Replaying Japan, 2020

This year’s conference theme will be “Ludolympics 2020”. Particular attention will therefore be paid to the relationship between games and sport in Japan, to the Japanese esport scene and its cultural specificities and to competitive video game practices, but also, more generally, to the notion of video game performance and to the mediatization or spectacularization of this performance. Through the prism of this theme, fundamental aspects of games and play will be questioned: the physicality of the playing practices, the place of competition in Japanese game culture, the role of rules and conventions in games and play, as well as the possibilities of bypassing these rules (through cheating, for instance) or the spaces of appropriation that they allow (visible in the amateur practices, fan creations or doujin circles, among others).