TOM BYERS

My research sits at the intersection of HCI, game studies, and industry-facing design scholarship. I investigate how games organise player time and how those structures are experienced across contemporary digital play.

Recent Publications:

Byers, T., Gibbs, M., & Nansen, B. (2025). Evaluating Time in Play and Temporal Satisfaction: Time-Centric Language in Video Game User Reviews on Steam. In Conference Proceedings of the 37th Australian Conference on Human–Computer Interaction (OzCHI 2025). https://doi.org/10.1145/3764687.3764693.

Byers, T. (2025). Time and Change in Virtual Worlds: Understanding Ludo-Solastalgia. Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds, Special Issue: ‘Time, Play and Games’, 17:2, pp. 221–234, https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw_00121_1.

Byers, T., Gibbs, M., & Nansen, B. (2025). Selling Time: Time-Centric Language in Video Game Marketing on Steam. Conference Proceedings of DiGRA 2025 Conference: Games at the Crossroads, 2025(2). https://doi.org/10.26503/dl.v2025i2.2434.

Byers, T., Gibbs, M., & Nansen, B. (2025). Shaping Time in Games: Developer Approaches to Temporality. Abstract Proceedings of DiGRA 2025 Conference: Games at the Crossroads, 2025(3). https://doi.org/10.26503/dl.v2025i3.2582.

Bacalja, A., Nichols, T. P., Robinson, B., Bhatt, I., Kucharczyk, S., Zomer, C., … & Schnaider, K. (2024). Postdigital videogames literacies: thinking with, through, and beyond James Gee’s learning principles. Postdigital Science and Education, 1-40. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42438-024-00510-3.

Ford, H., Sidoti, F., Falk, M., Pietsch, T., & Byers, T. (2024). How Australian places are represented on Wikipedia (No. 2). University of Technology, Sydney. https://wikihistories.github.io/reports/2024.

Byers, T. (2024). Speaking of Time: Time-centric Language in Video Game Marketing and User Reviews on Steam. In Abstract Proceedings of DiGRA 2024 Conference: Playgrounds. https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dl/article/view/2263.

Byers, T., & Nansen, B. (2024). Understanding Content Creation: An Exploration of the Social, Technical, and Professional Elements of Video Game Content Creation. In Conference Proceedings of DiGRA 2024 Conference: Playgrounds. https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dl/article/view/2240.

Byers, T., Gibbs, M., & Nansen, B. (2024). Temporality of Play: Time in Digital Playgrounds. In Abstract Proceedings of DiGRA 2024 Conference: Playgrounds. https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dl/article/view/2375.