ABZU

Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis

Ecogames: Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis brings together authors who explore the aspects of ecocritical engagement in and through games.

Editorial Team
22-01-2024 // Books // Criticism and Analysis, Games and Sustainability

Climate Larps: Environmental Design in Nordic LARP

In an article published in the Journal of Analogue Game Studies Laura op de Beke discusses the role of LARP (Live Action Role Playing) games in understanding the climate crisis. Within the article she explores how the environment is considered and included within the Nordic LARP sphere.

Editorial Team
19-09-2023 // Insights // Criticism and Analysis, Games and Sustainability, Games Beyond Entertainment

Spationomy 2.0- An Application of Discursive Game Design

In a time where it is difficult to engage with the increasingly fraught world around us, games scholars are continuing to search for new ways to approach difficult topics. One such example, is the application of Discursive Game Design(DGD) as seen in the Carbon Pearl game produced in 2021.

Amy Lycklama, Editorial Team
08-07-2023 // Education, Interview, Longread // Games and Sustainability, Games Beyond Entertainment

Fostering an open mind and open attitude in higher education using games and art-based educational activities 

With the use of art and media tools such as dialogical art, game play, and game development, this project aims to foster a space wherein it is possible to discuss complex topics, and for students with diverging opinions to be able to civilly discuss while learning from one another and developing a greater understanding of those whose opinions may differ from their own.

Editorial Team
28-06-2023 // Insights, Longread, News // Games Beyond Entertainment, Multi theme

Spationomy 2.0

The Spationomy 2.0 project was started in October of 2019, and concluded with a final conference held in November of 2022. The project was funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Union.

Editorial Team
22-11-2022 // Events, Insights // Criticism and Analysis, Games Beyond Entertainment, Social Games and Play

Ecomodding: Understanding and Communicating the Climate Crisis by Co-Creating Commercial Video Games

This article explores how the climate crisis and specifically the underlying “crisis of the imagination” (Bendor 2018, 132) exacerbate the entrenchment of environmental communication, and how modifying commercial video games (ecomodding) can facilitate the use of games as effective communication infrastructures to address this issue. Environmental communication challenges are well-studied, but remain difficult to tackle in practice.

Editorial Team
20-10-2021 // Insights, Publications // Criticism and Analysis

Taking Playful Scholarship Seriously: Discursive Game Design as a Means of Tackling Intractable Controversies

The article at hand explores the concept of playful scholarship, focusing specifically on the use of playfulness in re-assessing the collaboration between academia and societal partners to tackle “intractable policy controversies” (Schön and Rein 1994, p. 23)—i.e., challenges in which opposing parties operate with conflicting frames (often without even noticing).

Editorial Team
14-09-2021 // Education, Insights, Publications // Criticism and Analysis, Games and Sustainability, Games Beyond Entertainment, Multi theme

PhD Project: The Becoming-Playful of Warfare in the Netherlands

This PhD research project seeks to understand and explain this ongoing logistical process by mapping out the Dutch ‘military-academic-entertainment complex’ and the nature of its relationship to the ludification of warfare in the Netherlands.

Editorial Team
01-09-2021 // Insights, News // Game Technology and AI, Games Beyond Entertainment

Persuasive Gaming in Context

In this volume published in 2021 by AUP various scholars explore the role of persuasive gaming, and the ways in which games have expanded beyond merely an entertainment capacity.

Editorial Team
23-03-2021 // Books, Insights //

Playable Personas: Using Games and Play to Expand the Repertoire of Learner Personas

This article explores how playing and co-creating games in higher education contexts contributes to expanding learner personas and facilitating a multimodal learning experience. Working from the interdisciplinary perspectives of media/games studies, pedagogy, and linguistic anthropology, Stefan Werning, Deborah Cole, and Andrea Maragliano conceptualize in-class learning as the making and playing of games, reporting on game experiments and playful practices targeted at learning key theoretical concepts in our disciplines.

Editorial Team
16-03-2021 // Insights // Criticism and Analysis, Games Beyond Entertainment