Ropecon 2025 Academic Seminar
Call for Papers

Important dates:

Abstract deadline: May 15, 2025
Notification of acceptance: June 3, 2025
Paper deadline: July 10, 2025
Academic Seminar: July 25, 2025

Ropecon’s Academic Seminar is organized in cooperation with The Finnish Society for Game Research (Suomen pelitutkimuksen seura) 

New worlds have intrigued humans as long as we have existed. Whether the worlds of future, never-existing renditions of the past, lost continents, or fantasy worlds from the depths of our imaginations, new worlds are an endless source of tales and stories – and in no medium can they be explored better than in games. 

The topic of Ropecon 2025’s academic seminar, “New Worlds,” reflects the theme of Ropecon 2025. Whether about the exploration of new worlds in games or games’ texts and paratexts, about imagined futures and pasts, about the deconstruction of the worlds our games inhabit, or anything else related to new and imagined worlds in tabletop, miniature, and board gaming, we welcome all paper submissions by scholars of all levels, from younger scholars and PhD candidates to more established researchers.

The seminar focuses on working papers, and the aim is to provide gaming scholars with tools and peer-to-peer discussion for developing and refining their papers further. Every paper will be presented for 10 minutes and discussed for 20 minutes. The sessions will be open for all Academic Seminar ticket holders, but the presentations should be drafted with an academic audience in mind.

Submission guidelines

The papers to be presented will be chosen based on extended abstract review. The abstracts should be a maximum of 500 words (plus references). Abstracts should be delivered in PDF format. In order to facilitate discussion, full papers are distributed prior to the event to all participants. Though the majority of the seminar and discussion will be in English, paper submissions are also accepted in Finnish. If accepted, these papers will need to be presented to the audience in English.

As per the main focus on Ropecon itself, the academic seminar accepts papers on inherently non-digital gaming: papers that discuss games, gaming, and the cultures around these on tabletop games, card games, miniature games are welcome, while papers discussing inherently digital games and gaming are not in the scope of this seminar. 

The aim is that all participants can familiarize themselves with the papers in advance. Therefore, the maximum length for a full paper is 5000 words (plus references). The seminar presentations should encourage discussion instead of repeating the information presented in the papers.

Submissions should be sent to: academic.program@ropecon.fi