STRATEGIES at International Society for Ethnology and Folklore Conference 2025
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland
The 17th international SIEF congress will take place at the University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland, hosted by the Elphinstone Institute for Ethnology, Folklore, and Ethnomusicology.
STRATEGIES researchers Professor Sonia Fizek and Dr Ruth Dorothea Eggel will be presenting their approach to research on Work Package 2: People and Planet at the conference, in collabartion with game designer, Trevin York.
In this presentation Sonia, Ruth and Trevin explore the practice of doing ludic ethnography with the help of a card deck, conceptualized as a tool supporting fieldwork on environmental and social sustainability of video game development. The research is conducted within the Horizon Europe project STRATEGIES (Sustainable Transition for Europe’s Game Industries).
The research focuses on the socio-cultural and environmental implications of video game development. They are specifically interested in how European game studios navigate the map of relations between games and the natural environment and how they address the environmental and human cost of making games.
In their ethnographic fieldwork we are using a dedicated card deck “Game Studios vs Climate Crisis”, designed by Trevin York as a tool to be used in collaborative settings of “miniature ethnographic engagement” (York 2022). Such a method allows to incorporate cooperation directly into the research process - not only within the fieldwork but also during interpretation and meaning-making (Campbell & Lassiter 2010).
Both game and ethnography deploy similar strategies of discovery - puzzle solving and making sense of unfamiliar logics and experimentation with an open-ended approach allowing for serendipity. They hope that the deck can help us curate “re-enactments” (Dippel 2022) of key problems, and better cater to “situated knowledges” (Haraway 1988) emerging from this ludic “kindred practice” (Taylor 2022). In this ludic set-up, the ethnographer does not enter the field as the instance from above but becomes part of the playing situation.
This presentation will comprise two parts - in the opening act we will introduce the card deck and provide insights from the playing field. In the second part, we will discuss the dynamics of using the ludic ethnographic method.
To attend the conference, or find out more, visit the Conference Website.