09:00 – 09:30 Accreditation
09:30 – 09:40 Opening Words
09:45 – 10:45 Why Folk Games Manifesto- Niall Moody, Abertay University
The WHY FOLK GAMES? manifesto will be an interactive talk where we explore why folk games matter in a world suffused with videogames and technologically-mediated interactions. Using the Bread and Puppet Theater’s WHY CHEAP ART? manifesto as inspiration, Niall will draw parallels between how we talk about games and how we talk about art, and talk a bit about why folk games matter to him personally.
From there, the talk will open up: first, we will attempt to create a new folk game together, and then we will collaboratively write our own WHY FOLK GAMES? manifesto, to be printed out and distributed at Now Play This.
11:00 – 11:45 Playing With Your Imagination: The Intersection of Folk Games & Role Playing Games – Anna Blackwell
Anna Blackwell, the designer behind the popular solo Table Top Role Playing Games DELVE and Apothecaria, explores the connections between imagination, role-playing, writing, drawing, and folk games. This talk explores writing, drawing, and imagination as a form of play and how Table Top Role Playing Games can facilitate that. It will also examine the concept of folk games and how Role Playing Games can/ have utilised existing folk games to better guide the player experience. e.g. The act of drawing maps of imagined places as a gameplay mechanic as seen in DELVE, The Quiet Year, Ex Novo, and Microscope.
This talk will delve into Role Playing Games as an evolution of both Dramatic/ Fantasy play and Solitary or Co-Operation play as defined by child development studies and discuss the power of roleplaying as a psychological tool and the benefits and potential dangers thereof.
11:45 – 12:00 COFFEE BREAK
12:00 – 12:45 Anthropophagic Play: Folk Games as Cultural Remix and Remediation
(or How to Inspire Folk Games Development through the Latin American Philosophy of Cultural Cannibalism)
Pedro Mota, University of São Paulo, Brazil & Cologne Game Lab, Germany
Folk games are dynamic acts of cultural anthropophagy—a Latin American philosophy that critically devours and transforms external influences into something new and locally rooted. Inspired by Oswald de Andrade’s concept of anthropophagy and Bolter and Grusin’s theory of remediation, this session explores how folk games remediate cultural elements, techniques, and narrative discourses from other cultures, incorporating and remixing them through collective play. By blending tradition with innovation, folk games become living, dynamic, and collective expressions of cultural synthesis.
To inspire the development of folk games, we will showcase a selection of Brazilian indie games that embody anthropophagic play in their creation—highlighting how they remediate cultural narratives and mechanics to create unique, creative, and locally rooted experiences.
The central question we aim to explore is: How can anthropophagic play help us understand folk games as practices of cultural remix and collective storytelling? Let’s devour, remix, and play together. Yummy! 
13:00 – 14:30 LUNCH BREAK
14:30 – 16:00 Emily Koonce Playful session
This play session consists of a curation of folk games centered around developing connections between one another. We will introduce ourselves, learn and play a series of folk games chosen to build trust within a play community, and discuss what our experiences were like within that mode of playing.
16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break
16:30 – 18:00 Putting the folk in game.
Open conversation with the speakers and audience lead by Philipp Bojahr & Ruth Dorothea Eggels, CGL
This interactive session invites the audience to participate in a discussion on what makes a game “folk”. All the speakers will join the open conversation, connecting their perspectives on folk games—from accessibility and shared authorship to cultural re-mediation, re-adaptation, and the potential of emergent play for resilience and community building.
Together, we will explore the characteristics of folk games and their significance in contemporary culture and digital games. Is “folk” about storytelling, tradition, or tied to vernacular practices of play? What can we learn from emergent and community-driven forms of play? How can the folk in games be translated to digital environments, and what lessons can contemporary game design take from these adaptable, evolving play forms?
About the speakers
Niall Moody
Lecturer in game audio and design at Abertay University. He obtained a PhD in music technology from Glasgow University in 2009, following which he spent a number of years as an indie game developer before returning to academia in 2017.
These days his research interests are focused on game design and play, and specifically treating players as game designers. His recent work revolves around analogue games, and an exploration of what happens when you attempt to flatten the traditional hierarchy between game designer and player.
He is interested in folk games for the ways that they are open to change and modification, how they are shared by word of mouth, and how they can become linked to specific places and personal histories as a result.
Outside of academia, Niall is an artist and game developer. He is a member of Biome Collective, a Dundee-based digital arts collective, and helps organise the Dundee tabletop playtesting meetup for local analogue game designers.
Anna Blackwell
Anna Blackwell is an author and tabletop game designer best known for her solo Table Top Role Playing Games DELVE, Apothecaria, and For Small Creatures Such As We. She has been a freelance writer for seven years, writing about tabletop games for Tabletop Gaming Magazine, Senet, and Wyrd Science. Outside of game development, she is training to be a circus performer and specialises in quad stilts and tightwire!
Pedro Mota
Pedro Mota is a lecturer, filmmaker, and narrative designer with a strong academic background in film, media, and game studies. A Brazilian Ph.D. candidate at the University of São Paulo (USP), he is currently conducting cooperative Ph.D. research at the Cologne Game Lab (CGL) – TH Köln, Germany, after a previous research period at Mediadesign Hochschule Berlin (mdh). With a Master’s degree in Media and Audiovisual Processes from USP and a Bachelor’s in Cinema and Audiovisual from the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), with an exchange experience at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School (Portugal), Pedro Mota brings a deep interdisciplinary perspective to his work. Currently, his research focuses on ergosemiotic narratives, exploring the intersection of game design and semiotics through a narrative analysis prototype development. His ongoing project, titled “RHIZOLUDENS SEMIOPHAGIAS: Semiotic Borders of Narrative Ecosystems in Collaborative Rhizomes,” investigates the dynamic interplay between storytelling, semiotics, and collaborative systems to understand complex storyworlds.
Emily Koonce
Emily Koonce (she/her) is a Chicago-based multimedia artist, writer, and community organizer interested in the intersection of folk games, philosophy, and education. She acts as an event producer at Night City and as an adjunct professor of game development at DePaul University. With her background working at summer camps, Emily frequently travels to different games festivals and events to run folk games workshops. She has also worked at the NYU Game Center, Tender Claws, Babycastles, and the MAGFest Indie Arcade. Emily recently performed “Pause Play,” an alt-control dance piece at the 2024 A MAZE Festival alongside Susie Buchan, and her videogame “crockpot” was released in June 2024.
Ruth Dorothea Eggels
Ruth Dorothea Eggels is a cultural anthropologist and digital ethnographer, currently exploring sustainable game development practices in the EU Horizon project “STRATEGIES – Sustainable Transition for Europe’s Game Industries” (www.strategieshorizon.eu) at the Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences. Her research concentrates on the ethnography of technosocial lifeworlds and the anthropology of play and games and is inspired by Science and Technology Studies and New Materialism. Her dissertation, Embodying Gaming (University of Bonn 2024), explored the materialities and embodiments of play at gaming events in Europe. She was a lecturer at the Universities of Bonn, Graz, and Vienna and is co-editor of the journal Kuckuck. Notizen zur Alltagskultur.
About the organicers:
Philipp Bojahr
Dr. Philipp Bojahr is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the CGL working in the field of game studies and game design with a focus on new media applications in museums and other cultural contexts. As part of his tandem position, he also works in this field on a practical level at the Siegerlandmuseum in Siegen, where he serves as curator with a focus on multimedia and multimodal presentation. He studied media studies (B.A.) and media culture (M.A.) at the University of Siegen and received his doctorate in media and theatre studies from the University of Cologne for his work on aesthetic and technical visual forms of montage/assembly in videogames (“Visuelle Montageformen des Computerspiels”).
Sonia Fizek
Sonia Fizek is a games and media scholar. She holds a professorship in Media and Game Studies at the Cologne Game Lab at TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences, where she also fulfils the role of the head of research. In the years 2016-2025, she served as a co-editor-in-chief of the international Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds. In her latest book Playing at a Distance (MIT Press 2022), she explores the borderlands of video game aesthetic with focus on automation, AI and posthuman forms of play. Fizek’s current research concentrates on the environmental sustainability of video games. She is a scientific lead in the EU Horizon project “STRATEGIES. Sustainable Transition for Europe’s Game Industries” (2024-2027, https://www.strategieshorizon.
David Murphy
David Murphy is a Stockport-based academic and cultural critic. He holds a PhD in Communication and Cultural studies from York University (Canada) and he currently works at The University of Staffordshire Games Institute where he is a Senior Lecturer in Game Development.
Ma. Luján Oulton – Now Play This
María Luján Oulton is a curator and cultural producer specializing in experimental and artistic video games. She holds a Master’s degree in Communication and Cultural Creation from the Walter Benjamin Foundation. In 2009, she founded “Game on! El arte en juego,” the first Latin American art-video game exhibition. She co-founded the Game Arts International Assembly (GAIA) and Women in Games Argentina. Currently, she directs Now Play This. Oulton is dedicated to promoting experimental and artistic video games, fostering their integration into the cultural sector, and advocating for increased female participation in the gaming industry.