investigate.games has been commissioned by the Science + Media Museum (Bradford, UK) to deliver the Yorkshire Games Festival Showcase as part of the Yorkshire Games Festival. We will be showcasing 23 video games that have been developed in Yorkshire as part of the UK City of Culture celebrations.
investigate.games will once again be working with the York Board Games Convention team to bring Demons Wake (a social deduction games convention) to York St John University. You can find out more about Demons Wake here: https://demonswake.co.uk/
Entries are now open for the investigate.games x Aesthetica Games Lab as part of the Aesthetica Short Film Festival which will take place in November 2025. Entry details here: https://www.asff.co.uk/games/ Previous winners of “best game” at Games Lab include:
Sorry We’re Closed, the survival indie-adventure game developed by à la mode games wins ‘best game’ at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2024. Developer: https://alamode.games/ Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1796580/Sorry_Were_Closed/
The new open-access paper, first authored by Caitlin Veal, documents how games offer meaningful social experiences which flourish due to a perceived lack of social risk. This paper investigates how players perceive and understand the sociality afforded by online social video games (OSGs), framed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing data from semi-structured interviews (n = 20), we apply Blumer’s concept of symbolic interactionism to explore the ways in which video games take on new meanings in co-constructed, collaborative and contributory digital spaces. We argue (a) that games offer a meaningful social experience, (b) that this sociality flourishes due to the perceived lack of social risk particularly due to OSG characteristics of perceived or real anonymity, (c) that this works to facilitate social development, and (d) that these characteristics were valuable in the context of a pandemic at a time of reduced social interaction. Our contribution shows that online video game spaces alter the risk profile of forming and maintaining connections by reframing interaction as the cooperation toward shared goals. Abstract Veal, Caitlin., Coward-Gibbs, M., Denham, J., and Spokes, M. (2024) “You Feel Like You’ve Found a Place Where You Belong”: Symbolic Interactionism and Online Social Video Games in the Age of COVID-19. Games & Culture. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412024127387.
In this article, Matthew Spokes and colleagues build on the ‘dual process model’ to consider video games as a form of self-care. Building on M. S. Stroebe and Schut’s (1999) ‘dual process model’ (DPM), this paper draws on data from a survey of young people who identify as regular gamers (n = 450) and semi-structured follow-up interviews (n = 20) to understand video games as a form of self-care, and the positive and problematic encounters gamers experience in relation to immersion and escapism. The work is situated in relation to game/leisure studies, and extant research on different types of loss (bereavement; social opportunities; employment). We argue that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, self-reported responses to play function as a form of oscillation between ‘loss’ and ‘restoration’ in the DPM, and that the act of play and its post-hoc rationalisation is a crucial form of coping for young people, and an opportunity for meaning-making whilst grieving. Our contribution is to demonstrate how video games can and should be considered as a catalyst for grief management. Abstract Spokes, M., Denham, J., Coward-Gibbs, M., and Veal, C. (2024) ‘I wasn’t me, grieving in my room. I was Spiderman’: gaming, loss and self-care following COVID-19. Mortality https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2024.2315961
