It is that time of year again. It’s nearly time for Games for Geoscience!
If you don’t know – let’s face it, why would you? – Games for Geoscience is a scientific session at the European Geoscience Union General Assembly, held annually in Vienna. At this conference, which attracts around 18,000 geoscientists from around the world, I help convene a session sharing the use of games relating to geoscience. The conference runs from 14-19th April 2024.
We started in 2018 and have run it ever year since. We get all types of games, including card, board, roleplay, and videogames, and also include work that uses gaming technology, like virtual reality and 3D environments. The purposes of the games include for teaching, for science communication, and even for doing research.
This year we have a bumper session of twenty presentations, split between talks and poster, both onsite and virtual. It will be on April 17th 2024. You can find the abstracts for the session here.
Alongside the science session, we also run a very popular Geoscience Games Night. This is a bring and play event and features many of the games shared in the science session earlier. It tends to be very busy and a lot of fun! Find out more here.
I will also be helping with a science communication workshop, Elevate your Pitch, helping researchers craft short introductions for their research. See the session’s website here.
Rooted in Crisis is an anthology of eco-horror roleplay games tackling the climate crisis. The project paired up researchers across multiple disciplines relating to the environment with roleplay game writers. Myself, my wife Amy, and writer Gabriel Robinson developed The Forgotten City for the anthology, challenging players to create their city and then explore it and its inhabitants whilst its impending and unrelenting doom unfolds. The anthology will soon be going to Kickstarter and you can learn more and sign up to the newsletter here.
News
A new article on The Ethics of Citizen Science and Knowledge Games has been published by Karen Kat Schrier. Read it here.
Games Realising Effective and Affective Transformation (GREAT) is a research project exploring the potential and power of games to make real transformation in European society. It is co-funded by UKRI and the EU’s Horizon programme. Learn more about the project here.
NASA, yes NASA, have launched their own tabletop roleplay game – The Lost Universe. Players embark on a Quest to uncover why Hubble has disappeared mysteriously. Learn more here.
How video games companies are going green – an article in Time magazine. Read it here.
Downpour has been released. This is an absolutely superb, and free, app which allows you to make games on your phone using your own photos. Check it out here or Google Play or whatever it is on Apple.
The Serious Games Cookbook is a beginner’s guide using and designing serious games. Learn more here.
The European Geoscience Union blog has featured a new multiplayer online game, Thirsty Earth, to help people understand the challenges of effective water resource management. Read the article here.
The Green Game Jam website has been launched by Playing for the Planet. Teams around the world are designing games with the theme ‘small actions, big impacts’. Find it here.
Events
The Games for Change Festival is one my annual highlights. It focusses on the use of games for making positive societal impacts. Even though I've never made it to New York (yet!), they usually have great online content alongside the conference and sessions are posted on to their YouTube channel. This year's Festival will be June 27-28 2024. Details here.
Are you a Postgraduate Researcher working on games for the environment? The Interactive Games Postgraduate Research Conference 2024 will be held on July 12th at York St John's University. They are looking for submissions for 10 minute presentations with a deadline on May 24th. Find out more in this Tweet.
Environmental Sustainability at York (ESAY), The University of York, UK, are hosting the Play for Planet conference (not to be confused with Playing for the Planet) on April 22 2024. Details and tickets here. My abstract has been accepted for the conference and I will also be demoing a classic desktop version of Humber in a Box.
Opportunities
A call for proposals is open for the Digital Gaming and Values meeting by the International Academy for the Study into Gaming and Religion. This hybrid meeting will be online and live at the University of Bremen, Germany, on September 28th 2024. It is aimed at early-career researchers and graduate students. Deadline to apply is July 1st 2024. Find out more and apply here.
Another call for proposals, this time for Game Over – Dystopia x Utopia X Video Games at the University of Salzburg, November 14-16th 2024. Abstract deadline is April 30th 2024. Find our more here.
The Games for Change Student Challenge is open for submissions until April 15th 2024. If you are a student and have designed a game with societal impact, submit it to the challenge to be in with a chance to win a $10k scholarship! More details and submission here.
Cool Stuff
Rachel Kowert’s YouTube channel, Psychgeist, explores the science and psychology behind games. Rachel is an excellent researcher and advocate for the power of games. Check out the channel here.
Beecarbonize is an environmental card strategy game developed by Charles Games. Players must carefully manage resources, research new technologies, and enact policies to try and guide society through the climate crisis to survival. It is also free to play! Find out more here.
Wake is a game by Field Day Learning Games where you play a scientist solving environmental challenges across several ocean ecosystems. You can play it here.
Spilled! is an indie game where you guide a boat around rivers cleaning up oil spills. It is being developed by Lente on her own boat! Follow her progress on her Twitter account here.
This month on Floodology
I reached a big personal milestone for the Floodology channel this month – I reached more than 100 subscribers! Thank you to everyone who has subscribed, I appreciate every single one of you. In the grand scheme of things, it is a small number but it has been hard work to get to this point and I have learnt a lot.
My video this month explore time in AI. I noticed that when you ask an image generate to produce an image of a clock or a watch it usually made it showing the same time, every time. I dig down into the reason behind this and what it tell us about AI – what it can and cannot do. Coincidentally, the video coincided with British Science Week whose theme was ‘Time’ this year!
About this Newsletter
I make this newsletter voluntarily because I think games have a big role to play in improving the environment and making people more resilient to disasters, like flooding. I see a lot of things happening in this space but it is disparate and needs a community - I hope this newsletter brings you closer to someone with similar interests and builds collaborations.
Please support me by subscribing. It is free and I don’t offer a paid tier. It will be emailed to you on the 3rd Wednesday of each month.