In this talk Paolo Ruffino (Senior Lecturer in Media Studies in College of Arts at the University of Lincoln) looks at the emergence of forms of automation within digital gaming, self-playing games, games made and/or played by artificial intelligence systems, games played by ghosts and non-living matter. By focussing on incremental and idle games, as examples of ‘grotesque economies’ (Giddings, 2018), and as both inhuman and inhumane forms of play (an expression borrowed from Braidotti, 2013), heI loos at these examples as possible companions in our struggle for earthly survival.