Mark the launch of Artgames after Gamergate & hear how artgame designers reframed gaming's past to respond to the rise of the online right.

For this in-person event Dr Rob Gallagher will be joined by Dr Paolo Ruffino to discuss Rob's new book Artgames after Gamergate (Palgrave, 2025). The Gamergate movement's 2014 campaign targeting women, minorities and progressives in gaming culture is now widely seen as a catalyst for the emergence of the alt-right, the manosphere and Trumpism. But how did makers of artistic and experimental videogames respond to this moment? And what can their games tell us about gaming's place in culture, the ongoing rise of the far-right and the nature of digital creativity today?

Speakers:

• Rob Gallagher is a lecturer in digital media industries at King's College London. His research explores videogames as vehicles for artistic, personal and political expression, and the spread of logics, concepts, aesthetics and practices from gaming into other areas of culture and politics. He has published widely on gaming culture, and has written for The Guardian, The New Inquiry and The Architectural Review. His previous book, Videogames Identity and Digital Subjectivity, was published by Routledge in 2017.
• Paolo Ruffino is a senior lecturer in digital curation and computational creativity at King's College London and a member of the artist collective IOCOSE. He is the author of Future Gaming (MIT/ Goldsmiths Press, 2018) and the editor of Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Techniques and Politics (Routledge, 2021). His current research explores videogames and post-Anthropocene imaginaries, and the impact of videogame engines on contemporary visual culture.