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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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