Confoederatio Ludens is a Sinergia project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNF, that looks at Swiss games culture in general a vibrant game design and development scene in the pre-Internet age. For decades, digital games were programmed in Switzerland in niches, but also with commercial success. They bear witness to many sub-scenes and a society changing through digitization. This is the podcast on the project.
...talking with Yannick Rochat (UNIL)
2026-03-11 46 min
In this second episode of the CH Ludens podcast, host Eugen Pfister talks with his colleague Prof. Yannick Rochat, who leads the project Team at UNIL. Together, they discuss the game studies scene in Switzerland and previous networking efforts, which ultimately led to ever closer cooperation in our Sinergia project. Yannick introduces us to his team – Pierre-Yves, Sophie and Johan – and talks about the countless interviews that have been conducted so far, as well as the Platform Studies, which in Lausanne focus primarily on the analysis of the Swiss computer ‘Smaky’. Finally, Yannick introduces us to the history of the Zeta Challenger from Biel/Bienne and the different initiatives of games history and games preservation in Switzerland.