Drawing on Mary Flanagan's framework of critical
play, Zygmunt Bauman's account of the consuming subject, and Linderoth and Mortensen's aesthetics of dark play, this talk
argues that discomfort and absurdity can function as productive tools for critical inquiry. The talk uses the design methodology
of Happy Shoppers — hacking and subverting a familiar game structure — to demonstrate how games can challenge the ideologies
embedded in everyday consumption without offering easy answers or moral resolution.
Dr. Chloé Wake
(née Germaine) is a Reader in Environmental Humanities in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University
and Co-Director of the Manchester Game Centre. Her research sits at the intersection of game studies, critical theory, and
environmental humanities, with a particular focus on how games model and naturalise ideologies — and how they can be designed
to challenge them.
She is co-author, with Paul Wake, of
Curious Games: Game Making, Hacking and Jamming as Critical
Practice (Behavioral Sciences, 2025), which develops the methodology of game hacking and jamming as a form of critical-creative
research. She is also co-editor, with Paul Wake, of
Material Game Studies: A Philosophy of Analogue Play (Bloomsbury,
2022). Together, they design games under the guise of Frank and Alex Games.
Happy Shoppers is their most recent collaboration.
Participation Online via
ZoomTalk in English
Hosted by Thomas Brandstetter & Margarete Jahrmann
