Manchester Game Centre

Our CFP for Rituals of Play, this year's Multiplatform Symposium, is already drawing interest. We've also got some brilliant keynote speakers and panellists lined up - more soon! Please do spread the word - this is for anyone working at the intersection of games and magic, games the occulture, ritual and play, analogue, digital, or embodied play - all welcome! MGC researchers have been dabbling in this space for a while, so we're really pleased to be taking the plunge, with a little help from the Dark Arts Research Collective. https://lnkd.in/eiGXQZBn

DVRS Festival welcomes Writer and Narrative Designer on games such as 80 Days, Sable and more, Meghna Jayanth is doing her first talk on the brilliant #ThirstySuitors game. Darshana Jayemanne will be joining Meghna and I on a games research panel to explore a range of in-depth current topics relevant to games representation and identity. He is a Reader and Lecturer at Abertay University and author of Performativity in Art, Literature and Videogames. We are also very excited to announce composer and sound designer Kenneth Young to discuss his approach to creating music experiences in games such as LittleBigPlanet, Tearaway and Astro Bot. Frederic Babord CTO and Lead Coder at Radical Forge will be sharing his technical knowledge in building tools & physics based systems for their latest game Southfield. Zi Peters will be sharing his design experience from working on games such as Halo Wars 2, Hitman 2 and most recently Tales of Kenzera: ZAU. Not to be missed! is.gd/DVRS2025

New research out today - “Tabletop Eco-Weird: Gameplay Experience and Ecological Ethics” - by MGC member, Chloé Germaine. It's part of a collection that explores the "Eco-Weird", which is a developing field at the intersection of environmental thought and Weird fiction, including literature, games, films, art, and television shows. https://lnkd.in/en84sNN9

Join us Thursday 10th April from 7pm at The Grosvenor Pub, Manchester for a free night of socializing and #networking with game developers at the DVRS Games Festival x #Gameopolis #social!? Don't miss out on this free event open to #gamedevelopers, DVRS speakers, attendees, and friends.? https://lnkd.in/eMnv_3Z2

Really pleased to share that we (Iteration Games) have released a free demo of our next game, An Elaborate History of Chess, on Steam! This has been a few years in the making, and both myself and Alex Brooke have been working on it in our spare time for the last couple of years. It's always scary and exciting to see a project take a next step into being realised. If you're into strategy games, puzzle games, or chess, please give it a go and let us know how you find it. It's available on Steam now: https://lnkd.in/eE57mPcn

Thanks to Darren Vaile from Lucid Games Ltd for an entertaining and informative guest lecture at School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Metropolitan University on modelling and rigging for animation to our Games Art and Animation undergrads and Masters students. To see a lot more like this, don’t forget to get get your DVRS tix now at: is.gd/DVRS2025

The Festival international des Jeux is happening as we speak in Cannes, and one of our Game In Lab researcher will take the stage today at 2:30PM. ?? Thomas Franco Pinto, will present the initial findings of his thesis on gaming practices in families with children with learning disabilities. ?? He will be joined by Prof. Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre and Dr. Isabel Colon-de-Carjaval, who will provide a summary of their research ?? on why we love to play, all through the lens of language sciences and conversational analysis. Take some time off your day to learn more with our experts! You can follow the conference here ?? https://lnkd.in/exEm-ufp

Exciting news. Here's a first peak at the Multiplatform 2025 CFP. MULTIPLATFORM 2025: RITUALS OF PLAY - SHAPING ALTERNATIVE FUTURES WITH GAMES AND OCCULTURE will run from Jun 12-13 this year at The Manchester Metropolitan University. The theme is Rituals of Play and this year’s event is a collaboration with DVRK - the Dark Arts Research Kollective - at Manchester Metropolitan University. The symposium will explore the intersections between games and occulture, investigating the transformative potential of games as forms of rituals to explore alternative histories and speculate on radical futures. Games have long had a deep connection to magic, the paranormal, and the occult. As Huizinga famously noted, "there is no formal difference between play and ritual" (1988: 10). Indeed, activities like shuffling cards, rolling dice, and roleplaying create temporary ritual spaces in which to engage with chance, causality, and emergence - tools to model possible worlds and divine the future. Furthermore, contemporary games - both analog and digital - have become increasingly intertwined with occultural themes, incorporating concepts and imagery of the esoteric or the paranormal that go beyond the mere aesthetic inspiration to become sometimes actual philosophical, speculative and narrative frameworks. Check out our CFP! https://lnkd.in/e8J95nKv

We're happy to share these two brilliant calls for papers of interest to UK games researchers. These conferences are happing in the north of the UK this summer, at York St John (courtesy of investigate.games) and Sunderland respectively (in collaboration with MeCCSSA). It's great to be in a collaborative network with our regional neighbours and to be able to share the work of their staff and students. Take a look and consider submitting to one or both! https://lnkd.in/e2732_TM https://lnkd.in/equhDC3Z

The MGC and Strategies Horizon researchers Manchester Metropolitan University have been really pleased to support training in the 2030 SDG game. Great to see it being rolled out to students. The Manchester Metropolitan University students can sign up here.... https://lnkd.in/ehBXCUYU