At the 18th annual Spring Seminar at Tampere University (May 4-6, 2022), Jan Švelch and Jaroslav Švelch presented a paper about industrial reflexivity of video game art books. Taking a closer look at these reportedly lucrative coffee table pulblications, which are now being published for most major video games, the two researchers looked at how these books represent video game production. While primarily consisting of concept art, some art books also include behind-the-scenes narratives and making-of trivia. As such, they can emphasize the contribution of concept artists to video game development. What is, however, important in this regard is the treatment and crediting of individual concept artists, which differs from book to book. Some publications give individual credits, while other present images anonymously.

The theme of the 18th Spring Seminar was Gamebooks and it covered various intersections of books, literature, and games, including in-game representations of books and libraries, game novelizations, puzzlebooks and other playful approaches to books. The full program can be found here.