Special issue of Age, Culture, Humanities
Deadline (abstracts): December 15, 2025
Age(ing) Games: Technology, Play, and Age
George Bernard Shaw famously noted that “[w]e don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” In today’s media culture, play remains culturally coded as youthful, yet may, as Shaw suggests, in and of itself be read as an antidote to growing stereotypically “old”. Games, then, are linked to a younger age group, a notion that holds particularly true for games associated with technology. While, for instance, the older man playing chess in the park may be close to a cliché, the older woman playing Fortnite is decidedly less so. Thus, older adults’ engagement with digital technologies tends to be approached with reference to cognitive fitness: Hereby, games and the practice of playing are understood as means of productivity, befitting a framework of successful aging, rather than as cultural artifacts. This framing risks reducing play to a utilitarian tool for self-optimization rather than recognizing games as cultural practices through which aging and identity are negotiated.
This special issue of Age, Culture, Humanities aims to further investigate the connections and disconnects between age(ing), games, and technology. Its focus is twofold: On the one hand, it explores how the age experience of players informs the construction of play and games, players’ interaction with playable content, and playable technologies. On the other hand, the special issue focuses on how aging is represented in games – particularly, though not exclusively, in video games – and on how they frame the age performance of fictional characters.
Topics include but are not limited to:
- Which technologies are constructed and marketed to target specific age groups?
- What do “age-appropriate” technologies reveal about cultural constructions of play and age?
- How are adult players, gamers, and more presented in different media, such as fiction, (digital) games, or film?
- How is aging as a lifelong process made approachable through play?
- Which stereotypes about the age process are reinstated or circumvented in various playing practices?
- How does the category of age intersect with other forms of differentiation, such as gender, race, or sexuality?
- How can we use play as a critical concept to better understand collaborative arts interventions in dementia care?By bringing these diverse inquiries together, the special issue seeks to foster dialogue between
Gaming Studies, Aging Studies, and Health and Technology Studies, thereby contributing to a richer understanding of the aging experience within its cultural, technological, and digital frameworks. In effect, it invites contributions that imagine new ways of understanding play, aging, and technology beyond the boundaries of productivity, entertainment, and youth.
Please submit an abstract of approximately 300 words and a short biographical note to the guest editors Ruth Gehrmann (gehrmann@uni-mainz.de) and Amina Antonia Touzos (touzos@uni-mainz.de). Abstracts from scholars at all stages of their careers and working in any discipline pertaining to the scope of this call are welcome. All articles will be peer-reviewed.
Deadline for abstracts: December 15, 2025
Deadline for papers: May 1, 2026
Age, Culture, Humanities is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles on a rolling basis, so as soon as articles are ready, they will be published.