CH Ludens cover

CH Ludens

Arno Görgen, Eugen Pfister
Since 02/2026 1 episode

What is Confoederatio Ludens?

First Insights into Swiss Game History

2026-02-11 34 min

Description & Show Notes

In this premiere episode of the CH Ludens podcast, hosts Eugen Pfister and Arno Görgen present the project ‘Confederatio Ludens. Swiss History of Games, Play and Game Design 1968-2000’. They explain the interdisciplinary collaboration, the project's goals and the significance of digital gaming culture for the digitisation of (Swiss) society. They also discuss the transition from analogue to digital media and the transnational aspects of game development in the Alpine country. The hosts provide insight into initial research findings and future developments in the project.

Transcript

Intro Music>Intro Music: C h. Newton's.</v
00:00:33
Eugen Pfister>Eugen Pfister: Hi Arno.</v
00:00:37
Arno Görgen>Arno Görgen: Hi Eugen.</v
00:00:38
Eugen Pfister
00:00:41
Eugen Pfister: And welcome to our first episode of CH Ludens - The Podcast.</v>
Eugen Pfister>Uh, we are your hosts. Eugen Pfister. That's me.</v
00:00:47
Eugen Pfister>And.</v
00:00:50
Arno Görgen>Arno Görgen: And Arno Görgen, that's me.</v
00:00:51
Eugen Pfister
00:00:54
Eugen Pfister: Excellent. This is a prototype, this episode of our of our podcast.</v> And our idea is that in the next few months, we want to take you with us on a voyage through our project called Ludens.</v> We are going to present it briefly. Later we will present, uh, all the people from the project,</v> the motives of our research and our research topics, and a little bit of our output of the last three years.</v> Uh, and we want to show you how Switzerland has and had its own rich culture and history of digital games on a bigger scope of digital</v> history, so to say. And we also want to analyze a little bit together how this,</v> uh, histories of digital games and of computer history connect to the cultural and societal,</v> uh, social, sorry, history of Switzerland, uh, in the last half century.</v>
Arno Görgen
00:01:42
Arno Görgen: The idea is in each episode. Well, to talk to one of our colleagues, it's an easy concept,</v> uh, about their research and also about themselves as researchers, how they.</v> Yeah, became part of ch ludens, for example.</v> And maybe that's a good starting point for for us ourselves.</v> Or you can could you introduce yourself, who you are, what your role is within the project,</v>
Arno Görgen>all these important things?</v
00:02:10
Eugen Pfister
00:02:14
Eugen Pfister: Yes, I can. And, uh, as always, I didn't prepare anything.</v> So it will be a big stream of consciousness for my side.</v>
Eugen Pfister>So hello again. My name is Eugen Pfister.</v
00:02:22
Eugen Pfister
00:02:25
I'm a historian and political scientist, and I think for now, uh, more than ten years,</v> I'm specializing in the history of, uh, video games, of digital games, of computer games.</v> Also on the history in games, um, and especially the history of ideas, that is an analysis of</v>
Eugen Pfister>political ideas and ideologies in video games.</v
00:02:48
Eugen Pfister
00:02:52
So that's, uh, my, my, uh, my research topics.</v> And, uh, this is now my second project at the HKB, at the Hochschule der Künste Bern.</v>
Eugen Pfister>I think it's the Academy of Arts in Bern.</v
00:03:03
Eugen Pfister
00:03:05
And the first one was together with you, Arno, the SNFS project on horror game politics.</v>
Eugen Pfister>So the ideologies in horror video games.</v
00:03:14
Eugen Pfister
00:03:17
And this is now the second project I'm leading in Bern, which is Ludens, which we will present later.</v>
Arno Görgen
00:03:25
Arno Görgen: So my name is Arno, Arno Görgen. I'm a cultural historian.</v> I also studied sociology, uh, history of arts, uh, and many other things in</v> many years and many years ago. And I'm working on digital games since.</v> I just started thinking about this since 2009 for 17 years.</v>
Arno Görgen>Can you believe it?</v
00:03:49
Outro Music>Outro Music: I can, I can.</v
00:03:51
Arno Görgen
00:03:53
Arno Görgen: And my focus is on history of knowledge and the history of ideas, but more on the cultural side and how,</v> for example, how do we know things? What shapes our knowledge?</v> And, um, it's always been my focus that pop culture is a very important part of our.</v> Yeah, um, configurations of knowledge that we build over the years.</v> And within Ludens, I'm co-lead in our Berne branch, and I mainly work with the method of oral history in a subproject called Gamescapes Plus,</v> where my colleague Addrich Mauch and me investigate early player culture, so to say.</v> Before we dive more into these, let's say, specialisations of our project.</v> Um, what in a very general understanding is ch Ludens sorry.</v>
Eugen Pfister
00:04:50
Eugen Pfister: Before talking about that, I thought maybe, uh, I'm not sure if I've said it.</v> If I did, you please cut this, uh, from our episode.</v> Uh, but yes, of course, my role in I am the lead of the whole project.</v>
Eugen Pfister>So that's maybe also interesting to know.</v
00:05:03
Eugen Pfister
00:05:06
Um, but which also means that, uh, I have to spend more time with, uh, management and organization than with actual</v> research. Uh, nevertheless, I could do my my, I think, um, 8 to 9 interviews and the case studies so I,</v>
Eugen Pfister>I can also work inside of the project.</v
00:05:23
Eugen Pfister
00:05:25
But of course there are many um, yeah, all the organizational questions.</v> But now let's get back to, um, to the plan of our episode, to the script.</v>
Eugen Pfister>So let's talk about what does it mean.</v
00:05:34
Eugen Pfister
00:05:38
So CH stands for Confederatio Ludens, which is a wordplay, um, on the Confederatio Helvetica,</v> of course. Uh, on the right side. But this is the official name of the Swiss state.</v> The Latin version was chosen because Switzerland is a country with more than three official languages.</v> At least there are four. But maybe there are even more.</v>
Eugen Pfister>I think so I'm not too sure about that.</v
00:06:04
Eugen Pfister
00:06:07
Um, and because we are not only talking about games and digital games, but also about society,</v> we, uh, use this, uh, portmanteau name to encompass that.</v> But wait, what? I did forget, of course.</v> Again. And something. Let's let's start with the whole title of our project,</v> which is Confederation Ludens Swiss History of Games, play and Game Design from 1968 to 2000.</v> And, uh, this is an, uh, a so-called project project financed by the Snsf.</v> I should have looked up the acronym again, but is the Swiss National Science Funds,</v> I think, which has of course, different names in every language.</v> And it is a joint project. In fact, we are four universities working together,</v> and I think the official definition is or from the point of view, synergy promotes the interdisciplinary collaboration of 2 to 4 research</v>
Eugen Pfister>groups that propose breakthrough research.</v
00:07:05
Eugen Pfister>So that's what we are doing breakthrough research.</v
00:07:08
Eugen Pfister
00:07:11
And we are the maximum of four universities in our case.</v> That's, uh, for us, both the Huckabee, the Bern Academy of Arts, uh, then the University of Bern,</v> the University of Lausanne, Université de Lausanne, and the, uh, the Zurich University of the Arts.</v> So we have a budget of 3 million CHF, most of which goes into the salaries of our 20 colleagues,</v> but also the purchase and maintenance of, uh, software and hardware we are analyzing.</v> And we're not only interested in researching the history of digital games in Switzerland, but also and as I said before,</v> in using this example to explore the history of digitization, um, of society and in our case specific of the Swiss society.</v>
Arno Görgen>Arno Görgen: And yeah, our project is really huge.</v
00:07:59
Arno Görgen
00:08:04
Our team consists of you said it more than 20 colleagues and is being funded,</v> uh, for four years. We started in 2023 and, uh, the project will end next year in 2027.</v> It's, as you said, led by Eugene. And, um, I mean, 20 people need a lot of hierarchy and a lot of structure.</v> So we have our colleagues, Yannick and Tobias Huddle and also me on the Bern side.</v> Um, yeah. Overlooking, overlooking and connecting the four branches of, uh,</v> different universities. And it's also a super interdisciplinary project.</v> And the true sense of the words bring together historians, computer scientists,</v> media scientists, communication scientists, sociologists, design researchers,</v> political scientists, and many more different disciplines.</v> And our team members are also highly international, coming from Switzerland,</v>
Arno Görgen>Austria, Belgium, France and Germany.</v
00:09:08
Arno Görgen
00:09:11
And, um, again, a project that big. How did it even come to be and what did we want to achieve by it?</v> You already hinted on some main ideas, but yeah, how is it even possible that we are now working at this project?</v>
Eugen Pfister
00:09:30
Eugen Pfister: I mean, there are two reasons. I mean, there's of course the research interest and the research or the motivation for this research,</v> which I will come to later. But there's also a very pragmatic reason, um, and always,</v> uh, like to also talk about this pragmatic reasons in academia.</v> Um, and this was that um, let me start, um, on another point, uh, in, our biographies and histories.</v> Um, so we did our project in Bern from 2018 to 2021.</v> And at this time, we also were intensively looking for colleagues in Switzerland,</v> at other universities, universities, also working on game studies in the broadest understanding.</v> So as you said, they're from sociology, political scientists, but also game design development and so on.</v> Um, to see what the others are doing, to get an overview and to think of ways to better cooperate,</v> because, um, as of this moment, there are no institutes for game studies.</v> Um, so we have to find our we have to build up our networks ourselves.</v> And this works very well. And in fact, we were not the first doing this.</v> But, um, if I remember it well, our colleagues from Lausanne were especially active in,</v> uh, searching for all the colleagues in Switzerland.</v> Um, and of course, we have also to mention that The set had the longest history in this,</v> uh, in this research. So they did they did the, um, all the ground, the basic research and the groundwork for everything that came later and</v> did both did an invaluable job for, for our project.</v> Um, so but I'm now losing, uh, losing track, getting back to why why we, uh,</v> started. So one reason was that we got into contact with our colleagues.</v> Um, I met, for example, Yannick Roscher in Lausanne, and we talked about ideas,</v> what we could do together. And one common topic of, uh, all of us were that we are all interested in,</v> uh, not only our special topics, uh, but also in the history of, uh, digital games in Switzerland,</v> because there was not too much, uh, actual output on this before.</v> I mean, the car worked a lot on this, uh, and you can also find it on there,</v>
Eugen Pfister>um, on the web presence. But there are no books.</v
00:11:49
Eugen Pfister>There are almost, if I remember it correctly.</v
00:11:52
Eugen Pfister
00:11:55
Um, no real papers that give you an overview of this history.</v>
Eugen Pfister>And it is a very interesting history.</v
00:12:00
Eugen Pfister
00:12:03
And so the idea was be pragmatic, start with something that we're all interested.</v> Let's do something about the history of, uh, of, uh, digital games in Switzerland.</v> It's a broad topic, of course, because we are very interdisciplinary, so that we have the possibility for all colleagues</v> to do the special research. But under this umbrella, uh, motivation.</v>
Arno Görgen
00:12:24
Arno Görgen: You could also say it falls a little bit into this research trend of doing so to,</v>
Arno Görgen>say, local or regional histories of game history.</v
00:12:30
Arno Görgen>Right.</v
00:12:34
Outro Music>Outro Music: Yeah.</v
00:12:34
Eugen Pfister
00:12:35
Eugen Pfister: So you're totally right. I mean, this, um, we didn't invent this sort of, uh,</v> study. Um, and especially, I mean, one main motive for this, uh, for researching because there are still people</v> that might ask. Uh, yeah, but does it make sense in a small country like Switzerland to look for video games?</v> I mean, the big history is in the United States and the UK and Japan.</v> Yeah, and the reason for this is that what exists as a as a very early form of history of video games that mostly was written by journalists in</v> the beginning, who did a very valuable jobs, by the way, they were concentrating on the US,</v> UK and Japan because that's the master narrative that is concentrating on the console wars of Nintendo and Sega and Atari,</v>
Eugen Pfister>of course, and Nolan Bushnell and so on.</v
00:13:21
Eugen Pfister
00:13:24
So that's the story. Um, all of us know very well from the books, but what we also know,</v> but which is not that much research, is that there happened a lot outside of these countries in Europe,</v> but not only in Europe. There's the work from Melanie Swalwell on, um, Australia and New Zealand,</v> and there is the work, uh, the beautiful book by our colleague Jaroslav.</v> Jaroslav Svelch, uh, on the history of, uh, digital games in Czechoslovakia,</v> "Behind the Iron Curtain". So in the 1980s, there's also the work from our colleague Alexis Blanchet and Guillaume Montagnon on the history of</v> digital games in France. And all these examples show that there is a very dynamic computer culture,</v>
Eugen Pfister>but also video game culture emerging.</v
00:14:08
Eugen Pfister
00:14:12
And I mean, we don't have the time for this, but if you take a look at the video games now,</v> you only can really understand them and their history, how they became.</v> If you also take into account the history of video games outside of the US,</v> UK and Japan and take a look at Europe where, for example, personal computers were much more important.</v> But also and this happens now, uh, take a look at Southern America, which has a beautiful,</v> interesting and weird history of clones and copying and their own development Asia outside of Japan and Africa.</v>
Arno Görgen
00:14:46
Arno Görgen: And what's also interesting for the case of Switzerland is, I think at least that way is that it's also a good case</v> study for that. Also, the more, let's say, uh, internationally, more invisible countries like</v> Switzerland also developed, for example, their, their own, um, hardware platforms like the Smaky or the</v> Lilith computer in Switzerland. Um, and I think this all adds up to some kind of weird,</v> super interesting, multi-lingual history of computer games.</v> That is, as every history, very singular within the whole context of digitization and of computer</v>
Arno Görgen>game history.</v
00:15:37
Eugen Pfister
00:15:39
Eugen Pfister: That's totally right. I mean, we can't talk about everything today.</v> Uh, but, you know, inspired me to many more aspects.</v> Uh, and again, you rein me in if we start to lose focus, um, on this episode.</v> But, uh, yes, it's, uh, analyzing the history of digital games in Switzerland is not something that has to that is exotic or that is,</v> uh, yeah, it could also be interesting, but it is really central for understanding the history of digital games,</v> but also of digitization, because what I found so interesting when delving into this topic and,</v> uh, reading a lot on computer history, is that we have I mean, we're living in a profoundly changed society now that is so,</v> uh, influenced by digitalization. We live digital lives now, but we have almost no,</v>
Eugen Pfister>um, understanding of how this became to be.</v
00:16:27
Eugen Pfister
00:16:31
We understand it as something that was normal and natural and just evolved naturally.</v> And in fact, it always depended from weird accent, uh, accidents or or choices that were made.</v> The history of the microcomputer. For example, you mentioned Swiss, um, developments like the,</v> the Lilith, which was, um, not a microcomputer per se, but a workstation.</v> But as Smaky from the French speaking part, was a functioning personal computer in the broadest sense.</v> Um, and this was a weird, uh, wild pioneering time.</v> And digital games were, from the beginning, always part of this because games and maybe we should mention that games are not some frivolous,</v> uh, pastime to to, um, yes, to pass your time.</v> But they were also a way to, uh, to learn these new platforms, to access these new platforms,</v>
Eugen Pfister>to understand what they can do.</v
00:17:25
Arno Görgen
00:17:28
Arno Görgen: Yeah. This also hints a little bit on the other part of on the one hand, we have the region,</v> Switzerland, with its own, um, special singular developments, individual developments.</v> And uh, there's also the time frame that we research, which is, well, which,</v> uh, is more or less the shift from a purely analog world to a society that's highly digital,</v> digitized, and where on the one hand, we have, uh, things that only happen on paper or only happen in,</v> uh. Today we would say in real life. And then there's the games that are the ways to write about games in fanzines or,</v> um, then there's the early internet where, um, the nerds and geeks of this time come together and,</v> um, yeah, build their first communities to talk about games, to, um, write software and stuff.</v>
Arno Görgen>And it's a very interesting pioneering era.</v
00:18:31
Eugen Pfister
00:18:36
Eugen Pfister: Yeah, you're totally right. And I think that's really, um, at least it's our how do you say guiding research question is,</v> uh, curiosity and interest for how the digital world we now live in came to be and to better understand it.</v> And this is a time when this happened was, uh, the last half of the last century.</v> I mean, uh, we are beginning 1968 because I think the first game, um, I'm not even sure if we're starting with 1968,</v> maybe even earlier now, because the first games we're analyzing are, for example,</v> uh, class programs developed for the big mainframe computers at the ETH and then later the first games that were made for personal computers,</v> of course, in the 1970s to 1990s, 2000.</v> And then we had to stop with, uh, 2000.</v> The interesting thing is, it's not that long ago.</v> So we on one side, we most of us think that this happened in our lifetime.</v> So we are remembering it. But, uh, I was born 1980 and there was early socialized with computers,</v> but even myself, uh, I can, um, I'm astonished by some parts of this history and that I forgot or that I rewrote with my</v> new experiences. And I think that's really one of the core, um, outputs of this project to better understand how this affected</v>
Eugen Pfister>society and culture.</v
00:20:03
Arno Görgen>Arno Görgen: Okay. So so we talked about the time frame.</v
00:20:05
Arno Görgen
00:20:08
We talked about the regional aspect. But the other thing is that, uh, we're not doing this,</v> uh, ooh, creating a master narrative narrative of how cool this, this history is and how singular.</v> But we are also looking onto how all these aspects connect, for example, to the broader region or to the broader.</v> Um, yeah, national context of other, uh, yeah, digitization histories, for example,</v> how are the Swiss, uh, developers connected to German or French or maybe</v> also Scandinavian developers. For example, we have the case that in the demo scene or in also in the,</v> in the part of German games journalism history that there are people from all these other countries that are very</v> tightly connected to Swiss developers, to Swiss players, or to Swiss game journalists or whatever.</v> And this is also a super interesting point, because in my understanding, Switzerland has very much of a transit</v> land where very much communication happens and, uh, people come together because it's in the middle of Europe,</v> and there's no way that Switzerland can exist for itself because it's surrounded with other countries.</v> And, um, the contact to each of these countries is very tight.</v> This also is represented in its languages where you have German, Italian, French,</v> what? And, uh, well, I don't know. Uh, I don't know the English term for this.</v>
Eugen Pfister
00:22:02
Eugen Pfister: Ah, yes. We should have looked at rhaeto-romanic, uh, a form of Latin in, in a way or many different forms of Latin to be true depending of the valley</v>
Eugen Pfister>you're living in.</v
00:22:12
Arno Görgen
00:22:12
Arno Görgen: Yeah. And, um. Yeah. This this is a, for me, a point that shows how much</v> communication happens in this. Uh, yeah.</v>
Arno Görgen>Objectively relatively tiny region of Europe.</v
00:22:26
Eugen Pfister
00:22:32
Eugen Pfister: And what is really interesting is this happened mostly in a time before the internet.</v> We always had to remind ourselves that the built contact with, for example,</v> Linnell, a Swiss developer and publisher based in Appenzell, was, uh, working together with Developers,</v> musicians in in Vorarlberg, in Austria, but also in Germany.</v> They worked a lot together with developers in Italy.</v> I mean, they communicated via telephone and telephone was expensive.</v> They even told us then and they used the postal service for sending scripts,</v> for example, or the fax. I mean, there was also, which Pierre-Yves Hurel from from Lausanne is looking at the early forms of proto</v>
Eugen Pfister>forms of internet with the BBS boards and so on.</v
00:23:12
Eugen Pfister
00:23:15
Yeah, he will talk about that because he has much more knowledge than myself.</v> But it's really it's an interesting pioneering time when, I mean, when when national borders still played a bigger role in your daily life.</v> So for for German developers, for example, when they were invited to Appenzell,</v>
Eugen Pfister>it was something out of the ordinary.</v
00:23:32
Eugen Pfister
00:23:35
They were fascinated by taking the train through the Alps, as they told me in interviews.</v> But on the other side, it was normal to take a look over your national borders because the computer world was from the beginning,</v>
Eugen Pfister>an international community.</v
00:23:46
Arno Görgen
00:23:48
Arno Görgen: Yeah. In game scapes, we have this example where some game aficionados wanted to trade games and they were</v>
Arno Görgen>like, I don't know, 17, 18 years old.</v
00:23:58
Arno Görgen
00:24:01
And they just, uh, loaned to Japan and, uh, tried to get their game.</v>
Outro Music>Outro Music: Must have been so expensive.</v
00:24:07
Arno Görgen
00:24:08
Arno Görgen: On the one hand, it's somehow naive. On the other hand, it's very brave and very,</v> um. Yeah. Forward going. And this is something I also, to some extent admire,</v> which I, I would never do such a thing, for example.</v>
Outro Music>Outro Music: Yeah.</v
00:24:25
Eugen Pfister
00:24:25
Eugen Pfister: And this, uh, in fact, is one, one tiny example.</v>
Eugen Pfister>But of what we are, what we are looking at.</v
00:24:29
Eugen Pfister
00:24:31
This is not I mean, we're talking about the change of society, but, uh, this is one aspect of this change,</v> the broadening of the mind, the global thinking that came in a way I'm not a fan of using the word naturally,</v> but came normally with, uh, with being interested in the development of.</v> Okay. So so we gave, I think, a good first insight in some of our motives and topics.</v> I mean, it's impossible to resume, to resume, to to summarize them here.</v>
Arno Görgen
00:25:01
Arno Görgen: It's impossible. And this is also why we do the project.</v> I mean, we waited pretty long to start with the podcast.</v> Uh, one one aspect is that we didn't know very much at the beginning, and right now we are starting to get an idea of how vast and big</v> this history of, uh, digital games in Switzerland actually is.</v> And, um, yeah, this is also something I mean, we are now getting results from our research.</v> Uh, we have done, for example, more than 150 interviews.</v> We now have a data set of more than 200 games only from the time of the, I don't know,</v>
Arno Görgen>70s to the 2000 more or less.</v
00:25:45
Eugen Pfister>Eugen Pfister: And we started with around 60 in the beginning.</v
00:25:48
Arno Görgen
00:25:52
Arno Görgen: And I think there are coming a lot more from the Nile with the text games.</v> And we have done more than 50 block texts, done a couple of conferences and workshops,</v> and we are reaping the fruits of our hard work right now.</v> And we want you, the audience, to take part in this on the coolest part of our research.</v>
Eugen Pfister>Eugen Pfister: So the nice part. The nice.</v
00:26:16
Arno Görgen>Arno Görgen: Part.</v
00:26:18
Eugen Pfister
00:26:19
Eugen Pfister: Yeah, not the frustrating part where we tried stuff that didn't work out.</v> Uh, interviews that didn't happen. Um, games that we couldn't find, uh, but,</v>
Eugen Pfister>uh, but really, the the output.</v
00:26:29
Arno Görgen
00:26:32
Arno Görgen: Maybe something we could do an episode on the things that were.</v>
Eugen Pfister
00:26:36
Eugen Pfister: I think that's a nice idea. We could, uh, think of that for maybe for the for the last episode.</v>
Eugen Pfister>What didn't work? Uh, because. Yes.</v
00:26:41
Arno Görgen>Arno Görgen: Let's end with a low note.</v
00:26:44
Eugen Pfister
00:26:47
Eugen Pfister: I am maybe on a narrative side, maybe put it somewhere in the middle.</v> Um, sorry. I just wanted to use the opportunity to make to advertise our blog,</v> which is, um, you will find it with, uh, conclusions.</v> Uh, so it's a. Hypothesis. Um, or I think I remembered it.</v> Right. Um, and we we really started with the beginning.</v> So there were the, we we wanted to report on what happened in our project from the beginning,</v> from our kickoff meeting in Bern. Um, and the speed dating organized by, by Mela,</v> which was a beautiful idea. So please take a look at that if you want to find new ways to hold,</v>
Eugen Pfister>uh, workshops inside of your projects.</v
00:27:30
Eugen Pfister
00:27:32
Um, when we were together at conferences, but then really quite early on, the output,</v> for example, uh, Pierre-Yves' 5 or 6 parts on the computer expo at Lausanne,</v> which is a fascinating read. And then there were some case studies by bigger teams.</v> In Bern, for example, um, and all of the work of Beat, he is also a very writer and researcher,</v> and he has the most knowledge on the history of Linel.</v> So, um, yeah. If you're interested in our output, take a look at, uh, at the blog.</v>
Eugen Pfister>Advertisement ends here.</v
00:28:06
Arno Görgen
00:28:08
Arno Görgen: We will, of course, put the, uh, the link also into the show notes of the.</v>
Eugen Pfister>Eugen Pfister: That would be a really good idea. Thank you.</v
00:28:13
Eugen Pfister
00:28:16
Yeah, but talking about output, you said before we have more than 150 interviews.</v> I think it's going into the direction of 200 interviews now, uh, 50 block texts that are partially because,</v> yes, we know a good block essay should be no more than three pages long, but we are coming partially from the humanities.</v>
Eugen Pfister>We never know when it's time to stop.</v
00:28:34
Eugen Pfister>So our our case studies are in fact whole papers.</v
00:28:37
Eugen Pfister
00:28:41
Um, sorry for that. Um, we had two, uh, conferences, international conferences organized from,</v> uh, inside the project, but also reaching out to colleagues, uh, one mainly by our colleagues from the,</v>
Eugen Pfister>um, by Lausanne and the next one by you.</v
00:28:55
Eugen Pfister
00:28:58
So from Bern. Um, I don't know. What do you want to talk a little bit about the conferences?</v>
Arno Görgen
00:29:04
Arno Görgen: No, but I just wanted to add the the second one was by our by the Bern guys and also the the.</v>
Eugen Pfister
00:29:14
Eugen Pfister: Uh, yes. Sorry. You're right. Of course you're right.</v> You're right. Then, uh, we had some internal workshops which were thankfully very much fun,</v> uh, especially also to the expertise from our colleagues in colleagues in Zurich,</v> uh, who know how to combine really exchanging ideas and methods with fun.</v> So these weren't conferences or where we're presenting, but there were, um,</v> speed dating and, uh, little games. And I learned a lot from from Mila and her colleagues.</v> And did I forget something? Yes. Upcoming this year.</v> So the big output will be a book where we also try to find new ways to communicate.</v> So it's not a classical anthology, but we try to make it playful.</v> Make it, I don't know what's the English word for it, a game book like The Lonely Wolf and,</v>
Eugen Pfister>uh, Steve Jackson and Livingstone books?</v
00:30:04
Eugen Pfister
00:30:08
Um, yeah. Or you could also think about it as a hyperlink book, but the papers are not too long.</v> But, uh, all supposed to be very short from one page to maximum of, I think 6 or 7 pages.</v> And they are interlinked. So you can follow up different ways through your lecture of this book.</v> And then there will be also a big conference in, I think, in September, uh,</v> at the Monte Verita, which is also a little success, that we got the funding for that.</v> Yeah. It's beautiful. You have to you have to Google Monte Verita.</v> It's a beautiful place. Um, and I think that's it for the beginning.</v>
Eugen Pfister>For four outputs.</v
00:30:42
Arno Görgen>Arno Görgen: Yeah, yeah, there's not much to add for me here.</v
00:30:43
Arno Görgen>Uh, we are looking. That's not.</v
00:30:47
Eugen Pfister>Eugen Pfister: True.</v
00:30:49
Arno Görgen>Arno Görgen: To present you our project within the next year.</v
00:30:49
Arno Görgen
00:30:52
And I hope within maybe one episode per month, we try more, but, well, we have a lot on our plates,</v> and we hope we can then give you an impression how special and at the same time,</v>
Arno Görgen>how important this research is.</v
00:31:07
Eugen Pfister
00:31:10
Eugen Pfister: That's the idea. Thank you very much, Arnaud.</v> And I want to use this moment to thank you, to thank you in advance for all your work,</v> because, uh, podcasts normally, uh, end up being a workload for Arnaud.</v> He's very professional with cutting, editing and even making music.</v>
Eugen Pfister>Um.</v
00:31:28
Arno Görgen
00:31:28
Arno Görgen: Yeah. Since I'm doing podcasts, I don't listen to them anymore.</v>
Eugen Pfister
00:31:35
Eugen Pfister: And since we're writing blogs, we don't read them anymore. That's not true. Uh,</v>
Eugen Pfister>I'm listening to a lot of podcasts for books.</v
00:31:38
Eugen Pfister>Yeah. Yeah. It was fun talking with you.</v
00:31:41
Eugen Pfister>I think there are many open questions.</v
00:31:45
Eugen Pfister
00:31:48
If you find this podcast, please contact us.</v> You'll find our contact also on the blog, and we'll put also something into the show notes and also in commentaries.</v> Please comment and tell us what you want to hear about what you're most interested in this project.</v> And yeah, that's it. We will hear it later again this year.</v> Many, many times. Oh no, that's not true.</v> Maybe sometimes we will make episodes where only one of us is interviewing another colleague.</v>
Arno Görgen
00:32:12
Arno Görgen: And maybe we even have episodes where none of us is taking part and just our colleagues are talking.</v>
Eugen Pfister>Eugen Pfister: Wild. Cool.</v
00:32:20
Arno Görgen
00:32:22
Arno Görgen: We have episodes where we only show music from the cool Swiss games.</v>
Eugen Pfister
00:32:27
Eugen Pfister: Oh, that's such a great idea. I mean, we should check beforehand about the rights situation.</v> I think the copyright situation. Uh, but they're beautiful.</v> Yeah. Clip tunes. Swiss clip tunes, episode with, uh, Paul Rader and, um,</v>
Eugen Pfister>and, uh, and gates. Yeah. Good idea. I like it.</v
00:32:43
Arno Görgen
00:32:47
Arno Görgen: So, uh, have a good time. We hope you liked it and hear you next time.</v>
Arno Görgen>Bye bye.</v
00:32:53
Eugen Pfister
00:32:53
Eugen Pfister: Thank you. Arnaud. And for me, the same.</v>
Eugen Pfister>Uh, hope to hear you soon. Bye.</v
00:32:56
Arno Görgen>Arno Görgen: Bye bye.</v
00:32:58
Outro Music>Outro Music: CH Ludens</v
00:33:31

2026 - Arno Görgen, Eugen Pfister

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