Recent publications
Ruffino, P. 2022. There is no cure: Paratexts as remediations of agency in Red Dead Redemption 2. Convergence (link).
Ruffino, P. (editor) 2021. Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Techniques and Politics. London: Routledge (link)
Ruffino, P. 2021. Workers’ visibility and union organizing in the UK videogames industry. Critical Studies in Media Communication (link)
Ruffino, P. 2021. Seeking Deep Relations in a Precarious Industry: Addressing mental health through independent videogame development. Television and New Media (link)
Ruffino, P. 2020. Nonhuman Games: Playing in the Post-Anthropocene, in Death, Culture and Leisure: Playing Dead, edited by Matt Coward-Gibbs, Emerald Publishing, pp. 11-25 (link)
I am an academic and artist.
I am a Senior Lecturer in Digital Curation and Computational Creativity in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London.
I am currently working on a new monograph on videogames and post-Anthropocene imaginaries. I am also collaborating to a project on the impact of videogame engines, such as Unity and Unreal, on our contemporary visual culture. I have worked with videogame developers and produced research on independent game-making and unionisation in the games industry. I have also explored the gamification of life and wellness, and the use of videogames in serious contexts. I am particularly interested in approaches coming from studies on posthumanism, media philosophy, cultural studies and semiotics.
I have been awarded a PhD in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths in 2015, with a thesis on the narratives that bring about and challenge the dualism gamers-games. Previously, I have been working at the University of Liverpool, University of York, University of Lincoln, London South Bank University and the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University.
I am the author of Future Gaming: Creative Interventions in Video Game Culture (MIT/Goldsmiths Press 2018), and editor of Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Techniques and Politics (Routledge 2021). I have co-curated the volume Rethinking Gamification (Meson Press 2013) and co-edited journal issues of Convergence, Games and Culture, and GAME The Italian Journal of Game Studies.
I am one of the four founding members of the artist group IOCOSE. The collective investigates how the narratives surrounding the future of society and technology leave traces on the present. We work with visual media, mostly video installations and prints. Founded in 2006, IOCOSE have been exhibiting at major artistic and cultural institutions such as Tate Modern (2011), Photographers Gallery (2018, 2016), FACT (2012), Transmediale (2013, 2015), MAMbo (2018), Fotomuseum Winterthur (2017) Science Gallery (2012), Jeu de Paume (2011), Aksioma (2021) FMAV (2023).
Live debate: Can Video Games Change the World?
Red Pepper Magazine April 30th 2020
Future Gaming at Talks at Google, March 1st 2018
