Game Design

Hiloko Kato works as a senior researcher in Game Design with a focus on game reception, teaches in the Major Game Design and researches media reception in the SNF Sinergia project «Confoederatio Ludens - Swiss Game History, Play and Game Design 1968-2000». Further, she is associated with Prof. Heiko Hausendorf’s chair in German Linguistics at the University of Zurich and works as a lecturer at the German Seminar.

As a linguist, Hiloko Kato is interested in interfaces between digital games and language. This includes the semiotic analysis of games (understood as multimodal texts) and investigating games as a cultural asset using media and discourse linguistic approaches. Her current research focuses on the interactional production of digital agency in human players, game characters, animals, and other agents of digital transformation (robots, AI).

As Chair of the DSI Community Gaming, Hiloko Kato is committed to connecting researchers, stakeholders and interested parties in the field of digital games.