The Gathering - First Ludosemiotics Conference

Ludosemiotics includes all approaches to play, games and gamification that focus on the meaning-making, interpretative and cultural processes that arise from playing. It is conceived as a gathering for all research rooted in Semiotics or Semiology, regardless of the specific schools or theories adopted.

While classical Semiotics has addressed games, toys and playfulness since its early days, a stronger focus on games from a semiotic perspective started to emerge in the 2000s. Now, almost two decades later, the researchers engaging with ludosemiotics have reached a critical mass, and the approach has achieved a good level of credibility with the publication of several recent books on the topic (Hawreliak 2019, Thibault 2020, Aroni 2022, Giuliana 2024).

The time has come, then, to bring together the different researchers working on ludosemiotics, both established scholars and young researchers moving the first steps along this path, in order to share our perspectives, establish collaborations, cooperate, and start to build a community around our work.

The First Ludosemiotics Conference, hence, aims to be both a moment to gather together, and a starting point to establish the basis of the future of the field.

This event is supported by NEXR – Next Extended Reality (funded by NextGenerationEU and Business Finland, co-research project number 5703/31/2023), Mobility Mindshift (EU NetZeroCities) and by InterReal (ERC Starting Grant, funded by the European Union Grant agreement ID: 101163472).