About us

Games & Narrative Research Group

We are an international research group, working on interactive and computer game narrative.

We describe and analyze new narrative forms in interactive digital media reaching from videogames to experimental art projects. Our goal is a better understanding of these phenomena.

Since 2009, through workshops and publications, we have been developing a descriptive methodology and a taxonomy of examples with the goal of a unified theory of interactive digital narrative.

Short member bios

Hartmut Koenitz

Hartmut Koenitz is an Assistant Professor in Mass Media Arts at the University of Georgia. He holds a PhD in Digital Media from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research is in interactive narrative theory and practice, combining an evolutionary approach towards interactive narrative theory with practical experimentation in the form of ASAPS, a software tool able to integrate many existing approaches in Interactive Storytelling. He is also a digital artist whose installations have been shown in Atlanta and Paris.

Mads Haahr

Mads Haahr is a Lecturer in Computer Science at Trinity College Dublin and holds a PhD from that same institution. His academic background is in Computer Science and English Literature and has published in many fields across this spectrum. He is currently researching methods for highly immersive location-aware story-driven games and also runs the mobile game studio Haunted Planet Studios, which specializes in story-driven location-based augmented-reality games. He edits Crossings: Electronic Journal of Art and Technology.

Gabriele Ferri

Gabriele Ferri teaches the Computer Game Analysis workshop at the University of Bologna, Italy, and the Serious Game Design workshop at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He graduated from the PhD program in Semiotics at the University of Bologna, where he’s still pursuing theoretical research on narrativity and interaction. He is an editor for G|A|M|E – Games as Art Media Entertainment.

Tonguç İbrahim Sezen

Tonguc Ibrahim Sezen, PhD is an assistant professor at Istanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Communications, and a Fulbright alumnus. His research interests include cross-media narration, digital gaming, toy studies and interactive storytelling.  He is a founding member  of the Turkish Chapter of DiGRA, a member of the Turkish Game Developers’ Association Oyunder and an editor of Turkish Game Research Journal Oyundergi.

Diğdem Sezen

Digdem Sezen is an assistant professor at Istanbul University, Faculty of Communications and holds a PhD from that same institution. During her PhD, she got the Fulbright scholarship for her doctoral studies and did research in the field of interactive storytelling, new media literacies, digital games and experimental TV at Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Digital Media and has presented and published papers and book chapters in many fields across this spectrum.  She organises conferences, local events and gives workshops in these fields.