OLD WORLD BLUES ›Fallout‹ und das Spiel mit der Postapokalypse

FROG Deep Dive Panel

The panel centers upon the academic volume “OLD WORLD BLUES ›Fallout‹ und das Spiel mit der Postapokalypse” (release: July 2024 – Büchner Verlag). Since the late 1990s, the US digital role-playing game series Fallout has not only been characterized by the popularity and economic success of its five-part main series and its five series spin-offs. It also features profound and complex narratives, depicts moral dilemmas, presents alternative histories and allows players to explore extensive post-apocalyptic scenarios. This volume is the first German-language digital game studies classification of the Fallout series and represents the overdue and promising prelude to a specialist study.

The panel is hosted by the volume’s editors Arno Görgen and Rudolf Thomas Inderst, and will begin with a short talk on the cultural history of Fallout. This is followed by a panel discussion with the authors Tanja Hojahn, Marc Pascal Wagner and Thomas Wernbacher on various aspects of the series. At the end, there will be an opportunity for the audience to ask questions and take part in the discussion.

Panelists

Björn Blankenheim

Dr. Björn Blankenheim is a freelance author and lecturer. His research interests include game history, game design and game rhetoric. His dissertation ›Die Kunst des Computer Game Design‹ deals with the production aesthetics of computer games (1982-1996) in the context of the literature of art. From 2015 to 2018 he supervised a project on the literature of art and the art of teaching. In 2022 curated the exhibition ›Game Designers & Software Artists‹ and organized the symposium ›History of Games – PAtCHʼD‹. He is currently working on German computer and video game history and is busy setting up his own archive.

Tanja Hojahn

Since 2022 Graduate Student in History at the University of Regensburg, currently writing the Master Thesis about the portrayal of nurses in war in popular movies.
Co-Founder of the interdisciplinary network for young academics in Game Studies: „Ludobande“
2022 BA in History and Art History at the University of Greifswald

Pascal Marc Wagner

Pascal Marc Wagner (*1993) is a cognitive and cultural linguist (M.A.). On his website languageatplay.de and as an author and editor of game studies books, most recently ‘#GameStudies: 20 Jahre Forschungsfantasie’ published by Büchner-Verlag, he conducts research at the interface of linguistics and video games. He works as an editor for GamesMarkt, the B2B magazine for the European games industry.

Thomas Wernbacher

Thomas Wernbacher is a media psychologist and works at the University of Krems’ Center for Applied Game Studies. In his work, he investigates the use and effects of game-based approaches in the context of mobility, education, and health. His expertise includes concepts of behavior theory in the form of gamification and nudging with a special focus on incentive models. The current focus of his research activities is on the communication and mediation of sustainable development goals in conjunction with emergent technologies.

Moderation

Arno Görgen

Dr. Arno Görgen, Kulturhistoriker, ist Co-Lead des SNF-Sinergía-Projekts “Confederatio Ludens. Swiss History of Games, > Play and Game Design 1968-2000” an der Hochschule der Künste Bern. Zuvor war er von 2018 bis 2022 Mitarbeiter des SNF-Ambizione-Projektes “Horror-Game-Politics”. Zwischen 2009 und 2017 war er wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an den Instituten für Geschichte, Theorie und Ethik der Medizin der Universitäten Ulm, Köln und der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. Von 2012-2017 war er Fellow des Fellowship-Programmes “Innovationen in der Hochschullehre” des Deutschen Stifterverbandes (Projekt: Medizin und Medizinethik im Computerspiel). Forschungsschwerpunkte sind popkulturelle Repräsentationen von Krankheit, Gesundheit und Medizin, Medikalisierung digitaler Spiele, Systemtheorie und Ideengeschichte.