News
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.
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.
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…
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…
In partnership with MeCCSA, the University of Sunderland is delighted to announce a special symposium on Creative Methodologies: Practical Play and Media Multiplicities, a two-day event, examining methodologies of practice-based media research, from podcasts to games making. Our keynote speakers for this event are: Lance Dann (The University of Brighton), Chloe Germaine (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Nick Lewis (The University of Sunderland).
This symposium aims to interrogate the wide range of creative methodologies in media research as a showcase for the multiplicities of media and cultural studies. This event incorporates a cross-disciplinary and inclusive approach to practice-based research. We welcome papers examining autoethnographies, participant-action-led games jams as a way of video game making, R&D as well as ludological and narratological approaches to game studies, peer reviewed podcasts, the utilisation of video game journals, AI approaches to methodologies. We are also open to proposals on creative methodologies we may not have mentioned as we appreciate the breadth and depth of media’s multiplicities.
Stories of Intangible Heritage and Cultural Practices (of Horseracing) through Place-based Immersive Interactive Experiences: National Horse Racing Museum
Closing date: 18 March 2025
Fully-funded PhD
This project celebrates the vibrant cultural practices, intangible heritage, and unique social rituals of horse racing through emergent immersive and interactive storytelling. It aims to explore how these practices can be made tangible and publicly accessible via bespoke, place-based immersive experiences within a museum context. Focusing on the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket – the birthplace of horse racing, the global epicentre of the sport, and the financial hub of the racing trade in Europe – this practice-based research will delve into innovative ways of storytelling using immersive and interactive media.
We are excited to share the news that Game in Lab and Analog Game Studies are once again joining forces to host Generation Analog 2025, taking place online on July 16 & 17, 2025.
This year's theme is PUNK, exploring how games embody and express punk attitudes, spaces, and art.
Games have massive global reach among diverse populations. The transformative potential of the game industry is therefore huge, but research is needed if this potential is to be realised. The idea that games address the challenge of climate change has been established through the study of ‘ecogames’. However, optimism about the potential of ecogames is undercut by research into the negative material impact of game development, raising the question: how can we make and play games sustainably?
Apply to join a team of three new PhDs working on a project that addresses this question through interdisciplinary research across Art and Design, English Studies, Philosophy and Cultural Sociology. The three PhD projects will investigate the ecosystem of game design, game artefacts, and game consumption.
They are funded by the AHRC North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership and will be hosted at Manchester Metropolitan University and Salford University.
The conference panel addressed the multifaceted challenges of preserving video games. As the games industry evolves rapidly, the importance of preserving not only hardware and software but also play experiences becomes increasingly critical. This panel explored the roles of various stakeholders, including academia, industry, and archival institutions, in ensuring the longevity of digital games. Key topics included the potential for new archival releases by industry players, standardisation of codebases for future emulation, and the feasibility of creating a reference library akin to the Bodleian Library for games. The panel aims to generate actionable insights and encourage collaborative efforts in game preservation.
Playful Learning will take place on 2nd – 4th July 2025 at the University of Sussex in Brighton and our theme is 🥸 Surprise and Disguise. We're looking for submissions in all areas relating to the use of play or playfulness in relation to adult learning, including – but not limited to – higher and further education, playful workplaces, and lifelong learning.
In this talk at Essen Spiel, Paul and Chloe shared the results of the Games Imagining the Future project and revealed how it led to the development of STRATEGIES. They also looked ahead to the ways in which this current research hopes to support the board game industry in its aims to support ecological thinking and a transition to a more sustainable and just society.
Manchester Game Centre members Dr Reuben Martens and Dr Jack Warren have published essays in Kelly I. Aliano’s and Adam Crowley’s edited collection Video Games and Environmental Humanities: Playing to Save the World. According to the editors, the collection demonstrates how ‘video games engage in a form of ecocriticism like any other humanities field might’ while offering ‘meaningful knowledge about environments, ecology, and/or environmental crisis’ (2024: vii). Reuben and Jack feature in the collection's ‘Video Games and Environments’ section. Reuben’s chapter, ‘Fuelling the City: On the Politics of Energy Resource Extraction in City-Building Simulators’, explores the perpetuation of petrocapitalism in the ideological underpinnings and infrastructural representations of city-building games. Jack’s chapter, ‘Queer Thinking with Digital Stones’, explores the ecological and affective dimensions of World of Warcraft, particularly concerning the importance of stones and their sensations in digital environments.
From the 30th October to the 1st of November, esports enthusiasts, industry professionals, scholars and researchers from all around the world gathered at the Staffordshire University London for the ERNC2024. As the esports ecosystem continues to evolve, the conference explored themes such as the dynamic intersections between gaming cultures, competitive play, sustainability, diversity & inclusion, and spectatorship within the esports ecosystem. The presentations, panels, and keynote talks provided innovative ideas and valuable insights for the future of esports!
The Manchester Game Centre are pleased to say that its members have joined the prestigious UKRI Peer Review College. Dr Tom Brock, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, and Dr Chloé Germaine, Reader in Game Studies in the Department of English, have both recently joined the UKRI Talent Peer Review College.
It is with great pleasure that we invite you to participate in the 13th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health, which will be an in-person only event. The conference is set to take place in Manchester, United Kingdom, between the 6th and 8th of August, at the Manchester Metropolitan University and is being co-ordinated by Manchester Game Centre’s research lead for Games, Health and Wellbeing, Dr John Henry.
The Playful Learning Association, which has strong connections to (and shares members with) the Manchester Game Centre, has received a prestigious Advance HE Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence. MGC member, John Lean, along with others in the Playful Learning team, were recently at the Advance HE Awards to celebrate their achievement.
MGC environment and gaming lead, Dr Wahida Khandker, is the Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded Process Ecologies Network, which explores different conceptual approaches to nature across the arts, science, and philosophy. Games and Game Studies are areas of interest within the network, especially the ways in which games function to simulate ecological processes and are themselves relational and entangled processes.
Despite rapid and sustained growth in the last ten years, the esports industry entered an era where the financial health of esports organisers and teams is less than guaranteed. To address these concerns, Riot Games announced the introduction of regulations concerning team spending in LEC, the League of Legends league covering Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Following the 2008-2009 Global Economic Crisis, UEFA–the quasi-monopolistic continental football federation in Europe–introduced its financial fair play regulations, which later evolved into financial sustainability norms following the economic downturn post-COVID 19. UEFA desired to protect clubs from bankruptcy by introducing strict norms. The regulations guide not only the clubs’ spending but also their structure and governance.
As part of the Manchester Game Centre’s research on games and the environment, we hosted a game night on September 19th in the Manchester Poetry Library. The game night welcomed researchers from the STRATEGIES project - a Horizon-UKRI-funded research project supporting the game industries to make a sustainable transition - and students and members of the public to play the new game, Catan: New Energies.
The Manchester Game Centre was established in 2016 as a cross-university research network, drawing its membership from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Health and Education, and Science and Engineering. We recently released our annual report, showcasing our work over 2023-2024. The report features our current research projects and information about our ongoing priorities for research, public engagement and impact.
New publication alert! “On the Pre-Perception of Gamification and Game-Based Learning in Higher Education Students: A Systematic Mapping Study” Simulation and Gaming...
Since 2018, the Game In Lab initiative has been doing fantastic work by supporting and funding over 25 board game research projects worldwide. Here at the Manchester Game Centre, we have benefitted from this support with two of our projects, Blood Bowl: A Cultural History and Play and the Environment: Games Imagining the Future. In addition, Game in Lab supports our annual research events and networking with scholars across the world.
We are pleased to share their recent announcement regarding the opening of the 2024 International Call for Projects, which will be accepting submissions until September 6th. All disciplines are welcome, from social sciences to AI and the arts, or any other relevant field.
The Manchester Game Centre is thrilled to be welcoming its first International Visiting Research Fellow. Aasa Timonen, a PhD researcher from Tampere University’s Game Research Lab, will be joining us in October for a month-long visit.
Writing recently for the Post45 Contemporary Literature cluster, former MGC member Rob Gallagher, and current co-directors Paul Wake and Chloé Germaine have written about their work bringing games into university english degree programmes.
The cluster was edited by Rebecca Roach and features articles on multicultural literature, AI, BookTok, and more.
Dr John Henry and a team of researchers at the Department of Computing and Mathematics at the Manchester Metropolitan University and members of the Manchester Game Centre are investigating how sensor driven experiences can determine play and empower new interactions.
Article by Sören Henrich, originally posted on The Conversation
Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is crossing a new frontier, as the game may soon be used as a form of psychological therapy. Over the last five years, I have researched possibilities for the game’s clinical implementation, as well as potential hurdles. The therapeutic interest in the game only arose in the last five years, when D&D experienced a renaissance. Once a niche nerdy interest, it now has flourished into a multi-million dollar business, including a new movie franchise.
Several organisations used the rise in D&D’s popularity as the perfect opportunity to marry mental health with fun. This includes, for example, the US Critical Role Foundation, which supports creativity and empowerment in disenfranchised children. In the UK, youth group the Scouts encourage their members to learn skills of entertaining by facing fantasy adventures.
We are pleased to announce the launch of Paul Wake’s new research project: Blood Bowl: A Cultural History. Funded by Game in Lab, this project runs the length of 2024. This project contends that board games are significant historical texts that respond to and shape the cultures within which they are created. Moreover, it addresses the lack of critical historical analysis of twentieth and twenty-first century games, and in particular work on hobby games.
On Friday 26th April, Chloé Germaine presented her work at the Imagining Extinction in Video Games Symposium, hosted by the Centre for English, Translation, and Anglo-Portuguese Studies at Universidade do Porto, Portugal. For her contribution, Chloé chose to focus on roleplaying games, specifically considering the positive contribution of tabletop (analogue) roleplaying games in the ongoing promotion of gaming as an ecological media.
This choice comes from desire to advocate for the importance of tabletop gaming in our discussions about the role of games in supporting cultural and social change on environmental issues. At a very basic level, the development, production, and consumption of tabletop games is less environmentally catastrophic than video games - a point also made in Ben’s talk. While there are aspects of the tabletop gaming industry’s production and comsumption cycle that could be hugely improved in terms of sustainability and reducing harm, it can continue to exist as an industry without being a contributor to growing carbon emissions and ecological destruction.
Three years ago, Sam, James, and Chloe approached me to discuss the possibility of using Trophy as a teaching tool in the environmental sciences, specifically to counter the feelings of powerlessness that come up when facing the climate crisis. They saw how tabletop roleplaying games can use fantasy as metaphor for contemporary struggles, can shift perspective and broaden empathy, and—most importantly—can empower people and drive them to action.
From those early conversations, Rooted in Crisis was born. Roleplaying games are inherently collaborative—magic happens when diverse voices and talents come together in an act of creation. We recruited game designers and climate crisis researchers, pairing them together to share ideas and find common ground based on their own interests, fields of study, and lived experiences.
The end result is five diverse but interconnected games exploring different facets of humanity’s impact on the ecosystem. Each game shares a foundation based in the push-your-luck mechanics of Trophy Dark and Trophy Gold, but each adds innovative twists to tell their own unique story.
From Death Race to Grand Theft Auto, driving games have long fuelled claims that players might be inspired to start mowing down pedestrians outside of the game.Starting with a story about a Toronto police officer linking a hit and run to a copy of Need for Speed found on the offender’s passenger seat, Ben talks Rich through the surprisingly longstanding history of links between video games and reckless driving. We encounter early arcade video games, clowns being run over at anti-car carnivals, and Adam West’s Batman doing British road safety videos. Crash! Bang! Wallop!What a podcast!
