DIGITAL SOCIETY @ MANCHESTER MET 2022 is a biennial series of events exploring the impact of an increasingly digital society on play, research methods, politics, arts and the environment. The series is being organised by MMGC member Dr Tom Brock and the Digital Society Research Group.
These events celebrate the exceptional and diverse research expertise in digital social science and arts at Manchester Met. Each reflects a key aspect of digital research in the University’s Arts and Humanities Faculty, including games, methods, politics, arts and the environment.
As part of the Digital Society Week, the Manchester Metropolitan Game Centre has co-organised a panel on Ecogames, featuring our international research partners from the Cologne Game Lab and Utrecht University.
DIGITAL SOCIETY AND PLAY
Tuesday, 7th June, Geoffrey Manton Building, Manchester (lecture theatre 3)
9:30am Registration
10am Panel 1. Ecogames — Sonia Fizek, TH Köln, Joost Raessens, Utrecht University, Stefan Werning, Utrecht University
Break
11:30am Panel 2. Economic and political challenges within the Digital Games Industry — Aleena Chia, Goldsmiths University, Alison Harvey York University, Paolo Ruffino, Liverpool University, Anna Ozimek, Independent Researcher, Poppy Curran Jones, IWGB Game Workers
Lunch
2pm Keynote. The Politics of Children’s Digital Playgrounds — Dr Sara Grimes, University of Toronto
Break
3:30pm Panel 3. Theorising Playful Subjects in Digital Games — Feng Zhu, Kings College London, Stefano Gualeni and Daniel Vella, University of Malta, Rob Gallagher, Manchester Met, Tom Brock, Manchester Met
About the Panel
Sonia Fizek is an associate professor of media and game studies at the Cologne Game Lab at Technical University of Cologne. Sonia is co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds. Her research focuses on media aesthetics of computer play, work and play, and the sustainability of gaming - ‘green” game studies. In her book Playing at a Distance (MIT Press 2022), she explores the borderlands of video game aesthetic with focus on automation, artificial intelligence and post-human forms of play.
Stefan Werning is an Associate Professor for Digital Media and Game Studies at Utrecht University, where he organizes the annual ‘Multidisciplinary Game Research’ summer school and coordinates the special interest group ‘Thinking Through Games’ within the Game Research focus area. He obtained a PhD (2010) in media studies from Bonn University and his venia legendi at Bayreuth University (2015). Stefan has been a visiting scholar (2005) and fellow (2006-2010) at the program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. Moreover, he has worked in the digital games industry, most notably at Codemasters (2005) and Nintendo of Europe (2007-09).
In-Game Landscape Photography and Nature Documentary Filmmaking, or: The Remediation of Epistemic Eco-Practices in Digital Games
The talk investigates how players mediate landscape photography and nature documentary filmmaking in commercial AAA games, how these practices creatively re-imagine the encounter with (virtual) ecologies, and whether/how they may contribute to sustainability education and climate action. Online documentation of landscape photography in Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online as well as nature documentaries (which oscillate between parody and genuine re-enactment) based on the games GTA V and Destiny 2 will serve as case studies. Through a comparison with how the original practices facilitate contemporary conservationist movements and adjusted popular framings of and relationships towards nature, the talk aims to point out both the epistemic opportunities and limitations of remediating them in the virtual environments of video games.
Prof. dr. Joost Raessens holds the chair of Media Theory at Utrecht University. His research focuses on the understanding of how green media—in the broadest sense, including digital media, theatre, film, television, art and literature—contribute to ecological thought and facilitate different forms of civic engagement (global ecological citizenship) on a micro, meso and macro level. In general, his research interests include digital media and the ‘ludification of culture'; think of Games and VR for Change dealing with issues such as global warming and forced migration.
VR meets environmental sustainability
What if you could experience the world through the eyes of a tree? Or an animal? Or both at the same time? What if we all could experience the overview effect? VR can stimulate a multispecies perspective by raising empathy and awareness in unusual ways. Find out what the most impactful eco VR installations can do (such as Tree, Life in VR, SpaceBuzz, and Symbiosis), how these installations enable users to experience the world from a non-human perspective, and how they can help us imagine and build a greener future.