Animex Symposium on
Game Cultures and Net Zero
Games of all kinds allow us to play with imaginary futures and situations. For example, humanity's own future, as the Anthropocene era comes to a dangerous close and we begin to consider the post-Anthropocene. Relevant games include:
- those in fictional settings with a climate crisis metaphor, such as Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind
- games set in our own apocalyptic future, such as the Citizen Sleeper series
- explicitly educational or pro-social climate games, such as Earth Rising!
- games where the player must consider issues of privilege and limited resources around the access and play of games, such as Solar Server/Known Mysteries.
The Animex Academic Conference, now in its second year, builds on more than ten years of Teesside University's Animex Festival of games, animation and VFX. The Animex Conference brings an academic aspect to the more industry and practice-focused Animex Festival. For the first year, we are adding an Animex Symposium to the conference, a chance to really focus in on a specific area.
Game cultures and Net Zero
We are especially interested in 500-word abstracts on ‘Close readings and other analyses or case studies of climate-related games’, but are willing to consider other submissions. This may be a technique used to explore other aspects on this list.
Consideration of games as political texts
This might include looking at political metaphors, especially ways that games relate to works such as Climate Leviathan or Games of Empire. How do games help us experiment with the possible climate futures, or game-mechanically subvert the norms of Empire?
Wider cultural considerations
How can games influence, respond to, or subvert existing cultures, particularly consumer and extractivist cultures?
Games, the climate crisis and intersectionality
How are particular segments of society especially vulnerable to the climate crisis, or especially associated with, or represented in particular games?
Games as ways to play with the ethics of possible futures
How might games help us envisage the worst possible climate, environmental and political futures so we can avoid them? How might they help us envisage more positive futures and work towards them? In a deep adaptation context (Bendell, 2018), how can the play and study of games illuminate what we might choose to keep, and what to relinquish, as we transition to a lower energy and lower resource civilisation?
Emotional responses to climate games
How might games help us deal with climate grief and fears of the future? How might games offer us a chance to tell stories of radical hope (Friederici, 2023)?
Game emissions and resources
Game production and consumption is not one of the highest impact areas, such as transportation, housing and food. But videogame consoles, gaming PCs, and online multiplayer games, are all emissions and resource-heavy. How can we change that culture? (Note that technical considerations of precisely how many grams of silicon are in an Xbox, probably fall outside of the scope of this CFP).
Key dates: Thursday 31 July - Entries sent through submission portal. Monday 1 September (authors are notified). Wednesday 19 November (Animex Symposium on Game Cultures and Net Zero).
Contact Student Recruitment & Marketing on i.sturrock@tees.ac.uk for any queries.