Playing Futures 2026

Conference dates

Conference location

Important dates

Conference submission link to be added here

The first Playing Futures conference invites proposals of academic abstracts and of interactive works that focus on issues related, but not limited to, any of the following topics, from the perspective of climate and energy futures:

  • Representations of climate and energy futures in videogames and board games, such as ecogames, dystopian/utopian games, or solarpunk games.
  • Representations of climate and energy futures in role-playing games and LARPs.
  • Game communities and their climate actions, awareness, or responsibilities.
  • Playable simulations of energy and climate futures.
  • Play practices related to ecological and environmental thinking, in games as well as outside traditional formats of games.
  • Game making methods such as sustainable game production.
  • Game design and the challenges and possibilities of representing or enacting futures through playable media.
  • Game technology and topics of efficiency and sustainability.
  • Game philosophy, for example focusing on the ethics of games and play in the context of the climate futures.
  • Material practices in the game industry, for example on issues of sustainability or permacomputing.
  • Game industry policies and regulations, from climate-relevant union actions to legislation on sustainable technological development.

Playing Futures does not focus on research that treats games as purely utilitarian tools in formal education settings, nor on “gamification” approaches to addressing climate and energy issues. Instead, Playing Futures wants to explore what games and play, as forms of entertainment and aesthetic experience, can contribute during and after climate and energy crises. Playing Futures is particularly interested in perspectives from geographical and disciplinary margins that explore how futures are represented, simulated, and played in both digital and analog games, along with examining the role of game production in shaping futures. The Playing Futures conference encourages participants to present work that considers the future from a generational viewpoint, beyond the urgency of the present.

Playing Futures is a single-track, presentation-based conference where authors will have 30 minutes to present their work, with at least 15 minutes available for discussion. The conference will take place at the IT University of Copenhagen on May 20th and May 21st 2026. Playing Futures aspires to build a community of researchers and practitioners invested in working with the role of games and play in the future. As such, we encourage in-person participation in the event, understanding that the economic and geographic realities may not always allow for this. We encourage participants close to Copenhagen to avoid flying if/when possible.

The talks will not be streamed, but the conference proceedings will consist of recordings of the presentations. The conference is free to attend.

Submissions and presentations will be in English.

Academic abstract format: Abstracts should be of no more than 1200 words excluding references. Abstracts should be anonymized for peer-review, and submitted as pdf or Word documents through the conference management system. References can follow any conventional format. Accepted abstracts will not be published.

Interactive works format: Interactive works should submit a link to a playable/interactable version of the work, as well as a 1200 word max. abstract detailing the interactive work’s contributions to the conference topics. Interactive works will be evaluate on the basis of their qualities as interactive works, and not on the abstract’s qualities. Interactive works include any digital or analog creations that can be shared through a platform like itch.io. The works must be playable, though not necessarily finished, and the conference must have permission to distribute them via the conference’s itch.io page. These works can be at any development stage, from prototypes to finished products. The projects will not be physically exhibited at the conference. Instead, we ask authors to submit, along with their creative work, a 1200 word max. abstract—excluding references—in Word or PDF format for peer review. The review of interactive works will be made following criteria based on their creative and expressive value, with academic value being relevant but secondary to the conditions of acceptance. We encourage the submission of works that explore agency and possible worlds using the rhetorics and poetics of playable media.

Authors of all accepted submissions should prepare a 30-minute talk to be recorded and archived as part of the conference proceedings. Remote participation is possible for accepted works by authors whose economic or geographical situation does not allow travel.

Authors of interactive works are also expected to prepare a 30-minute talk. There will be time during the conference for casual showcasing the works to the attending audience, but there will be no exhibition. Participants should bring everything needed to showcase their works.

Selected Bibliography

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Abraham, B., & Jayemanne, D. (2017). Where are all the climate change games? Locating digital games’ response to climate change. Transformations: Journal of Media, Culture & Technology, 2017(30), 74–94.

Aghoro, N. (Ed.). (2025). Video Game Ecologies and Culture. De Gruyter Oldenbourg. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111379715

Alder, A. (2013). The Quiet Year.

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Backe, H.-J. (2017). Within the Mainstream: An Ecocritical Framework for Digital Game History. Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, 8(2), 39–55.

Bergillos, I. (2020). Media life in the Anthropocene. In Journal of Environmental Media (Vol. 1, Issue 1, pp. 27–31). Intellect. https://doi.org/10.1386/jem_00004_1

Berkeley Lab. (2019). The Hidden Cost of Computer Gaming | Energy Technologies Area. Berkeley Energy Technologies Area. https://eta.lbl.gov/news/hidden-cost-computer-gaming

Blewitt, J., & Cunningham, R. (Eds.). (2014). The Post-Growth Project. How the End of Economic Growth Could Bring a Fairer and Happier Society. London Publishing Partnership.

Bohunicky, K. M. (2014b). Ecocomposition: Writing ecologies in digital games. Green Letters, 18(3), 221–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2014.964283

Carton, W., & Malm, A. (2025). The Long Heat. Climate Politics When It’s too Late. Verso Books.

Chang, A. Y. (2011a). Games as Environmental Texts. Qui Parle, 19(2), 57–84. https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.19.2.0057

Chang, A. Y. (2019). Playing Nature. University of Minnesota Press; JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctvthhd94

Chico Morales, J. M. (2025). Écran-imaginé y écran-imaginant: Dos perspectivas estéticas para afrontar el imaginario de nuestra modernidad [Doctoral thesis, Universidad de Granada]. https://hdl.handle.net/10481/103729

Cubitt, S. (2009). A Critique of Play. Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, 16. https://refractory-journal.com/a-critique-of-play-sean-cubitt/

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Fizek, S., Fiadotau, M., Wirman, H., & Garda, M. (2023). Teaching Environmentally Conscious Game Design: Lessons and Challenges. ACM Games, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.1145/3583058

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Guattari, F. (2001). The Three Ecologies (I. Pindar & P. Sutton, Trans.). Bloomsbury.

Hammar, E. L., Jong, C., & Despland-Lichtert, J. (2023). Time to stop playing: No game studies on a dead planet. Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, 14(1), 31–54. https://doi.org/10.7557/23.7109

Heise, U. K. (2008). Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195335637.001.0001

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Holemans, D., Osman, P., & Franssen, M.-M. (n.d.). Dare to Care. Ecofeminism as a source of inspiration. Skribis.

Inie, N., Falk, J., & Selvan, R. (2025). How CO2STLY Is CHI? The Carbon Footprint of Generative AI in HCI Research and What We Should Do About It. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3714227

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Kunzelman, C. (2022). The World Is Born From Zero. In Understanding Speculation and Video Games (pp. 141–177). De Gruyter Oldenbourg. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110719451-006

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Light, A., Shklovski, I., & Powell, A. (2017). Design for Existential Crisis. Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI EA ’17, 722–734. https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3052760

Malm, A., & Carton, W. (2024). Overshoot. How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown. Verso Books.

Markusson, N., Buck, H. J., Carton, W., Hougaard, I.-M., Dooley, K., & Lund, J. F. (2024). Carbon removal and the empirics of climate delay. Environmental Science & Policy, 161, 103884. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103884

Mathews, F. (2021). The Ecological Self. Routledge.

Mills, E., Bourassa, N., Rainer, L., Mai, J., Shehabi, A., & Mills, N. (2019a). Toward Greener Gaming: Estimating National Energy Use and Energy Efficiency Potential. The Computer Games Journal, 8(3–4), 157–178. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-019-00084-2

Mills, N., & Mills, E. (n.d.). Greening the Beast—Save $. Retrieved January 14, 2025, from https://sites.google.com/site/greeningthebeast/market-survey

Mills, N., & Mills, E. (2016). Taming the energy use of gaming computers. Energy Efficiency, 9(2), 321–338. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-015-9371-1

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Nardi, B. (2019). Design in the Age of Climate Change. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 5(1), 5–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2019.01.001

Paul, H. (Ed.). (2019). Critical Terms in Futures Studies. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28987-4

Pérez, C., Verón, J., Pérez, F., Moraga, M. Á., Calero, C., & Cetina, C. (2024). A Comparative Analysis of Energy Consumption Between The Widespread Unreal and Unity Video Game Engines (No. arXiv:2402.06346). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2402.06346

Pérez Latorre, Ó. (2015). The Social Discourse of Video Games Analysis Model and Case Study: GTA IV. Games and Culture, 10(5), 415–437. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412014565639

Pérez Latorre, Ó., Oliva, M., & Gómez Puertas, L. (Eds.). (2023). Espejos rotos Narrativas distópicas y sociedad de entrecrisis. GEDISA.

Phillips, A. (2014). (Queer) Algorithmic Ecology: The Great Opening up of Nature to All Mobs. In N. Garrelts (Ed.), Understanding Minecraft: Essays on Play, Community, and Possibilities (pp. 106–120). McFarland.

Pinder, M. (2024). Negotiating Anthropocentrism and Ecologies in Cozy Games. Replay. The Polish Journal of Game Studies, 11(1), 125–136.

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Ruffino, P. (n.d.). Videogames, the Anthropocene, and Other Problems of Scale: Methodological Notes for the Study of Digital Games in Times of Ecological Crisis.

Rusch, D. C. (2017). Making Deep Games Designing Games with Meaning and Purpose. Routledge.

Schernikau, L., Smith, W. H., & Falcon, R. (2022). Full Cost of Electricity “FCOE” and Energy Returns “eROI.” Journal of Management and Sustainability, 12(1), 96. https://doi.org/10.5539/jms.v12n1p96

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