Ludotopia

Where do computer games 'happen'? The articles collected in this pioneering volume explore the categories of 'space', 'place' and 'territory' featuring in most general theories of space to lay the groundwork for the study of spatiality in games. Shifting the focus away from earlier debates on, e.g., the narrative nature of games, this collection proposes, instead, that thorough attention be given to the tension between experienced spaces and narrated places as well as to the mapping of both of these.

Espen Aarseth, born in 1965, is Professor of Game Studies at the IT University of Copenhagen. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Game Studies, a journal he co-founded in 2001. In 2016 he received an ERC Advanced Grant for the project 'MSG - Making Sense of Games'. Stephan Günzel (Dr. phil. habil.), born in 1971, is Professor of Media Theory at the University of Applied Sciences Europe in Berlin and currently head of the Media Studies Master Program at the Technical University of Berlin. He co-founded the Digital Games Research Center at the University of Potsdam and is specialized in the fields of Spatial Theory, Image Studies, and Computer Game Research. As Visiting Professor for Spatial Studies at the Humboldt-University in Berlin and the University of Trier as well as in numerous publications within the past years he surveyed the interdisciplinary discourse on space and gathered its origins in Anthologies and Encyclopaedias.