Games Library Week 2018: Talks: Games Fictioning

Chella Ramanan: Black Panther and Afrofuturism: a guide to writing compelling black characters in video games

Afrofuturism centres black people when considering a high-tech future. This is counter to mainstream fiction, which erases black people from the past, present and the future. The launch of the Black Panther film, in February, brought Afrofuturism to a mainstream audience, making it the perfect time to examine it in the context of games. Although games are often preoccupied with futuristic settings, they largely ignore black people or tell the same narratives, which is a missed opportunity for inclusive storytelling.

Chella Ramanan is a freelance video games journalist and podcaster and also writes games. Her writing has appeared on The Guardian, Game Industry News, as well as interviews with the BBC and speaking at events. As co-founder of 3-Fold Games, Chella is the writer on narrative exploration game, Before I Forget, which focuses on a woman living with dementia. She is also co-writing interactive fiction Windrush Tales and has written for other developers. Chella plays an active role in driving positive change in the industry, as a board member and vice chair for Women in Games and BAME in Games, respectively. She is also an advisory board member of the BGI, the new national organisation for games culture. In 2018, Chella was nominated as a GamesIndustry.biz top 100 rising star of the UK Games industry.

Phoenix Perry: Feminist Interfaces

How can feminist values interfaces with technology to help us design more inclusive experiences? This talk is a speculative mediation and world building experience on the history of design and video games.

Phoenix Perry creates physical games and user experiences. As an advocate for women in game development, she founded Code Liberation Foundation. In her role at Goldsmiths, University of London, she lecturers on experience design and games and leads an MA in Independent Games and Experience Design which she created.

Eve Jamieson: The Games Library

The Games Library was launched in Goldsmiths Library in early 2018 as a way to give students and staff access to computer games to support study and research. Eve will recount some of the challenges and successes of this project and discuss why it's so important to include games as part of the Library collection.

Eve Jamieson is the Subject Librarian for Computing at Goldsmiths Library and helped create the Games Library collection. Eve is a board game enthusiast and is interested in making games available as part of academic library collections.
 

Stella Wisdom: British Library Games Collaborations

Stella will talk about a number of British Library creative digital collaborations including the Off the Map competition with The National Videogame Arcade, the Playing Beowulf project with University College London's Institute of Education and Minecraft project Litcraft with Lancaster University. Also, participation in International Games Week in Libraries, and experiments; making apps, games and interactive fiction using digitised library collections.

Stella Wisdom is a Digital Curator at the British Library; promoting new methods of research and creative innovation using born digital and digitised collections. In 2013 Stella co-founded with GameCity the annual Off the Map competition, which challenges students to create videogames and interactive fiction inspired by British Library digital resources. Stella has also collaborated with University College London Institute of Education on Playing Beowulf, Lancaster University on Litcraft and with TIME/IMAGE on Poetic Places. 

Minkette​: Escape Rooms

Escape Rooms are the 'hot new thing' and have been for the last half a decade. This talk shows some behind the scenes of the design process of both story and non-story focused escape games, plus tips relevant to any kind of game design.

Mink is a veteran of designing both real world and digital games; Ex-Hasbro, Ex-Punchdrunk, Ex-Six to Start, in 2014 she finally brought it all together with her 'BA degree in the semiotics of woodwork' by turning her hand to creating Escape Rooms.