ways to think about games and play that decenter the human player and explore a variety of play formats and practices that require surprisingly little human action. Idling in clicker games, wandering in walking simulators, automating gameplay with bots, or simply watching games rather than playing them—Fizek will argue that these seemingly marginal cases are central to understanding how we play in the digital age.

Sonia Fizek is a media and games scholar. She holds a professorship in Media and Game Studies at the Cologne Game Lab at TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences. Fizek is also a visiting professor at the University of Lower Silesia in Wroclaw (Poland) and a co-editor-in-chief of the international Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds. In her latest book Playing at a Distance (MIT Press 2022), she explores the borderlands of video game aesthetic with focus on automation, AI and posthuman forms of play. Fizek’s current research concentrates on the environmental aspects of video games. She participates in two international projects: “STRATEGIES – Sustainable Transition for Europe’s Game Industries” (2024-2027), and “Greening Games. Building Higher Education Resources for Sustainable Video Game Production, Design & Critical Game Studies” (2021-2024).

Auditorium 3.330

Maison du Savoir, Belval Campus, University of Luxembourg