The Game Is On – Wie Gaming unsere Welt revolutioniert

Johanna Pirker [Österreich]
Keynote

40 minutes

Digital technologies open up new spaces for experiences and storytelling – and games are among their most influential forms. In her keynote speech ‘The Game Is On’, based on her book of the same name, Johanna Pirker positions video games as a narrative medium that not only depicts social issues, but actively negotiates them.

Based on her research into games, virtual and augmented reality, and artificial intelligence, Pirker shows how interactive game worlds open up new perspectives: they allow players to make decisions, take responsibility, explore alternative futures, and experience complex relationships both physically and emotionally. Games thus become social spaces in which community can develop, power relations become visible, and empathy can be practised.

In the context of DIGITHALIA, the keynote address ties in with key festival questions: Who tells stories in digital spaces? Which bodies, voices and perspectives become visible – and which remain invisible? Pirker talks about games as art and cultural assets that mediate between technology, creativity and society, and about their potential for education, science and critical public discourse. She does not shy away from ambivalent aspects, but rather views gaming as a contested space in which progress, exclusion and new forms of resistance manifest themselves simultaneously.

This keynote is an invitation to view games as a narrative practice on a par with theatre, film and literature, and to take digital gaming worlds seriously as places where we negotiate how we want to live together in the future.

Johanna Pirker (born 1988) is a computer scientist and, since July 2025, Professor of N-Dimensional User Experience at the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology at the Technical University of Munich. Previously, she researched and taught at the Graz University of Technology, ETH Zurich and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, among others. She founded Game Lab Graz and worked for a time in the gaming industry, including at Electronic Arts. Pirker's research focuses on games, virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, data analytics and EduTech. With her book ‘The Game is On: How Gaming is Revolutionising Our World,’ she advocates for the recognition of games as an art and cultural form.

»The Game is On: Wie Gaming unsere Welt revolutioniert«
Johanna Pirker, Ecowing 2025