All our events will be posted here and on our blog. You can also follow our activities on X or LinkedIn by searching for #BristolDigtialGameLab. If you would like to hear about our events directly, please sign up to our mailing list using the following form.
For 2024/25, we are advertising events slightly differently. Rather than events per month, below you can find events and opportunities tied to ongoing Game Lab projects and initiatives.
Workshops
Your Choices Matter: How Larian Writers Tell the Player’s Story
On Wednesday 6 November 2024, the Bristol Digital Game Lab is delighted to be hosting a game writing workshop with the writing team from award-winning Larian Studios, creators of Baldur’s Gate 3 (Game of the Year, 2023). In a workshop led by writers Adrienne Law and Chrystal Ding, attendees will learn how Larian approaches writing role-playing game (RPG) dialogue that lets players craft their own stories through the choices they make. Use this form to signup.
Can Games Teach? Games and the Environment
Join us on Wednesday 22 January 2025 for this symposium, organised by Dr Lewis Alcott (School of Earth Sciences) and Dr Richard Cole (Department of Classics and Ancient History), which brings together researchers and educators interested in how games and immersive technologies can be used as a form of education and engagement about the environment. The day will target 3 principal uses of games in an academic setting: (1) to discuss how games can be used to inspire people of all ages to discuss and learn about the environment, (2) how they can be used directly in education from primary school to higher education, (3) how games can be used as a part of research for both outreach and pedagogy.
Over the course of a series of invited talks by academic leaders, masterclasses by industry experts working on environmental games, and gaming demos, the event will establish a network of scholars interested in the intersection between games, education, and the environment. After lunch we will host an active play session where we can engage in how games can communicate about the environment. Book your space.
Postgraduate Work-in-Progress Workshop
Our annual postgraduate work-in-progress workshop will take place in 2025. Further details to follow.
Game Nights
Antiquity Games Night
The Lab supports Antiquity Games Night – a monthly online meetup where scholars, students & designers play antiquity games together, organised by Dr Richard Cole (University of Bristol) and Dr Alexander Vandewalle (University of Antwerp/Ghent University). Think: ‘reading group, but with games’. All you need to do is sign up to the Discord via https://discord.gg/h2XPtJfGut. No experience required. We look forward to seeing you there!
- For September 2024, we’ll be playing Dawn of Defiance (Traega Entertainment) in co-operative mode. Dawn is a survival game inspired by Greek mythology and reminiscent of Valheim, ARK Survival Evolved and Minecraft. We’ll kick off at 20:00, Monday 30 September.
- For October 2024, we’re playing Total War Pharaoh (2023), a grand strategy game set in the Bronze Age. We’ll kick off at 20:00, Thursday 24 October.
- For November 2024, we’ll be hosting a special session of AGN as part of the Antiquity in Media Studies conference. The AIMS special session of AGN will offer a co-op gaming experience of the newly released Age of Mythology: Retold (2024), where we’ll form teams and pit ourselves against the in-game AI in an epic clash of mythological armies and characters. (Note that active gameplay is not required to take part in the event – it is perfectly fine to join as a spectator or commentator.) We’ll kick off at 19:00, Thursday 14 November.
- For December 2024, we’ll be playing Valheim (Iron Gate Studio) in co-operative mode. We’ll kick off at 20:00, Monday 16 December.
- For January 2025, we’ll be playing a series of simultaneous multiplayer arena battles in Ryse: Son of Rome (Crytek). We’ll kick off at 20:00, Monday 20 January.
Player Studies
We need you to help us conduct research on player responses to ‘First Person Talkers’. We’re looking to recruit 60 people to come to the University of Bristol and test out a prototype murder mystery game called ‘Dead Meat‘. During the study we will sit with you while you play, and ask you for your thoughts about it through some questionnaires and a short interview. You don’t need to be a gamer, or to be “good at games” – we would like to hear from as many different kinds of people as possible. Participants must be a native English speaker who is 18+ with normal / corrected to normal vision and able to visit the University of Bristol in person at a pre-arranged time in February-March 2025. The study will begin with a questionnaire (15 mins) that can be completed online. The in-person part of the study will take around 45 mins. All participants will receive a £20 Love2Shop voucher for completing the study.
If you would like to find out more, please register your interest on this Microsoft Form.
This study forms part of the Game Conscious™ Characters project, led by Meaning Machine and funded by a MyWorld Collaborative Research and Development grant.
Game Jams
‘Concept’ Game Jams
Building on the success of our Exposing Algorithmic Bias ‘concept’ game jam in 2023, we’ll be running a series of game jams on this theme with groups of young people across Bristol as part of the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures research project ‘Caring for Futures’. We’ll be sharing the outcomes of this work in due course, as well as our broader findings around using game jams as a creative methodology.
XR Jam
Are you an early-mid career creative technologist, designer, or creative working in immersive media or the games industry? We invite you to join a workshop series organized by the AI Tools for Games and XR Storytelling project at the University of Bristol, which aims to bring together diverse talents to explore the possibilities and challenges of integrating AI into the creation of compelling game and XR stories. If you would like to attend the workshop series please apply by filling in this Google form. Deadline for applying: Friday 25 October 2024. Workshop participants will be invited to an XR Game Jam in early 2025. Further details can be found on our blog.
Research Seminars
Join us on Tuesday 11 March 2025 at 15:30 for a hybrid Classics and Ancient History / Game Lab research seminar. Dr Alexander Vandewalle (University of Antwerp/Ghent University) and Dr Richard Cole (University of Bristol) will be presenting on their work exploring player responses to historical video games. The title of the seminar is: “‘As You Write Your Odyssey…’: An Empirical Study of Classics Students’ Play Interests and Ergodic Characterization in Historical Video Games.” The seminar will be held in the Lecture Theatre 3, Arts Complex, Woodland Road, University of Bristol. The online link is to follow.
On Wednesday 7 May 2025, we’re delighted to be hosting a research seminar by Dr Glaire Anderson (University of Edinburgh). Further details to follow.
Industry Talks
TBC