Videogames burst onto the scene of new media almost fifty years ago. Nowadays, not only are they one of the pillars of the entertainment industry but they also perhaps represent the most fertile terrain in terms of narrative production, the processing of new languages, experimentation of solutions and technologies for our daily life and the incubation of social projects. Videogames invade reality and plunder and fuse with other expressive forms, according to an increasingly transmedial logic where the boundaries between the arts become ever more permeable.

With the Histories of Videogames project, Festivaletteratura seeks to provide a first approach to the turbulent and dazzling world of videogames. Over this journey of discovery, we will try not only to read the aesthetics, decipher the codes and map the imaginations but also to show how videogames blend high and low culture, their importance in contemporary art, the imposing philosophical questions on perception and identity, their political use and their widespread use in the field of sociological studies.

These themes will be investigated through:

- A more traditional series of meeting with experts, authors and writers (events 104 , 197 , 220 , 254 , 273)

- Some critical approaches to videogames, a kind of lesson/show in which specific themes will be tackled by the "teachers", who make the public play (events 17 , 67 , 123)

- Two workshops on writing video games, following two different approaches (events 88 , 169)

- A game room with thirty spaces, open every day during the Festival, curated by Andrea Dresseno from the Archivio Videoludico della Cineteca in Bologna together with We Are Müesli, which outlines the history of videogames through five major themes: courtly love, the sublime, war and peace, invisible cities and the historical avant-garde

- Travelogue, an audiovisual installation created by international artists using videogames, curated by Matteo Bittanti.