Call for Participation

How are games and sustainability intertwined? Or broken? Serious games offer a chance to educate, express, and intervene, where play becomes a tool for comprehension and exploration. 

 

In a climate-shifting world, we see game makers and players expressing climate anxieties about the impact of human industry on our globe. We see games and their play explore  a variety of narrative themes and design tactics around sustainability. Titles like Daybreak demonstrate the complexity of climate action, game makers are building games running on renewable energy, and others are using games to illustrate how related themes (climate misinformation, overconsumption) are contributing to climate harms.

 

The theme of this year’s Serious Game Arcade is Games and Sustainability, asking how games can seriously help to build sustainable and regenerative futures. We are taking a broad approach to the concept. We are accepting contributions that  ranging from how games can model sustainable practices or improve science literacy to how they represent living through the climate crisis, as well as how game makers tackle the nuanced challenges of sustainable game design. 

 

This event is a chance to talk, share, and explore how games and sustainability intertwine. Unlike other academic conferences, it’s a chance to workshop ideas, share prototypes, and talk about the larger questions many of us face in the world of serious games. The program is open to:

 

1. Completed Interactive Projects: From games to controllers or servers, we will offer a space at the event to showcase your work. 

2. Design Work in Progress: We love works in progress, and are happy to provide you with an opportunity to get feedback from other game makers, industry experts, and academics.. 

3. Short Research Abstracts: We invite you to share abstracts on your research so we can curate roundtables on the challenges and emerging directions of serious games. 

We invite anyone working or researching in the space of serious games to apply, and encourage any CGSA conference participant to arrive a day early and check out this compelling and interactive program. This event will be entirely free and recorded, and hybrid participation is welcome. We are accepting all serious games submissions, but we will prioritize titles that align with the theme.

 

Submission Criteria

Please use the submission form (here and above) an abstract or summary of your game (~300 words). Be sure to list any needs you might have for showcasing your work. 

 

If you have any questions or issues, please reach out to Scott DeJong (scottbdejong@gmail.com).

Please submit your expression of interest no later than March 20, 2026