Program: Gamevironments Research Day on 22nd October

This year’s theme is “Video Games and Our Futures.” Currently in 21st Century society, we face a range of complex issues and wide-sweeping changes and challenges, ranging from radical political and economic shifts, to the implications of climate change and related environmental threats, migration, the impacts of wars, and the long legacies and effects of colonialism, gender inequities and other related power imbalances. These changes will also transform media environments (such as those for video games) and media practices (such as gaming). As mediums of support, reflection, and documentation, but also through their unique technical and interactive storytelling capabilities, these future and future-oriented games may engage and immerse players in dramatically different altered environments and storyworlds. How, then, may we consider, from production and distribution to characters, narratives, and aesthetics, the nature of these transformations and impacts? What visions of the future are depicted in existing games, how were these games made, and by whom? What social and political issues do they address and engage? How will our interactions with them support, deflect, or otherwise alter our modes of play? How might technical innovation alter what is now familiar to us? These are the questions that our invited participants and experts will engage with to help us understand and explore the potential futures of video gaming. Program Gamevironments Research Day