History of Games Conference 2025
by Jagiellonian University in Kraków and SWPS University
Kraków, Poland, September 3-5, 2025
Conference Theme: The Nineties
It was the end of history.
The advent of global communism had finally been halted with the collapse of the Soviet Union, former Eastern Bloc countries eagerly switching to neoliberal economies, and only North Korea and Fidel’s Cuba remaining faithful to the cause. The Middle Eastern conflict seemed poised for a peaceful resolution with the Oslo Accords, while South Africa had just elected its first Black president. The Good Friday Agreement was signed to bring an end to The Troubles. European nations united under a single banner. A sheep had been successfully cloned, and the Hubble Telescope was launched into orbit. A lecherous stoner occupied the White House, a Pole sat on the Holy See, and the Queen of Human Hearts was about to ascend to the British throne. US-guaranteed peace, progress, and prosperity were supposed to last forever—of course, if you did not count silly little places like Bosnia or Rwanda.
For the first time, digital technology was everywhere. Computer-generated imagery exploded onto the silver screen, conjuring dinosaurs, robots, sea vessels colliding with icebergs, and even the ghost of John Lennon. On TV, we watched groups of friends struggling with their first printers, teenagers slaying digitally enhanced vampires, FBI agents chasing computer-generated aliens, and mythic heroes from New Zealand meeting ancient gods straight out of a machine. More than one show closed each episode with a woman sharing an intimate moment with her new best friend: a laptop computer.
Rapidly developing digital technologies had a profound impact on gaming. The introduction of 32-bit computing architecture enabled the transition to 3D environments, while CD-ROMs stored more digital data than anyone had thought possible. Personal computers, armed with new graphics and sound chips, raced against a new generation of consoles, including one developed by Sony—the largest and most powerful corporation in the world. Joysticks gave way to gamepads and the WASD+mouse combination. A growing digital network allowed players to immerse themselves in fully graphical multiplayer RPGs. From Myst (1993) to Doom (1993), from Tomb Raider (1996) to Diablo (1997), from Pokémon (1996) to Grand Theft Auto (1997) to Fallout (1997)—hit titles introduced entirely new genres of digital gaming, culminating in the decade’s end with the release of The Sims (2000), which became the best-selling PC game in history at the time.
Game-based movies began to hit cinemas, mustering the star power of Bob Hoskins as Mario and Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. The first seminal books on game studies were published, and the narratology vs. ludology debate was about to begin.
Meanwhile, in the shadow of digital gaming’s mainstream rise, other gaming phenomena thrived. Vampire: The Masquerade (1991) paved the way for a new generation of tabletop RPGs while bridging the gap between gamer and goth subcultures. Magic: The Gathering (1993) established the rules for collectible card games. Midway through the decade, Settlers of Catan (1995) turned German-style board games into a global phenomenon, heralding the board game renaissance of the following decade. In Nordic countries, a new mode of LARP was taking shape. Dungeons & Dragons was acquired by the world’s largest toy manufacturer and remade into a mainstream brand, with its third edition launching in 2000.
For History of Games 2025, we encourage you to revisit the decade that shaped contemporary gaming—analyzing the technologies, genres, discourses, practices, and phenomena that defined game culture between the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers (2001). Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
• National and local game cultures in the 1990s
• Gaming after the Iron Curtain
• East Asian games in regional and global perspectives in the 1990s
• Analogue and board games in the 1990s
• The twilight of vernacular game-making and the professionalization of the game industry
• Hardware development and new gaming platforms
• The introduction of 3D games and its consequences
• The arrival of online gaming
• Cult games of the 1990s
• Game-related and game-adjacent media in the 1990s
• From Night Trap to Grand Theft Auto: Moral panics of the 1990s
• The emergence of so-called “geek culture”
• Game studies before Year One
• Trends, schools, aesthetics – artistic notions within game development
• 1990s games as contemporary vehicles for nostalgia
• Adaptations, quotations, inspirations: games of the 1990s in the broader cultural context
Submissions:
Submissions of an abstract of 500 words (not including references) are welcome to the Histories of Games 2025 conference and will be double-blind peer reviewed. Please make sure the submission is anonymous and the references to your own work, if used, are included in a way not allowing the identify the author (i.e., avoid saying “in my previous work [citation]”).
Please note that to ensure equity and access to the conference, no author may present more than two contributions to the conference. This includes single and joint authored submissions.
Important dates
Submission opens: 1 April 2025
Submission Closes: 1 May 2025
Notifications of Acceptance: Sent to authors by 10 June 2025
Conference: 3-5 September 2025
More details, including the link to the submission platforms, conference fees and available participation formats will come shortly to the conference website: https://www.history-of-games.com/.