Wargaming Nature: From Photosynthesis to Suppressive Fire
A Play and Hack Workshop with Chloé Germaine and Paul Wake
Game Board for Suppressive Fire. Game Design by Paul Wake, based on Photosynthesis by Hjalmer Hach, with art by Marc Von Martial
In this workshop presented at the Games Transformed Festival, we will explore connections of common-place understandings of the ‘nature’ and warfare in games.
The workshop will begin with a playtest and discussion of a hack (a remaking, a mangling) of Hjalmar Hach’s popular tree-themed board game Photosynthesis (Blue Orange 2017), the result of which was the hex-based wargame game Suppressive Fire (Germaine and Wake 2023). The hack reflects and challenges the ways in which Photosynthesis’s gamified forest ecosystem yokes together concepts of nature, conflict, combat and the economy, and on an underlying machinic idea in science, politics, and gaming – that of ‘the system.’ Following the introductory talk, participants will be invited to play Photosynthesis and Suppressive Fire, and to share their thoughts and experiences of the connections of nature, warfare and wargaming.
LOVE GAMES
HATE CAPITALISM
The World Transformed and the IWGB Game Workers and UTAW trade unions invite you to Games Transformed, a day festival celebrating how playing, discussing and designing games can help us imagine, demand, and build a better society!
There will be talks and workshops, the opportunity to play great games, both digital and tabletop, and a lot of the coolest nerds you could ever meet.
The festival is the culmination of the Games Transformed Game Jam. A whole bunch of eager teams will have been working on brand new games showcasing progressive politics for the month before the event. Attendees will be able to play them for the first time, before they head to this year’s main TWT in a custom-built arcade machine, joining social media sensation Thatcher’s Techbase. If you fancy it, there’s still time to get involved yourself! Just head to this itch.io page.
Talks, panels, workshops, and games: 10:00 - 18:00