Playful Learning: A Conference Like No Other
My workshop was billed as a world record attempt for the shortest game jam (there is a record for this, but Guiness told me that it was not administered by them). Essentially, I sat down four groups of four and five participants around piles of game pieces and printed out grids. After only five minutes of game chat I asked them to simply start playing. Miraculously, it worked! People were soon rolling dice, drawing boards, moving pieces around and talking intently. As a facilitator there was not much for me to do as I saw three of the groups games resolve out of the chaos, the laughter and banter got louder. …
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Emote VR Voicer
Dr Adinda van ‘t Klooster received support from the Manchester Game Centre for her launch of the Emote VR Voicer project (2024–2027) and closing event of the Singing Graphics in VR exhibition at the Holden Gallery. People booked in to experience one of two VR artworks (VRoar or the AudioVirtualizer) and filled in a questionnaire before and after. This helped to assess if there was any change in positive or negative emotion as a result from the artwork. The data is now being analysed and submitted for publication by the project team. The main findings were that positive emotion significantly increased for singers experiencing VRoar and for non-singers experiencing the AudioVirtualizer.
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Is it really green? Video from UK Games Expo panel
There are no easy answers for to how to “green” board games but STRATEGIES researchers from Manchester Game Centre teamed up with the Green Games Guide, as well as with designers from independent studios and Asmodee, to explore how the industry is grappling with important dilemmas.
We discussed the strategies that are already being used to reduce the impact of board games on the planet, and also highlighted areas where more research, knowledge and action is needed.
Watch the video here.
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Funding Call Open - Game in Lab International Projects
We are happy to announce the opening of the Game in Lab 2025 international call for projects, which will be accepting submissions until September 15th.
Game in Lab invite research teams all around the world to submit their proposals about board games. All areas are welcome, whether social sciences, psychology, linguistics, arts, or any other.
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Call for Papers: Exploratory Green Gaming Seminar
The Green Gaming seminar is a cooperative adventure developed in collaboration with the Game Studies Research Centre (Poland), the Manchester Game Centre (UK), Cologne Game Lab (Germany) and the Centre for Excellence in Game Studies (Finland). The event will take place over a month, and explore ideas at the crossroads of game studies, environmental sciences, and ecomedia research.
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Games Workshop Research Day 2025
We are pleased to announce that our second annual Games Workshop Research Day is taking place on Saturday 11th October 2025!
For its second outing the event will run all day from 9:30 until 20:30 and has three parts. The morning will be dedicated to talks about Games Workshop’s games, the afternoon will be a ‘playable exhibition’ in which we pair gaming with presentations, and the day will conclude with a social evening of sporting mayhem as we come together to watch Blood Bowl played live.
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DVRS Games Festival - Recap
In April 2025, Dr Satish Shehorak organised the first international diverse games festival at Manchester Metropolitan’s School of Digital Arts. Satish is a Senior Lecturer in SODA and Programme Leader for MA Games Art. He also researches the inclusivity and diversity in video game representation, working with UKIE to collect longitudinal data on this issue. Satish’s research is part of the MGC’s Narrative and Representation research theme.
DVRS hosted two days of talks and a networking event showcasing diverse speakers and topics across games development as well as animation and film. Working in collboration with PoC in Play, UKIE, Gameopolis and the Liverpool Game Dev Network, the festival engaged over 80 attendees in person and 500 online with speakers and presenters Shifally Rattan, Senior Character Artist at Infinity Ward, Harvey Newman, Game Director and Animation Specialist, founder of Proxima Studio, Helen Kaur, UI Art Director at Hundred Star Games, Darshana Jayemanne, Reader in Digital Cultures at Abertay University and others.
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Hacking Magic - Report on the Utrecht Gamelab x MGC Franchise Hacking workshop
On April 30th 2025, the Utrecht Gamelab and the Manchester Game Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University collaborated on a first-of-its-kind hybrid three-hour co-design workshop, building on the work of Chloe Germaine and Paul Wake on ‘game hacking’ and the ‘franchise hacking’ technique developed by the Utrecht Game Lab on the basis of Germaine and Wake’s earlier work to experiment with re-designing Magic: The Gathering (MTG) as a medium for climate education.
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Calling All Video Gamers Aged 18-35!
Please help our PhD researcher, Richard Rowlinson whose doctorate examines the relationship between socio-economic and gender status on games and consumer behaviour.
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How the ‘manosphere’ spreads through online gaming, influencers and algorithms
This article is republished from The Conversation and is written by Manchester Game Centre narrative and representation lead, Frazer Heritage, with Lisa Sugiura, Associate Professor in Cybercrime and Gender, University of Portsmouth.
The Netflix series Adolescence has generated discussions about masculinity, male violence and the effect of “manosphere” content on boys. The manosphere is a collection of men’s rights and misogynistic groups that are interconnected through websites, blogs and forums that promote masculinity, misogyny and opposition to feminism.
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First ever UK Diverse Games Festival launches at Manchester Met
DVRS Games Festival, the first festival focused around diversity in the gaming industry will be held at Manchester Met next month, from Thursday, April 10 to Friday, April 11, 2025.
It is a collaboration between the university’s School of Digital Arts (SODA) and POC in Play, the organisation geared towards increasing the representation of people of colour in the video game industry.
The festival is co-funded and supported by the Manchester Game Centre.
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Student Internship Opportunity - Game Design for Sustainability
Student Internship 2025 - Game Design for Sustainability
We are looking for a motivated research intern to assist with data collection and compilation for STRATEGIES – Sustainable Transition for Europe’s Game Industries, a live research project exploring sustainability practices in game development.
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What Can Game Design Tell Us About Learners' Agency in Higher Education?
On 5th February 2025, Dr John Lean delivered an invited talk to the Computer and Information Science research group at Northumbria University. Titled ‘What can game design tell us about learners' agency in higher education?’
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Rolling for Community - Dr Sören Henrich on how D&D shaped his identity and connections in academia
Recently, game centre member and researcher in games for health and well-being, Dr Sören Henrich, wrote for the British Psychological Society about how roleplaying plays a part in his academic life and research…
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Keynote Announcement - Multiplatform 2025
Dr. Jeff Howard, Associate Professor of Games and Occulture at Falmouth University
For Multiplatform, 2025, Rituals of Play, Jeff will deliver a seminar on “Playful Occultism” that explores manifestations of the occult in relation to play and games.
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Rituals of Play - Multiplatform 2025 Call for Papers
Rituals of Play is our theme for Multiplatform 2025, the annual MGC symposium dedicated to analogue and video game studies. This year’s event is a collaboration with DVRK - the Dark Arts Research Kollective - at Manchester Metropolitan University.
This DVRK edition of Multiplatform will explore the intersections between games and occulture, investigating the transformative potential of games as forms of rituals to explore alternative histories and speculate on radical futures.
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New Publication - The Call of the Eco-Weird in Fiction, Films, and Games
The Manchester Game Centre are pleased to announce the publication today of research by Chloé Germaine on ecological ethics, aesthetics and board games. The chapter, “Tabletop Eco-Weird: Gameplay Experience and Ecological Ethics”, appears in the new book, The Call of the Eco-Weird in Fiction, Films, and Games that is edited by Brian Hisao Onishi and Nathan M. Bell. It arises from the collaborative research carried out by various folks at The Society for the Study of the Eco-Weird, hosted out of Penn State university.
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Aasa Timonen: Researching Warhammer in Manchester Metropolitan University
In September 2024 we were delighted to welcome Aasa Timonen as the Manchester Game Centre’s first International Visiting Research Fellow. Read Aasa’s account of her stay in Manchester in this short blog…
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CALL FOR PAPERS - Interactive Games Postgraduate Research Conference 2025
Are you a Postgraduate Researcher researching video games, board games, VR, or any other type of interactive play? Check out this call for papers from the Investigate.Games group over at York St John university…
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