Stefano Gualeni


Stefano Gualeni is an Italian philosopher, professor, and game designer who has created video games such as Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths, ''Gua-Le-Ni; or, The Horrendous Parade, and Something Something Soup Something''.
Gualeni is currently a full professor at the Institute of Digital Games of the University of Malta, where he pursues academic research in the fields of game design, virtual worlds research, the philosophy of technology, science fiction, and existentialism.
He had been a visiting researcher in various international institutions, including the Laguna College of Art and Design of Laguna Beach, California, the Centre of the Digital Humanities of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, the Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies at the Ritsumeikan University of Kyoto, Japan, and the Faculty of Media and Communication of the Singidunum University of Belgrade, Serbia.
WWW gua-le-ni.com

Background

Stefano Gualeni was born in Lovere, Italy in 1978, Gualeni graduated in 2004 in architecture at the Politecnico di Milano. His final thesis was developed in Mexico and is supported by ITESM.
Gualeni was awarded his Master of Arts in 2008 at the Utrecht School of the Arts. In his thesis, he proposed a model for digital aesthetics inspired by Martin Heidegger's existential phenomenology.
He obtained his PhD in Philosophy at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2014. His dissertation, titled Augmented Ontologies, focuses on virtual worlds in their role as mediators: as interactive, artificial environments where philosophical ideas, world-views, and thought-experiments can be manipulated and communicated experientially.

Academic work

Gualeni's work takes place in the intersection between continental philosophy and the design of virtual worlds. Given the practical and interdisciplinary focus of his research - and depending on the topics and the resources at hand - his output takes the form of academic texts, literary fictions, and/or of interactive digital experiences. In his articles and essays, he presents computers as instruments to prefigure and design ourselves and our worlds, and as gateways to experience alternative possibilities of being.
In 2015, Gualeni released the book with Palgrave Macmillan. Inspired by post-phenomenology and by Martin Heidegger's philosophy of technology, the book attempts to answer questions such as: will experiencing worlds that are not 'actual' change our ways of structuring thought? Can virtual worlds open up new possibilities to philosophize?
His 2020 book with Daniel Vella,, engages with the question of what it means to exist in virtual worlds. Drawing from the tradition of existentialism, it introduces the notion of 'virtual subjectivity' and discusses the experiential and existential mechanisms by which can move into, and out of, virtual subjectivities. It also includes chapters that specifically leverage the work of Helmuth Plessner, Peter W. Zapffe, Jean-Paul Sartre and Eugen Fink to think through the existential significance of the virtual.
His contributions to the edited volumes Experience Machines: Philosophy in Virtual Worlds, Towards a Philosophy of Digital Media, and Perspectives on the European Videogame similarly focus on the experiential and existential effects and possibilities disclosed by virtual technologies.
One of the central themes of Gualeni's work revolves around the fact that the history of philosophy has, until recently, merely been the history of written thought. He argues that we are, however, witnessing a technological shift in how philosophy is pursued, valued, and communicated. In that respect, Gualeni advances the claim that digital media can constitute an alternative and a complement to our almost-exclusively linguistic approach to developing and communicating thought. He considers virtual worlds to be philosophically viable and advantageous in contexts like thought experiments, in the case of philosophical inquiries concerning non-actual state of affairs, and for speculative research into non-human phenomenologies.

Monographic books (non-fiction)

  • Gualeni, S. 2024. Il videogioco del mondo: Istruzioni per l'uso. Palermo : Time0.
  • Gualeni, S. & Fassone, R. 2022. Fictional Games: A Philosophy of Worldbuilding and Imaginary Play. London : Bloomsbury.
  • Gualeni, S. & Vella, D. 2020. Virtual Existentialism: Meaning and Subjectivity in Virtual Worlds. Basingstoke : Palgrave.
  • Gualeni, S. 2015. Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools: How to Philosophize with a Digital Hammer. Basingstoke : Palgrave MacMillan.

Novels (fiction)

  • Gualeni, S. 2025. What We Owe the Dead. Eindhoven : Set Margins'.
  • Gualeni, S. 2023. The Clouds: An Experiment in Theory-Fiction. New York : Routledge.

Book chapters

  • Sun, Y & Gualeni, S. 2025. ", Nelson Zagalo & Damián Keller In Artificial Media: Emerging Trends in Narratives, ''Education and Creative Practice. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, pp. 49-63.
  • Gualeni, S. & Vella, D. 2023., Marta Martín Núñez Jugar el malestar. Ludonarrativas más allá de la diversión. Santander : Shangrila, pp. 14–21.
  • Van de Mosselaer, N. & Gualeni, S. 2022. . In Gottwald, D., Vahdat, V., Turner-Rahman, G. Virtual Interiorities. Pittsburgh : ETC Press, Vol. 3, pp. 21–44.
  • Gualeni, S. & Vella, D. 2021. . In Navarro-Remesal, V. & Pérez-Latorre O. Perspectives on the European Videogame. Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, pp. 175–192.
  • Gualeni, S. 2019. . In Gerber, A. and Goetz, U. The Architectonics of Game Spaces: The Spatial Logic of the Virtual and its Meaning for the Real. Bielefeld : Transcript, pp. 153–165.
  • Gualeni, S. 2018. . In Romele, A. and Terrone, E., Towards a Philosophy of Digital Media. Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 225–255.
  • Gualeni, S. 2017. . In Silcox, M., Experience Machines: The Philosophy of Virtual Worlds. London : Rowman and Littlefield International, pp. 113–136.
  • Gualeni, S. 2015. . In Zagalo, N. and Branco, P.. Creativity in the Digital Age''. Springer Series on Cultural Computing, XIV. London : Springer-Verlag, pp. 59–74.

Ludography

Playable academic works

Stefano is a philosopher who designs games videogames and a game designer who is passionate about philosophy. Although his academic work largely takes the form of texts, he also designs virtual experiences that have the specific objective of disclosing thought experiments and ideas in ways that are interactive and negotiable.
The following are part of his ongoing 'playable philosophy' project:
Other playable academic works:
  • ' : a strategic two-player tile-laying game meant as a satirical take on the unrestrained residential construction in Malta. The game was a finalist for SaltCON's 2021 Ion Award in the Strategy Category. : a free, playful toolkit for primary school students to be used in class, part of a 3-year research project funded by the Erasmus+ program

Commercial titles released as game designer

Gua-Le-Ni; or, The Horrendous Parade Prezzemolo in una Giornata da Incubo Tony Tough 2: A Rake's Progress Midway Classics 2 Midway Classics 1 Dangerous Heaven Prezzemolo in una Giornata da Incubo Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths
  • ''Mikro Mortal Tennis''

Other game industry credits

  • Stefano is listed in the 'extra credits' of the 2013 Independent Games Festival 'Student Showcase finalist' videogame ATUM for having acted as project supervisor and game design consultant.
  • Stefano designed Necessary Evil, a small, critical video game developed together with Dino Dini, Marcello Gòmez Maureira and Jimena Sànchez Sarquiz. The game was presented at the 2013 Digital Games Research Association conference in Atlanta as an example of the meta-reflexive and critical potential of the medium.
  • Stefano is listed in the credits of the 2012 action-adventure video game The Unfinished Swan for having tested early versions of the game and having provided design-related feedback.
  • Gualeni appears in the credits of Playlogic Entertainment's 2009 hack-and-slash video game Fairytale Fights for having helped with quality assurance recruiting and training.
  • Stefano is thanked in the credits of the videogame EXP for having helped with the structuring of the game concept and having acted as project supervisor. EXP received honorable mention in the 2011 Independent Games Festival Student Showcase.
  • Stefano is in the 'special thanks' section of the credits of the videogame Chewy! for having provided game design guidance. Chewy! was honored with the 'Best Design' award at the 2011 Independent Propeller Awards at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.