We all know loss. It ranges from trivial – a lost key, a lost book, a lost appointment – to deep tragedy – the loss of a loved one, the loss of your country, the loss of the work that defined you. While loss can cause us to feel anxiety, anger, grief, and disappointment loss-driven thinking may spark valuable reflection – especially in a world where loss tends to accompany us on the daily basis, channeled through ecological concerns, political turmoil, economic crises, or existential anxieties. Countries lose wars, politicians lose influence, societies lose trust, common people lose their jobs, homes, basic rights; communities lose languages, traditional lifestyles, habitats, and identities; the world as a whole loses landscapes, species, and climate balance. On a smaller scale, we can lose games, social media influence, opportunities, but also our patience, sense of direction, our will, faith, or our sanity.
Keynote speakers
Mark Maletska, Doctoral researcher and PhD
Lost and found during the war: How full-scale invasion changed playing video games for queer Ukrainians
War always goes hand in hand with material and moral loss, on both global and local scales. It changes the everyday lives of the people involved, forces them to get used to a new, often threatening, situation. Some groups, however, experience it differently. Lives of queer people can be even more unstable and unpredictable. Hence, the changes are different, and if a society is not used to these differences, queers might be misunderstood and left without any help in the time of loss.
One activity to see those differences is playing games, including video games. During war times, video games could be seen as a waste of time, luxury or just an untimely activity that takes away from other, more useful things. Yet, for some people, gaming spaces become the only spaces to be themselves or get distracted from horrors of real life. For others, this habit is lost because of displacement, lack of time or higher sensitivity towards violence happening on a screen.
The keynote will talk about the lost and acquired habits experienced by queer Ukrainians during the open warfare through the prism of gaming. After the full-scale invasion of Russia started in 2022, many Ukrainians lost their homes and relatives, experienced displacement and disruption of their lives. While for most social groups, both the governmental structures and other people were ready to help with the loss, many queer people struggled with getting same help. Gaming as one of the usual activities became a reflection of the impact of both internal changes and external situation for them.
Bio:
Mark Maletska (MPhil) is a Doctoral Researcher and PhD candidate at Tampere University, Tampere, Finland. His dissertation research is focused on the relationship between video game mechanics and gender identity self-exploration. His research interests include queer game studies, research on video games and diverse gender identities. He moved to Finland in autumn 2022, after the full-scale invasion into Ukraine started. Currently, he lives and works in Finland. Prior to current position, Mark Maletska was a teacher of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University, Ukraine.
Magdalena Kozyra, Assistant Professor
What can queer failure tell us about the medium of video games? / The experience of (queer) failure in digital games
Failure is a paradoxical phenomenon. On the one hand, it accompanies us like a shadow and teaches us that loss is a natural part of everyday life as we learn and grow. On the other hand, however, we are constantly told that we should be ashamed of our shortcomings and should try harder to achieve success: at school, work, and even in personal life, we are rewarded for good grades, efficient work and successful relationships. How can we appreciate failure in a world whose almost every aspect strongly depends on neoliberal values that dictate what should or shouldn’t be considered a success?
These values are also mirrored in the medium of digital games, which can be considered a “paradigmatic media of Empire - planetary, militarized hypercapitalism” (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter). The neoliberal discourses are also evident in the general approach to failure in games. Many claim that a good game should be well-balanced in terms of manual challenges: it shouldn’t be too easy, as it will quickly get boring, but it also shouldn’t be too hard, as it will only frustrate the players. Unlike in the real world, obstacles presented in digital games are designed to be overcome sooner rather than later. Like in neoliberal societies, failure is an important part of the system, as it keeps the player engaged in rivalry (with the game or other gamers), but what really matters is the triumph over the opponent. If you want to complete the game, you have to beat it.
However, not all games follow this pattern, and that’s where the concept of queer failure comes in handy. Jack Halberstam, in his book The Queer Art of Failure, claims that there is a way of breaking out from the neoliberal discourses centered around a narrow understanding of success. Namely, it is by exploring the different states of “failure”, such as nonnormative lifestyles and values, negative affects or art about loss, anger and emptiness. What I want to show in my talk is that the same logic can be applied to video games. I’ll focus on titles that use failure not as a meaningless setback, but rather as a significant element that affects the gaming experience and allows exploring the themes that are difficult to represent using a medium dependent on character development, narrative progression, and the acquisition of new levels or resources. Its queer nature is therefore responsible for challenging the neoliberal and normative discourses within the medium of video games, which dominate both its mechanical and narrative aspects.
There is no harm in learning how we could fail more interestingly – after all, gamers, as well as queer people, are already exceptionally good at it.
Bio:
Magdalena Kozyra is an Assistant Professor at SWPS University in Kraków. She has recently defended doctoral dissertation on the experience of failure in digital games and currently teaches classes at Game Design at SWPS University and at the Faculty of Polish Studies at the Jagiellonian University. She is employed in the project "Polish video games? Gaming cultures and the gaming industry in the national context" (NCN OPUS 19), is involved in the activities of the Jagiellonian University's Game Research Center. She is interested in contemporary popular culture, likes cats, cheese and NieR: Automata.
Lasha Kavtaradze, Ph.D.
Loss and the silence it leaves: Epistemic authority of legacy media in the age of big tech
Over half a decade ago, Hannah Arendt lamented that authority as such “has vanished from the modern world." As technologies advanced, such concerns have often applied to entities or institutions claiming authority as legitimate sources of knowledge, including news media. From philosopher Luciano Floridi’s early warnings about the internet turning into a “superhighway of disinformation” to the contemporary crisis of post-truth politics, concerns over the epistemic authority of legacy media have only intensified.
In January 2025, shortly before Trump’s second inauguration, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, would end its third-party fact-checking program in the U.S. In his statement, Zuckerberg framed fact-checkers as biased and prone to mistakes, posing a threat to freedom of expression. Though the decision was an obvious ode to the second Trump era—echoing another pro-Trump tech platform owner, Elon Musk—it sent a clear signal that Big Tech is no friend to legacy media when business interests are at stake. More importantly, Meta’s decision to terminate the fact-checking program was a stark reminder that the epistemic authority of media professionals has been permanently undermined, with Big Tech playing a dominant role in shaping this new reality.
In this keynote, I will discuss how tech platforms have acted as a double-edged sword for legacy media and its epistemic authority in democratic societies. On one hand, they fueled media with endless innovations, providing new infrastructures for creative practices. On the other hand, they created a fertile ground for legacy media to be exploited—or even sacrificed—to fit their business models whenever necessary. This keynote address critiques the tech dependency of legacy news organizations, primarily through the lens of their losing epistemic authority in a high-choice media environment.
Bio:
Lasha Kavtaradze is a Ph.D. candidate at Kristiania University College and the University of Bergen, specializing in the role of emerging technologies in fact-checking and journalism. He is scheduled to defend his thesis on March 5, 2025. He holds a master's degree in Digital Media and Society from Uppsala University (Sweden) and has worked as a journalist, TV and radio producer, fact-checker, and media critic.
His research focuses on the use of AI and automation in information verification and its broader impact on journalism. In addition to his academic work, Kavtaradze authored a handbook for journalists on reporting violent extremism and radicalization. He has also contributed academic and opinion articles on media polarization and the influence of political radicalization on the media landscape.
Programme:
Monday May 19, 2025
Nord University, Noatun, room Oscar Sund 1 and Oscar Sund 2.
11:00
Welcome and introduction / Torill Mortensen, Nord University
11:10
Lost and found during the war: How full-scale invasion changed playing video games for queer Ukrainians / Mark Maletska, Doctoral Researcher and PhD candidate at Tampere University, Tampere, Finland.
12:00
Lunch at Noatun
12:30
Visions of a Lost Future: Polish 1980s Sci-Fi and the Emergence of a New Structure of Feeling on the Verge of the Transformation Era / Kinga Siewior, Jagiellonian University, Krakow
13:20
Reflection: Loss of Agency in Goal-Oriented Gaming / Johan Kalmanlehto, University of Jyväskylä, Usva Friman, Tampere University
14:10
Coffee
14:25
The Geography of Loss / Daniel Vella, Malta University
15:15
Loss in Video Games: What is Well Played? / Andy Phelps, American University; Mia Consalvo, Concordia University
Afternoon activity
Informal social event: Bring good shoes and outdoor clothes.
Tuesday May 20, 2025
08:15
Coffee and fruit
08:30
Start day two
08:40
Losing and Remembering: The Experience of Time through Broken Objects in Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) / Anna Bartnicka, University of Wrocław, Poland
09:30
Break
09:40
A loss of professional identity: the lived experiences of internationally-trained nurses in Norway / Anita Robertson, Nord University
10:30
The loss of educational third spaces and trust framed through the Baudrillardian corpus - The Örebro campus attack case / Maria Kalaridi, Linnaeus University, Sweden
11:20
Lunch
12:00
Loss and the silence it leaves: Epistemic authority of legacy media in the age of big tech / Lasha Kavtaradze, Ph.D.
12:45
Coffee
13:00
Liberating Losses: On the Comforts and Seductions of the Postapocalypse / Agata Zarzycka, Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław
13:50
“Choosing is Losing”. A (work-in-progress) game design experiment in PowerPoint / Nele Van de Mosselaer, Tilburg University
17:30
Guided tour and dinner (19:30) at the Norwegian Aviation Museum
Wednesday May 21, 2025
08:15
Coffee and fruit – start of the third day note, only Oscar Sund 1
08:30
Imagining loss of survival – exploring player experiences of survival games / Matilda Ståhl, Aska Mayer, Rainforest Scully-Blaker, Tampere University; Robyn Hope, North Carolina State University, USA; Nicholas Taylor, York University, Canada
09:30
What can queer failure tell us about the medium of video games? / The experience of (queer) failure in digital games / Magdalena Kozyra, Assistant Professor SWPS University Krakow
10:15
Break
10:30
The loss of girls from gaming / Kalle Laakso, Tampere University
11:20
The loss of a Cleric: Musings on NPC death / Kristian Bjørkelo, Nord University
12:10
Lunch
12:40
Summary, new topic, new program committee
Call for Presentations
We all know loss. It ranges from trivial – a lost key, a lost book, a lost appointment – to deep tragedy – the loss of a loved one, the loss of your country, the loss of the work that defined you. While loss can cause us to feel anxiety, anger, grief, and disappointment loss-driven thinking may spark valuable reflection – especially in a world where loss tends to accompany us on the daily basis, channeled through ecological concerns, political turmoil, economic crises, or existential anxieties. Countries lose wars, politicians lose influence, societies lose trust, common people lose their jobs, homes, basic rights; communities lose languages, traditional lifestyles, habitats, and identities; the world as a whole loses landscapes, species, and climate balance. On a smaller scale, we can lose games, social media influence, opportunities, but also our patience, sense of direction, our will, faith, or our sanity.
At the same time, however, depending on what is being lost, to whom, and why, the experience can also be a harbinger of something good. Loss is often an inevitable part of change, transformation, initiation, and liberation. It marks the flow of time, creates space for new things, turns the old things into memories, and memories into knowledge. It also brings solutions, relief, and can even be cathartic. Consciously or actively embraced, it can become a statement, an act of power, or a sign of growth. In cultural imagination, it may bring out alternative visions of lost worlds that, staying out of reach, serve as cautionary tales or models to pursue.
While culture itself seems to react to the sense of loss as a peculiar esprit du temps with various modes of nostalgia, retrospection and archiving which often form specific paradigms of mourning, the goal of this call for presentations is to explore loss as a versatile and connective concept, capable of inspiring diverse kinds of reflection. That is why we invite presentations devoted, but not limited to:
- Transformative loss
- Materiality of loss, e.g. ruins
- Lost technologies, practices and knowledge
- The art of letting go or getting rid of
- Regrets and lost causes
- Utopia and dystopia
- Migration
- Being lost
- Madness
- Nostalgia
- Discursive and affective dimensions of losing and failing
Format
We invite abstracts of up to 500 words (not including literature lists), for the following formats: Paper, work in progress, reflection.
- Reflections: This is a flight of fancy, a description of potential ideas and connections that the concept loss fosters
- Paper abstract: This is a summary of a relevant research project you have done, and which you would like to present to the others
- Work in progress: This is work you would like feedback on
- We also invite more formats: experiences, performance, experimentation and roleplay
- Feedback: You will get a commenter, and be asked to provide feedback on the work of another person
Deadline
- Early deadline 16th March. We start accepting from this date.
- First date of decisions: 20th March.
- Late deadline 16th April.
Submit by email to northern.star.symposium@gmail.com.
Selection process
Submissions are not anonymously reviewed. Program decisions will be made by the program committee:
- Mia Consalvo
- Tomasz Majkowski
- Aska Mayer
- Agata Zarzycka
- Torill Elvira Mortensen
- Egil Trasti Rogstad
Supported by the local organizing committee:
- Kristian Bjørkelo
- Ida Løvdal Alvsen
- Cristóbal Mora Bieni Bianchi
- Martta Ojala
- Frederik Grønbæk Aarup
