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Prof. Dipl.-Dramaturg Univ. Daniel Heßler

Professorship for Game Design

Fast facts

Organizational unit
Design
Field of work
Game Design
Location & room
Campus Max-Ophüls-Platz MOP-2, Room 121
Employee group
Teachers
Function
Program Director Serious Games & Digital Knowledge (B.A.)
E-mail
daniel.hesslerfh-dortmundde

About the person

Daniel Heßler teaches and conducts research in the fields of game design, interactive storytelling, serious games, media theory, and humor theory.

He studied dramaturgy, modern German literature, and psychology at LMU Munich / the Bavarian Theater Academy August Everding and worked from 2002 to 2012 in the independent theater scene, at the municipal theater, and on international touring productions as a dramaturg, director, writer, and performer.

Since 2005, he has been developing and publishing games in the genres of action RPG, RTS, visual novel, and tabletop RPG, including titles for Kalypso Media and Ulisses Spiele. From 2015 to 2022 , he taught Media Studies and Media Practice (B.A.), Computer Game Studies (M.A./M.Sc.), and Literature and Media (M.A.) at the Game Innovation Lab at the University of Bayreuth, as well as gamified didactics at the Bayreuth Center for Higher Education Teaching. He was a lecturer at HMT Leipzig, Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, and Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences; Creative Director of the LevelUp project at JLU Giessen; and has served as a judge at the German Dev Days since 2020.

In June 2024, he assumed the Professorship in Game Design at the Fachhochschule Dortmund and heads the Serious Games & Digital Knowledge (B.A.) study program . He is a member of the GameLabs network at universities and a founding member of the German Society for Game Studies.

Publications

Research

Lectures etc.

Goals, Rules, Actions. Foundations of Ludo-Narrative Aesthetics. ( Summer School: Applied Storytelling. JMU Würzburg, Research Training Group “The Experience of Stories in the Digital Age (TESDA),” July 30, 2026; URL(Opens in a new tab) )
Competency Development Through Serious Games: Experts’ Expectations and Their Implications for BaN Game Design. (Nature Meets Play. Transforming Environmental Education Through Games. Reykjavík University, March 17, 2026; with Prof. Dr. Jennifer Tiede; URL(Opens in a new tab) )
12 Types of Fun. Keynote at the MittelstandsMakerthon 2026. (Fachhochschule Dortmund / In|Die Region Westfalen, February 17, 2026; URL(Opens in a new tab) )
Think: Loop. Procedural rhetoric for teaching sustainability principles. ( HumboldtN NRW Research Center, online; June 12, 2025; lecture series “Sustainable Through Play? Gamification in Sustainability Communication”; URL(Opens in a new tab) )
Fundamentals of Game Studies for Social Work. (Fachhochschule Dortmund, Applied Social Sciences, May 23, 2025)
“Aha” Moments and Minor Infractions: Normality and Creativity in TTRPGs. ( University of Cologne, February 25, 2025; Symposium “The Didactics of TTRPGs—Ludonarrative Role-Playing in German Language Classes.”)
Tower and Dungeon at Max-Ophüls-Platz: The DigiLab at Fachhochschule Dortmund ( Martin Luther University Halle, online; January 14, 2025; lecture series “The World of GameLabs”)
Game Studies, Game Design, Game Didactics: Gameplay Verbs in the Curriculum for Serious Games. (Technical University of Dortmund; January 7, 2025; lecture series “Science and Play: Disciplinary Approaches to Game Studies”)
Immersion and Agency in Digital and Non-Digital Games. (Heimerer Academy for Social Pedagogy, Munich; July 17, 2024)
Serious Games: Didactics Based on Mechanics and Interfaces (German Police University, Münster; June 24, 2024; with Prof. Roger Walk)
Serious Games: How to Ideate Gameplay Mechanics with a Purpose (Erasmus Project DIGITCRESHE, Banja Luka College, Bosnia and Herzegovina; June 4, 2024)
Theory of Humor and Serious Games (FU Hagen, Online, April 9, 2024)
Puppet, Mirror, Bam! On Embodied Understanding in Slapstick Avatars (Beyond Gravity: Reflexions; Festival for Digital Arts, Dance, and Performance, a collaboration between the Academy for Theater and Digitality and the Theater im Depot, Dortmund; November 26, 2023)
LevelUp Serious Games & Digital Knowledge – Production Peeks (Showcase Booth; GameDays, June 13–14, 2023, TU Darmstadt)
The LevelUp Project at JLU Giessen (QUADIS – Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education / Campus Meets Castle / University of Bayreuth, March 18, 2024; with Prof. Dr. Nicole Immig)
The Relationship Between Immersion and Learning in XR – Expert Interview with Dr. Thorsten Aichele and Daniel Heßler ( Interview; ZHL, University of Bayreuth; 2023)
Against Exposition: On Emergent Narrative. ( LevelUp JLU Giessen, Winter of Games; November 16, 2022)
Storytelling in Video Games—How Does It Even Work? (Medientage Munich, October 18, 2022)
Game Innovation Lab: Gameful Teaching, Playful Innovation (Showcase Booth; StartPLAY 2022: 1st Interdisciplinary Conference on Gamification and Entrepreneurship. University of Koblenz-Landau, August 5–6, 2022; with Robin Hädicke)
Humor in the Classroom (GEW Bavaria, Online, April 7, 2022)
Teaching and Assessing Games: Insights from Six Years of Computer Game Studies at the University of Bayreuth. ( Justus Liebig University Giessen / HessenHub, December 17, 2021)
Narrative Design: Conflict Design and Emergence. (Guest lecture in the Game Design study program, June 6, 2019, University of Applied Sciences Europe, Hamburg)
You Lose, You Laugh – On Agency, Loss, and Humor in Computer Games. (Annual Conference of the International Society for Humor Studies, June 25–29, 2018, University of Tallinn)
Jesus as a Hero. Depictions of Jesus in Computer Games. (Rabanus Maurus Catholic Academy, December 7, 2015, Haus am Dom, Frankfurt)
Primary Gameplay Mode. On Gameplay Elements in *Sucker Punch*, *Kung Fury*, and *Fist of Jesus*. (Conference of the AG Games: Interplay of Cineludic Forms. November 21, 2015, Frankfurt Film Museum)