Call for papers: Otherworldly Entertainment: A Conference on Horror, Magic, Gothic, and the Occult in Video Games

Between the 13 and 15 August 2025, the Dark Arts Research Group and the Digital Cultures and Languages research group in the Department of English, Germanic, and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen will co-host a three-day international conference on horror, magic, gothic, and occult themed video games.

The conference is supported by a grant from the Carlsberg Foundation in Denmark. 

Since the publication of Christopher Partridge’s foundational essay, ‘Occulture is Ordinary’ in 2013, there has been a growing scholarly interest in studies of popular occulture and its intersection with media technology. There is now a wealth of important research on print, radio, television, and film. However, video games have received far less attention in these scholarly discussions. From the early 1980s onward, there has been a huge growth in video games featuring horror, magic, gothic, and occult themes. Games like Haunted House (1982), Ghosts ‘n Goblins (1985), Castlevania (1986), Phantasmagoria (1995), Diablo (1997), Darksiders (2010), Call of Cthulhu (2018), etc., have been hugely successful and brought scary interactive monstrous worlds to arcades and home consoles around the world. Today, video games continue to be one of the biggest platforms for horror, magic, gothic, and occult entertainment, even outperforming cinema and television. Despite the central role videogames hold as a key conduit for producing and disseminating knowledge about horror, magic, gothic, and the occult for broad audiences, it remains severely understudied.

The conference seeks to explore the following key research questions:

1. What can we learn about popular culture through a study of horror, magic, gothic, and occult video games?
2. How do video games shape our popular understanding of horror, magic, gothic, and the occult?
3. How has popular culture responded to horror, magic, gothic, and occult-themed video games?
4. How does the medium of video games shape the way horror, magic, gothic, and the occult are represented?
5. What kinds of imagery, symbolism, game designs, and language are used in horror, magic, gothic, and occult video games?

In asking these questions, the conference hopes to uncover the reasons why horror, magic, and the occult continue to possess such an important place in our popular culture and media. 

We are thrilled to have Esther Wright from Cardiff University, UK, and Kirstin Mills from Macquarie University, Australia as our keynote speakers. The conference will also feature breakout sessions, designed to foster further group discussion.