‘The promise and pitfalls of posthuman and postanthropocene games’, Keynote at the Animex Symposium on Games Cultures and Net Zero
In November 2025 I was invited to Keynote the Animex Symposium on Games Cultures and Net Zero, alongside the Animex Research and Innovation Conference, Festival of Games, at Teeside University, Middlesborough.
The Symposium aimed to explore how games imagine and interrogate futures shaped by climate crisis and the transition beyond the Anthropocene, setting a critical framework for understanding how interactive media engages with environmental futures.
My keynote, “The promise and pitfalls of posthuman and postanthropocene games”, can be viewed here:
It was an excellent day, exploring a variety of different perspectives, approaches, and, of course, games.
Panel 1, “Tabletop climate futures”, featured Esther MacCallum-Stewart and Douglas Brown presenting Onwards to PeaceGames!, alongside Tonguc Sezen and Digdem Sezen with Island Istanbul, which examined TRPG worldbuilding as speculative practice.
Panel 2, “Digital and hybrid climate futures”, included Darshana Jayemanne, Hadi Mehrpouya, and Alenda Chang discussing Planting paratexts; Thomas Yount presenting Climate Cooldown; and Silvia Ruzanka exploring hybrid play in Playing in the soil.
A presentation by Patrick Prax, Systemic sustainability in and through games, concluded the programme, highlighting the role of games in imagining sustainable futures, and promoting Prax’s new edited collection (with Clayton Whittle and Trevin York) – The Game Needs to Change: Towards Sustainable Game Design.