• Negotiating Anthropocentrism and Ecologies in Cozy Games 

  Pinder, Morgan (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2024-05-27)

  As we sit at the precipice of this planet’s sixth mass extinction event, we need to use every tool at our disposal to advocate for our ecologies. Human self-interest and anthropocentric thinking act as barriers to communicating ...

• Soft Horrors: The Visual and Ludic Safety of Dark Cozy Games 

  Waszkiewicz, Agata (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2024-05-27)

  According to their most popular definition, cozy games are characterized by visual softness and relaxing gameplay devoid of combat and time-sensitive gameplay. However, with the recent increase in popularity of these games, ...

• Cozy Heterotopias in JRPGs: A Foucauldian Perspective on the Spatiality of Coziness in Japanese Role-Playing Games 

  Simond, Stefan H.; Klös, Tobias (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2024-05-27)

  This article applies the concept of heterotopia as developed by Michel Foucault to cozy aesthetics in JRPGs. After introducing the concept of heterotopia and its six key principles, the term JRPG is briefly reflected upon. ...

• Comfortably Numb: An Ideological Analysis of Coziness in Videogames 

  Andiloro, Andrea (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2024-05-27)

  This essay analyses the concept of coziness in videogames, focusing on their role as a stress-relieving diversion in modern capitalist societies. The article emphasizes the genre’s features of safety, abundance, and softness, ...

• No Uglies: Rejection and Utopia in "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" 

  Calloway, Alexander (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2024-05-27)

  What motivates cruelty against video game characters designed to be friendly? Using human-to-NPC interactions within the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons as a case study, this paper seeks to define what aspects of a cozy ...

• “Drown Your Troubles in Coffee”: Place, Heterotopia, and Immersion in the Coffee Talk Series 

  Poirier-Poulin, Samuel (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2024-05-27)

  This article contributes to the growing body of research on space, place, and immersion in video games and offers an analysis of placeness in Coffee Talk (Toge Productions, 2020) and Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & ...

• The Duality of Cozy Games: Cozy Agency, Neoliberalism, and Affect 

  Bódi, Bettina (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2024-05-27)

  Cozy games can be thought of both as indoctrination into, and escapism from, anxieties caused by neoliberal ideology underpinning the late-capitalist apparatus championing productivity, progress, and quantifiable result ...

• Gry przytulne i opór poprzez troskę 

  Waszkiewicz, Agata; Tymińska, Marta (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2024-05-27)

• Cozy Games and Resistance Through Care 

  Waszkiewicz, Agata; Tymińska, Marta (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2024-05-27)

• „Gamebook” wzbogacony literacką przeszłością – analiza gry paragrafowej „Dziady część V. Dziady, które nie spieprzają” autorstwa Mikołaja Kołyszki 

  Sowa, Julia (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2023-12-28)

  This article addresses issues showing the interconnectedness of the postmodern categories of pastiche and parody in relation to gamebooks. The first part of the text is a cross-section of the most important theoretical ...

• Recenzja książki Joanny Pigulak „Gra w film. Z zagadnień relacji między filmem i grami wideo”, Universitas, Kraków 2022 

  Prajzner, Katarzyna (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2023-12-28)

  What is the relationship between computer games and cinema? Why computer games tend to employ camera movement, shot-selection and framing similar to that used in the cinema? To what extent, though, is it useful to look at ...

• Computer games as a subject of psychological research – negative and positive aspects of gaming 

  Paleczna, Monika (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2022-12-30)

  Computer games are an interactive form of entertainment that is popular with younger and younger players. Therefore researchers are actively seeking information on the consequences of pursuing this type of pastime. At the ...

• (Post)pandemic academia, or rising from the ashes 

  Jankowski, Filip (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2023-12-28)

• Feeling the narrative control(ler): Casual art games as trauma therapy 

  Austin, Hailey J.; Cooper, Lydia R. (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2022-11-21)

  Through a combination of aesthetics and game mechanics, casual art games offer unique engagements with trauma, allowing players to practice grief or empathise with the traumatic experiences of others. Both “Spiritfarer” ...

• O gropowiastkach 

  Jankowski, Filip Fabian (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2022-11-21)

  This paper proposes introducing a new category to describe certain digital games – “game-satire” (“gropowiastka”) – similar to literary philosophical satires. The author takes as his point of departure the term “game-story” ...

• The aesthetics of speedrunning: Performances in neo-baroque space 

  Reed, Emilie (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2022-10-25)

  Speedrunning describes activities related to the development and performance of strategies to complete games quickly, and is a valuable source of historical and technical information, while producing specialized aesthetic ...

• Playing distressed art: Adorno’s aesthetic theory in game design 

  Hanussek, Benjamin (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2022-08-09)

  The discussion on games as (not) art has been raging for decades without reaching a consensus. It is argued here that the ontological status of games is irrelevant for the perception and development of aesthetic experiences ...

• A tale of two Eberts: Videogames and the arbitrariness of meaning 

  Kaczmarski, Paweł (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2022-09-13)

  The article revisits and examines in detail the so-called Ebert debate: an exchange of polemic voices between Roger Ebert, his opponents and supporters, on the issue of the relationship – both actual and potential – between ...

• Play the art: Artistic value in video games 

  Jancsovics, Klaudia (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2022-07-14)

  Playing a game does not mean that we are doing something childish and useless. Using a new technology to express our feelings and raise the awareness of social issues does not mean we cannot call it art. If we go back in ...

• 16-bit dissensus: post-retro aesthetics, hauntology, and the emergency in video games 

  Dolan, Patrick R. (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, 2022-07-12)

  Santiago Zabala reveals a crisis in modern society that perceives a world dominated by oppressive neoliberal ideology as acceptable and unproblematic. He claims that today’s greatest emergency is that we fail to notice ...

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