As part of Digital Society @Manchester Met​, the Manchester Writing School would like to invite you for a day of exploring 'immersion'; a term now ubiquitous in literature, film and XR.

The Manchester Metropolitan Game Centre is excited to host a panel on current trends in LARP research with Michaël Freudenthal, Jonaya Kemper and Evan Torner, and chaired by Chloé Germaine.

At this event, Kristina Neidderer will discuss the challenges and joys of codesigning All about Us, a boardgame that provides support to people will early to mid-stage dementia. Attendees will then get the opportunity to play the game.

Imagine the world's decision-makers have been pressured by the people they represent to take climate breakdown seriously. In Daybreak, each player controls one of 4 world powers: the US, China, Europe, and the Majority World. Together, they need to decarbonise all aspects of society, while protecting communities from climate shocks.

Repurposing materials salvaged from gaming culture in service of queer worldbuilding and trans-futurist speculation, Tabitha Nikolai’s artistic practice spans costume design, nail art, participatory performance and the design of text adventures and virtual environments. In this conversation with Rob Gallagher (Manchester Metropolitan University) Tabitha will discuss the themes, ideas and reference points that run through her work.​

MGSN PhD student Gemma Potter is exploring crossovers between craft and digital gaming as part of doctoral program Transformation North West. At this event, Gemma will share her research approach through which she has co-created a series of grafted games in order to assess the potential of these crossovers for the manufacturing industry in the North West. Gemma will discuss her research before inviting you to think about how the grafting approach could be applied to other contexts.

The Manchester Games Studies Network is hosting two exciting research papers on contemporary indie videogames. ‘Dr Seán Travers (University College Cork), ‘Nihilism, Violence and Popular Culture: The Postmodern Psychopath in Toby Fox’s Undertale’ and Charlotte Gislam, ‘Learning Spatial Grammar in The Binding of Isaac.’

This event investigates the use of Dungeons & Dragons 5e to engage with the history of the early Islamic world. We ask what challenges are posed by the use of historical settings in roleplaying games.

This event explores the ways in which players create, encounter and interact with the environment in indie roleplaying games. This will be a panel discussion featuring award-winning roleplaying game designers from the UK and the US, including the creators of Cthulhu Hack, Cthulhu Dark and Trophy.

It is hard to find a definitive answer to why people in the ancient world were so interested in knucklebones, but in this online presentation, Dr Ada Nifosi (Lecturer in Ancient History; University of Kent) will show some examples of their variety of uses in different contexts.

The Portico Library invites the public to a programme celebrating games and recreation through the ages. From Jane Austen’s depictions of the card-playing Georgian middle classes to Dickens’ festivals and dances, 19th-century literature describes the roles that pastimes play in our cultural lives, and the social, moral and intellectual aspects of game-playing.

Dr Ben Edwards will discuss the recreation of the Stone Age site Bryn Celli Ddu (Angelsey) in Minecraft, and how it enables teachers, kids and adults to explore the archaeology around the 5,000 year old site – one of the most impressive megalithic tombs in the UK.

In this online seminar, the creators of 'Diamond the Game' discuss how they developed a game to communicate the processes of Diamond Light Source, the UK's national synchrotron.

In this online session Mick Chesterman will outline his work and research on collaborative game making with mixed age and ability groups.

Join Professor Sylvester Arnab as he presents his findings on game-based research and practice towards solving a variety of real-world problems, discusses the latest advancements in the academic field and concludes on common misconceptions and pitfalls in the domain.

In this talk, Dr Huw Lloyd will report on recent work that has been done on solving Japanese Pencil Puzzles with nature-inspired algorithms.

In this seminar, Dr Jennifer Cromwell will explore how – and how successfully – Assassin’s Creed Origins unites the worlds of gaming, digital humanities, and Egyptology.

In this seminar, John Lean will discuss how what started out as a straightforward design-based project has, through embracing play as a cultural form, become more about how games can be used as an extended metaphor to understand and enhance undergraduates’ experiences of university

In this seminar, Dr Dawn Stobbart will discuss the relationship horror has with videogames, showing how this medium portrays horror, how it utilizes representations of horror in other media to horrify the player, and how videogames can incite a stronger reaction than in other media.

The Game Design Masterclass is a crash course in the theory and practice of creating exciting boardgames and card games. This event will be led by professional game-maker James Wallis, creator of Once Upon A Time, The Extraordinary Adventures Of Baron Munchausen and the new RPG Alas Vegas.