The second round of the DiGRA Rising Star Spotlight brought together a strong set of nominations, reflecting the quality of emerging scholarship across the DiGRA community. We are pleased to announce the scholars selected for this round of the DiGRA Rising Star Spotlight.
Maria O’Brien – ECR/PP Track
Rising Star Spotlight
Bio:
I completed my PhD on tax incentives for creative industries in 2020 at Dublin City University. I was appointed as lecturer in taxation at the University of Galway in March 2024 to work across both the School of Law and the School of Business. As a former lawyer, I pivoted to the academic world in 2005, doing a few masters before getting funding for a PhD. I have used my knowledge of theory and practice of law to research tax policy for digital games and am actively researching comparative tax incentive regimes across multiple jurisdictions. I have also put theory into practice through industry advocacy in Ireland, through voluntary board work with Imirt, the Irish games industry body.
Research focus:
My research reflects my background as a lawyer and tax consultant who pivoted to study of screen and creative industries. My interdisciplinary work approaches creative industries from a law and political economy perspective from a national, an EU and global perspective, recognising that the law is not neutral but has a role to play in the development of culture. I am co-founder of DiGRA Ireland, and former board member and chair of Ireland’s games industry body, Imirt (the Irish for play).
Research themes include:
• The praxis of political economy of games
• The intersection of tax and creative industries policy
• A law and political economy perspective on state policies for film and digital games • Creative policy and cultural value: the importance of tax policies for creative industries
• Comparative State aid policy in the European Union for digital games
Recent publications and achievements: My recently published book Tax Credits for Cultural Production in Europe: The Irish Example (2025) looks at tax policies for film and digital games in Ireland, taking into account the impact of EU state aid policy in this area. I also edited a special issue of the open access journal Irish Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy, focused on audiovisual cultural policies.
What is next
I am currently expanding my research to engage with games tax incentive regimes across the European Union and beyond. I am using my unique mix of knowledge of the disciplines and practice of law and tax and creative industries to develop cross-jurisdiction research on the development, impact and evaluation of tax credit regimes and R&D regimes in various countries in the EU, UK and others. I have actively engaged with many of the DiGRA community to help develop this work and to bring in collaborators, as this field of study is more than one person can do in one lifetime.
Tax policy is a hard sell in the field of digital games research, but I am passionate about making the tax system work for game devs, and making policy work for the games sector.
Recent Research/Publications
O’Brien, Maria. Tax Credits for Cultural Production in Europe: The Irish Example. Springer Nature Switzerland, Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2025
O’Brien, M. (2025). The Impact of the European Union on Ireland’s Tax Policies for Audiovisual Industries: Between a National and Supranational Discourse. In Eds Victoria Durrer, Ali FitzGibbon and Kerry McCall Magan, Cultural Policy: Perspectives on the Island of Ireland (pp. 176-192). Routledge.
O’Brien, Maria. “The new tax credit regime for digital games production in Ireland.” Irish Journal of Arts Management and Cultural Policy 10.2 (2024): 100-113.
Hill, John, and Maria O’Brien. “Tax incentives in the audiovisual landscape: The economic and the cultural.” In Eds Ruby Cheung, John Hill, Nobuko Kawashima and Paul McDonald, Global Film Policies: New Perspectives, Routledge, 2025. 15-34.
O’Brien, Maria. “The many facets of culture in digital games policy: the EU dimension.” G| A| M| E Games as Art, Media, Entertainment 1.10 (2023).
Zihan Feng – Student Track
Rising Star Spotlight
Zihan Feng is a Ph.D. candidate in the Critical Game Design program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Before joining RPI, he received his B.S. degree in Interactive Media Arts from New York University Shanghai. Besides academic endeavors, Zihan has also worked as a designer at multiple international game companies, including NetEase Games and Lilith Games.
Zihan’s work has been deeply influenced by his global experience. He is passionate about understanding how video games are designed and played on a global scale, with research interests focused on inclusive game design, serious games, and cross-cultural gaming. In his research and design praxis, Zihan has employed community-engaged and critical approaches to amplify the voices of the overlooked in contemporary game culture and game studies, with a vision that positions game design and gaming as a way to connect people.
In 2025, Zihan published the article “Exploring the Etymology of YouXi: A Chinese Perspective on the Concept of Game” in the journal Games and Culture. In this article, he points out the hegemonic role of the English language in game studies and revisits the concept of game and play from a Chinese cultural and linguistic perspective. This piece challenges the Eurocentric norms in the field and establishes an invitation for diverse perspectives in future game research.
That same year, Zihan published his game project, Kevin. This game is based on his community service experience with the Chinese Rainbow Network, the biggest sinophonic LGBTQ+ organization in the United States. The game revolves around the college life of the protagonist, Kevin, and explores the intersectionality of his Asian queer identity. Kevin was recognized as a finalist in the 2025 conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems and was showcased at the 2025 Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Game Conference, underscoring both its academic and community impact.
In his ongoing dissertation project, Zihan Feng continues to carry forward community-engaged game design with the Asian queer community in the Greater Boston Area. He employs ethnographic methods to examine the everyday navigation experiences of Asian queer individuals for building the game prototype, and invites community members to participate in the game iteration process through co-design playtesting. This research is firmly grounded in rigorous academic practice to preserve its critical perspective, while also organically integrating the voices of Asian queer communities and fostering their creative agency within game design.
Looking ahead, Zihan envisions building an academic career over the next decade that advances equity, innovation, and diversity in game research and pedagogy. By interacting with the DiGRA community, he hopes to communicate and collaborate with scholars sharing similar interests in community-engaged research and inclusive design praxis.
Recent Research/Publications
Feng, Z. (2025). Exploring the etymology of YouXi: A Chinese perspective on the concept of game. Games and Culture. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120241308948
Feng, Z. (2024). How game ecology drives player choices in strategy video games: An environmental determinism perspective. Simulation & Gaming, 55(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/10468781241231895
Feng, Z. (2025). From simulation to repurposing: The evolving historical designs in Chinese digital games. In Y. Kang, K. C. C. Yang, M. Mochocki, J. Majewski, & P. Schreiber (Eds.), Asian histories and heritages in video games (1st ed.). Routledge.
Feng, Z. (2026). Design an Asian queer game through multimodal ethnography. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Feng, Z., & Hu, P. (2025). From gambling to storytelling: Reimagining slot games for intersectional narratives in Kevin. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3720322