This year, Now Play This explores the relationship between play, games and the climate crisis. Due to the pandemic, we are once again running a fully online festival. Join us for a four-day programme of games, workshops and conversations, where each day shifts a different aspect of the festival’s theme into focus!

The programme is free and accessible for all, but if you enjoy what Now Play This does and can support the festival, please consider getting a pay-what-you-feel festival pass. (You can even print it out and wear it as a lanyard!).

Thursday: What do you need to have fun?

From simple children’s games to real-time multiplayer environments, play experiences are facilitated using vastly different amounts of resources. We open the festival with projects that help us think about the infrastructures behind the way we play.

Live events on Thursday 25th March

3:00pm

Flying to the Festival

Live Play Experience
5:30pm

Opening Ceremony

Virtual Gathering
6:30pm

Greener Games – One Studio’s Approach to Sustainability

Talk
8:00pm

Folk Game TikToks

Conversation

Play any time

Airplane Mode

Hosni Auji

Alternative Ecologies Jam

Emilie Reed

Repurpose

Amy Strike and Tom Williams

The Land

Erin Davis

Friday: You Fix The Climate

A more than 30 year long tradition of games presents the climate and environmental crisis as a problem for players to solve. What does is feel like to be responsible for the fate of the planet?

Live events on Friday 26th March

1:00pm

Climate Change Games and Research

Workshop
3:00pm

World Climate Simulation

Live Game
5:00pm

Among Ripples: Shallow Waters

Play & Talk
6:30pm

Cards against the Climate Crisis

Play & Talk

Play any time

Among Ripples: Shallow Waters

Eat Create Sleep

Balance of the Planet

Chris Crawford

Carbon City Zero: World Edition

Sam Illingworth & Paul Wake

Ecologic

Vitalijs Rodins

Saturday: Beyond Repair

Challenging the notion that the climate crisis can be solved or fixed by players, we go “beyond repair” with critical work that directly addresses the powers behind environmental destruction and imagines futures in which the damage has become irreparable.

Live events on Saturday 27th March

11:00am

Alternative Ecologies Mid-Jam Meetup

Mid-Jam Meetup
3:00pm

Games about Bad Actors

Play & Talk
5:00pm

Imagining Post-Climate Crisis Worlds

Play & Talk
8:00pm

Festival Party

Virtual Gathering

Play any time

Even in Arcadia

Phoebe Shalloway

The Last Survey

Essay Games

Venice 2089

Safe Place Studio

Villains and Heroes

Marloes de Valk

Sunday: Ways of Relating

Many games have uncritically repeated the mechanisms of extraction and exploitation. On the last day of the festival we present works that give space for reflection and imagine other ways of relating to the natural world.

Live events on Sunday 28th March

2:00pm

JR Carpenter & Tomo Kihara: Weather Warnings

Conversation
3:00pm

Free Ice Cream: Community Mapping & Playable Data

Workshop
4:00pm

Summit for Intergalactic Knowledge (SIK)

Digital LARP
5:00pm

Group Play and Discussion in The Garden of Earthly Delights

Play & Talk
6:00pm

Alternative Ecologies Jam Presentation

Presentation
7:30pm

Festival Closing

Virtual Gathering

Play any time

Floating Point Leviathan

Yan Knoop

Honour Water

Elizabeth LaPensée

The Garden of Earthly Delights

SCRNPRNT