Games Workshop Research Day: Event Roundup
Saturday 11th October saw us host our second annual research day dedicated to Games Workshop’s games and worlds at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester.
The day began with two research panels, the first on ‘Miniatures,’ the second on ‘Worlds and Histories.’ We have permission to share some of the slides which you can access by clicking the links below:
Session One: Miniatures
Sam Tobin: ‘Miniature Matters: Failcast, Plastic Crack, and ‘Every Metal’’
Tom Railton: ‘Neurodivergent Making: Kitbashed temporalities and weirdly leanings’
Adam Edwards: ‘Ancient Dignity: Abstraction, irreverence and the legacy of the launch rules of Age of Sigmar’
Ian Williams: ‘Chapterhouse Revisited: Intellectual Property, 3D Printing, and the Platformization of Analog Play’
Session Two: Worlds and Histories
Ioannis Costas Batlle, ‘Mythbusters, icebergs, and why you learn more from Warhammer than you realise’
James Holloway and Gianluca Raccagni, ‘“Larger, wilder, and far more dangerous”: Medieval and Medievalist Imagery in the Warhammer games’
Tomas Rawlings, ‘Chaos in the Warhammer Setting’
Patrick Prax and Ray Whitcher, ‘‘‘More more warp death!” Skaven and Warpstone as Environmental and Economic Critique’
After lunch the event resumed with a round table panel on ‘Games Workshop’s Player Communities,’ chaired by Jenny Cromwell, with panellists representing different gaming systems and communities: Alex Wormall (Blood Bowl), Matthew Broadbent (Horus Heresy), Chris Hart (aka Dirk the Dice; old school and vintage games), and Chris Connor (Club Leader/Warhammer Alliance).
This was followed by what we called a ‘playable exhibition,’ a new format for academic work (for us at least) combining academic poster presentations with playable demo games and art exhibits. Alongside this, there were more traditional ‘playable games’, with Hearthforge Games demoing Blood Brawl and other works in progress.
The posters can be downloaded below:
Phil Booth, ‘“Kill them all and God will know His own”: Combatting Heresy in Medieval Europe and the Grim Dark Future’
Shaun Stevenson, ‘Stoicism and Strategy: Practicing Ancient Philosophy Through the Tabletop Game of Blood Bowl’
Ray Whitcher, ‘Purge the Fandom’
The event closed with a Blood Bowl match filmed in front of a live audience. Huge thanks to Blood Bowl legends Philip Muwanga and Kåre Foged for playing in front of a heckling pizza-eating crowd, and for indulging us in some Blood Bowl Bingo-inspired showboating! Similarly huge thanks to RickWreckless and Alex Wormall (commissioner of the Waterbowl BB league) for their fabulous commentary, and to Matt Geary at Geek Pride for making Blood Bowl look so good on the big screen!
This activity was funded by AHEAD, the public engagement programme of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Manchester Metropolitan University.