On 30 October 2026, we invite game-makers, artists, scholars, thinkers, and others to assemble in central London for a one-day facilitated symposium on the topic: Games against borders.
This event is a sequel to the 2025 symposium “What is the Antifascist Game,” organized by RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab in conjunction with the Games Transformed Festival for radical games and play, which this year will take place on October 31 and November 1 and be dedicated to racial and migrant justice.
Games against borders
This discussion could not be more urgent. The spectre of the border–those imaginary lines which separates ‘us’ from ‘them’, which violently guards stolen wealth, and which determines who can live and move freely–is hardening. Across Europe, the UK, and beyond, border regimes are becoming ever more violent. Pushbacks, detention, and deportation are increasingly normalised, while border enforcement agencies such as ICE and Frontex are granted exceptional powers to terrorise those who have been illegalised.
Meanwhile, reactionary, far-right and fascistic forces In the UK and beyond are organizing to strengthen the border. They are organizing in game-spaces and they are organizing playfully, whipping up racist and anti-migrant sentiments used to justify vicious government policies, that deepen cultures of xenophobia, and that embolden pogroms. Beyond just stoking paranoid and racist delusions of foreign invasion, the border has become a powerful ideological symbol that justifies the violent policing of gender, sexuality, culture and solidarity: us and them, good and evil, normal and perverse, productive and parasitic.
Games, the games industries, and gamer culture are far from innocent: from the casual imperialism of many history and strategy games to the profitable indifference of corporations to the racist bile being propagated on their platforms, games frequently reproduce and normalise racial hierarchies, capitalist values, and nationalist imaginaries.
And yet games can also offer profound opportunities to challenge these systems of domination, to explore border-defying ways of being, and to experiment with other ways of living together. Games and game cultures can, if they wish, be part of the struggle against borders and for a world of solidarity, peace and abundance.
For these reasons, this year we dedicate our symposium to the theme Games Against Borders and developing a play- and game-ful opposition to bordering: the processes by which borders are created, enforced, proliferated and normalized.
Bordering, because borders are neither natural nor inevitable; they are socially constructed barriers between nations and communities, made real through systems of enforcement such as walls, passports, border policing, and surveillance. They are both produced by and reproduce forms of domination rooted in statism, imperialism, capitalism, nationalism, and racism, upholding inequalities shaped by colonial histories. Many games reproduce these constructs ideologically; think, for example, of the way the border features as a key mechanic and theme in 4x games, where war between states is presented as natural, normal and inevitable, and the nation is a central unit of play in countless games. More conceptually, consider the way that most commercial games figure the player as a self-sufficient, self-contained, competitive and logical “player” whose “borders” must be policed against alien menaces.
But hegemonic games don’t just participate in bordering ideologically, they also do so materially. Besides the relationship between the digital games industry and the military-industrial complex, the industry benefits from a global division of labour that artificially “cheapens” the labour of workers in the global South, just as it concentrates creative power and profit in the North. And the entire games industry is built on horrific exploitation throughout the material production chain, from the mines where minerals are dug (and the communities poisoned by them) to the factories where consoles are assembled to the logistics empire and data centres on which they rely. Bordering determines not only who can access which games, but who is exploited in their making.
However, as we critique bordering, we also celebrate the power of games to break and transgress borders. We remember the sailors and stowaways, sex workers and enslaved peoples who played board and card and other games by the water’s edge, perhaps encoding their rebellion in the moves of a chess piece or a dancing body. We are inspired by the vast transnational communities of gamers whose potential has only been glimpsed, and the potential of games to imagine different ways of organising the world.
Should players of the world unite? Under what banner? What would a game without borders look like? This belief draws us together: that games are among the most important platforms for the radical imagination, for transversal solidarity and for subversive pleasure in the 21st century.
Join us
With all that in mind, we invite scholars, thinkers, game-makers, artists, fans, freaks and other others to join us for a day of conversations, conviviality and creativity.
As with our 2025 symposium, this symposium will not welcome political grandstanding or turgid academic papers: we propose to gather for a day of meaningful discussions, creative exchange and relationship-building. There will be no formal presentations but, rather, a day of facilitated large and small group conversations, oriented towards learning from one another and, if it feels fruitful, building new collaborations and projects.
Registration is free and a vegan lunch will be provided. Thanks to support from RiVAL, we are able to offer a limited amount of financial support for those without institutional support.
We especially welcome applications from people whose life experience and history of struggle has grappled with racism, borders and imperialism.
In the interests of demolishing borders, we are extremely flexible, omnivorous and curious about how we think about “games” and “play.” It of course includes conventional games (computer games, board games, role-playing games, LARPS etc) and sports, but we are also interested in kink and sexual play, in playful group facilitation techniques, in musical improvisation and other forms of creative play… and much more. If these ideas speak to you, please consider joining our conversation
This year, our symposium will also take place on the same day and in the same context of a skill-building workshop for game workers, organized by the trade union IWGB. Some of our events will overlap, providing a great opportunity to build solidarity and have generative conversations!
To apply to join us, please use the online form below and linked here: https://forms.gle/Ln1H4r61JFfDvWVu5. We have a limited number of spaces and applications received after August 3 risk being added to a waiting list and being ineligible for what few subsidies we can offer. If you’d prefer not to use the online Google form, you can email Max at the address below with all the information. If you’d prefer not to have to type so much, you can do the same but as an audio note or on a video call. Just get in touch.
If you have questions, please reach out to Dr. Max Haiven: mhaiven at lakeheadu dot ca
This symposium is being hosted by RiVAL: The Reimagining Value Action Lab with support from the Games Transformed festival and is being coordinated by Max Haiven, Briar Dickey and Nick Koppenhagen.
Also register and propose sessions separately for the Games Transformed festival
Our Games Against Borders symposium is organized in conjunction with the Games Transformed 2026 festival, now in its fifth year and bigger and better than ever!
Participants in the symposium are strongly encouraged to attend the festival, which will include game demos and play sessions, talks, workshops, parties, play, and conviviality.
Symposium participants are also strongly encouraged to propose talks, workshops, demos and other things for the festival, however the application and approval will go through a separate process, which will be posted publicly soon.
For now, you are encouraged to sign up for updates. If you complete an application for the symposium, we’ll also email you details about the festival proposal process when it is available.
Application form
If you don’t see the form below, please find it here: https://forms.gle/Ln1H4r61JFfDvWVu5