The Institute of Digital Games - University of Malta was represented by Dr Daniel Vella at Digarec conference at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He delivered a talk entitled "The Wanderer in the Wilderness: Minecraft, Proteus and Being in the Virtual Landscape" which focused on Minecraft (2011) and Proteus (2013) as ludic instances of the trope of the lone wanderer in a natural wilderness.
His talk drew on approaches to space and place from the phenomenological tradition, ludological approaches to game space, and phenomenological theories of digital game experience in order to arrive at an understanding of what is entailed, experientially and existentially, in the idea of 'being-in-the-gameworld.'
It can be viewed in full on Digarec's Twitch Channel.