Professor Paul Wake and Dr Chloe Germaine will be speaking to sustainability researchers and educators at the University of York.

Their paper, which draws on the methodological innovations in participatory research with games, considers how “hacking” and “jamming” are modes of play that support effort to address behavioural and cultural change for climate action.

The paper explores how game making and play practices are aesthetic interventions in addressing the challenges of global heating. We focus on hacking and jamming, which are two modes of game creation and critical play we have developed as such interventions. Our work aims at unravelling commonplace assumptions about what games are, especially the mechanistic, systems-thinking that characterises game studies. Game systems are stories. Hacking and jamming games can therefore offer alternative stories to the extractive and mechanistic understanding of nature and human labour that underwrites the climate and ecological crises.

This paper is being delivered as part of the Play for the Planet Network, organised by the Environmental Sustainability group at University of York.