“When I first came to UChicago about 15 years ago, this event just would’ve been pretty unthinkable,” said Patrick Jagoda.

It was mid-October, and Jagoda was welcoming guests to the kickoff symposium for the Year of Games—a University-wide celebration of games and play spanning the 2025–26 academic year, spearheaded by the Division of the Arts & Humanities and the University of Chicago Library.

Back in 2010 the general attitude toward games at the University was characterized by a “kind of skepticism,” recalled Jagoda, William Rainey Harper Professor in the Departments of Cinema and Media Studies and English Language and Literature and the College. What little scholarly attention had been given to the topic was mainly focused on the relationship between video games and violence.

Over time the wariness began to give way. Students packed courses on critical video game studies, leading to the creation of a media arts and design minor and then a major (now one of the most popular in the Division of the Arts & Humanities). New infrastructure—the Media Arts, Data, and Design (MADD) Center; the Weston Game Lab; Fourcast Lab—gave students and faculty space to explore games together. Research projects on games proliferated.

The Year of Games represents a new phase in the relationship between UChicago and games: wholehearted embrace. The idea for the initiative emerged “several years ago—long enough that 2026 seemed impossibly far away,” recalls Chris Carloy, PhD’18, assistant instructional professor in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities and the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and chair of the Year of Games steering committee.

It all started with University Librarian and Dean of the University Library Torsten Reimer, a gamer himself, who convened a meeting of like-minded people on campus. Reimer floated the idea of a large-scale project that would highlight the many ways UChicago students, faculty, and alumni are engaged with play.

The organizers took an intentionally broad view of their chosen topic. Classic board games? Elaborate live-action role-playing games? Video games? Puzzles? For the Year of Games, it all counts. “If you think of yourself as somebody—or even if you might wonder whether you should think of yourself as somebody—who does things related to games and play,” Carloy says, you’re eligible to join the fun.

That expansive vision is reflected in the wide-ranging programming. The Year of Games events calendar is packed with ways to play, learn, and create: a Minecraft study break, game design opportunities, weekly mah-jongg and bridge sessions, a Doc Films series about games.

These get-togethers surround tentpole events, including the Year of Games Kick-Off Symposium and the Spring Carnival, which is planned for May 16. “Imagine the main quads taken over with live performances and bouncy houses and schoolyard games,” Carloy says. “If you haven’t played Red Rover in a long time,” well, send yourself right over.

The symposium, held over three days at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, brought together scholars, industry bigwigs, game enthusiasts, and students who will shape the future of game design and study.

The event was a reminder of how much the multibillion-dollar industry—which has the largest market share of the entertainment sector—shapes culture. Games and play are part of everyone’s lives, even those who don’t think of themselves as gamers. “Why do we talk about games like there’s gamers and then there’s not-gamers?” asked MIT professor D. Fox Harrell in a discussion of games and the academy. “We don’t do the same thing with music. We don’t say there’s musickers and non-musickers.” We just ask people what kind of music they like. We could, he said, ask the same question about games: “What kind of game do you like?”

In other words, games are for everyone. So pass go and read on for some of what the year has had to offer.—S. A.

Arcadia

For over a century, Chicago has been home to innovations in game design and manufacturing.

Speakers:

• Billy Basso, game designer and studio founder
• Andrew Borman, director of digital preservation at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York
• Chris Granner, audio director at Zynga
• Son M., studio director and creative director of the independent game studio Perfect Garbage
• Josh Tsui, studio founder and director of innovation at DePaul University’s Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Moderator: Katherine Buse, assistant professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies

For the first panel discussion at the Year of Games Kick-Off Symposium, creative figures behind made-in-Chicago games such as The Addams Family pinball machine, Mortal Kombat, and Animal Well took the stage to establish Chicago’s bona fides in the game sphere.

Chicago and games go way back. Standard Playing Card Company was founded in 1890 (the same year as another important Chicago institution), and the coin-operated game industry developed here in the mid-20th century. The panelists, who had each entered the industry at different times, offered glimpses into how the game landscape in Chicago has evolved. Granner programmed and composed for music chips in arcade game machines; Tsui was involved in the rise of early computer graphics and digitized video; Basso worked for a series of established studios in Chicago before going independent; and Son M. taught herself to design games in her parents’ basement after playing indie games on itch.io.

Chicago has also been a crucial part of the game-testing infrastructure. Sears got a shout-out from Borman for the work it did testing and marketing the home version of Pong to get those first consoles into living rooms in 1975. Panelists described how Chicago’s large number of arcades and huge game rooms attracted gamers and made the city a great place for play testing. Chicago’s particular culture had something to do with it too, Granner pointed out: It contains “a tremendous cross-section of America, at once cosmopolitan and parochial.” Borman eched the point: “Chicago is a city rich with gaming history, but I think it’s also one that continues to innovate and will continue to innovate for many years to come.”—C. C.

Feast for the ears

Four sound designers discuss their craft.

Panelists:

• Ben Babbitt, composer at the independent game studio Cardboard Computer
• Joanna Fang, senior Foley artist at Sony
• Chris Granner, audio director at Zynga
• Takashi Shallow, MFA’18, interdisciplinary artist, DJ, and a lecturer in media arts and design

Moderator: Julianne Grasso, PhD’20, assistant professor of music theory at Florida State University

Everyone in this room can remember the sound of your parents walking up to your locked door,” Joanna Fang (above) told the crowd gathered in the Logan Center auditorium for a panel discussion the first day of the Year of Games Kick-Off Symposium. It’s her job as a Foley artist to evoke hyperspecific soundscapes in the studio—the crunch of snow under hesitant steps, the metallic rush of a sword unsheathed for battle, the soft rustle of an expensive leather jacket—using materials like toilet plungers, old shoes, and cantaloupes.

Fang was joined onstage by three other artists who work with sound. All classically trained musicians, the panelists eventually found a home in games, creating the scores and sound effects that bring games to life.

Sound is essential to supporting a director’s intent, the panelists agreed. They described the careful awareness of the associations between genres and sounds that they bring to this work. Decisions to follow or deviate from a common pairing—like first-person shooter games and electric guitar—can be significant. Shallow brings this challenge into sound design classes, encouraging students to explore unexpected music and genre pairings. Fang also spoke about how she negotiates expectations and authenticity in sound, giving the example of prosthetics. In real life, prosthetics are typically designed to move noiselessly, but in games, players and studios alike often expect them to make distinctive sounds.

At the end of the event, Fang gave a live Foley demonstration with supplies she had gathered from the Logan Center throughout the day—shoes, colanders, music stands, a few pieces of 3D-printed waste, and a deflated yoga ball perfect for replicating the sound of creaky leather (“You have The Matrix in this one prop,” she said). And the pièce de résistance? A soaking wet chamois, or “shammy.” Wrap it around a couple pieces of manicotti, twist, and you have the most shudder-inducing bone break you’ll ever need. Using these sounds to make the audience feel a certain way, she said, is “like weaponized ASMR.”—C. C.

Playing, for keeps

Panelists discuss why and how we preserve games.

Panelists:

• Andrew Borman, director of digital preservation at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York
• Simon Parkin, journalist and podcast creator
• Torsten Reimer, University Librarian and Dean of the University Library
• Josh Tsui, studio founder and director of innovation at DePaul University’s Jarvis College of Computing and Digital Media

Moderator: Kent Lambert, associate director of MADD Center Arts Labs (Hack Arts Lab and Weston Game Lab)

“I’m a historian. … I’m currently playing Cyber Punk 2077, and in 500 years I want a historian to be able to play this and say something profound about culture today,” Torsten Reimer said on the first day of the Year of Games Kick-Off Symposium. Two days later he and others dug into the challenges and opportunities of game preservation.

The game industry has historically treated each new release as inherently better than the previous version. As a result, the speakers agreed, companies have not taken as much interest in preserving their own archives, as, say, film studios have. Game studios do tap into their history, occasionally releasing new versions of retro games or consoles. But these attempts to “monetize on nostalgia,” as Simon Parkin put it, aren’t the same as preserving the originals.

“It needs to be a society-wide conversation on preserving what made us who we are and what will be important for those who come after us,” said Reimer.

Most game preservation has been done by private institutions, individual collectors, and fans. And approaches vary widely. UChicago’s Weston Game Lab, for example, prioritizes playability over preservation, explained Kent Lambert. Each time students play on the consoles in the lab’s Retro Bay, there is risk to the condition of these objects, but the lab decided that the experience of playing vintage video games was worth it.

Andrew Borman explained that his institution takes a broad approach, making an effort to preserve everything around games, including marketing materials, focus testing records, and industry magazines. But there’s always a question of how much the circle should be expanded, said Borman. Would you preserve an interactive screensaver or advertisement?

“Preservation isn’t an accident, but survival often is,” said Borman. There are many game-related materials that have simply been lost, that there won’t be the opportunity to preserve. To create the documentary Insert Coin (2020), about arcade game manufacturer Midway Studios, Josh Tsui said he relied on records that were on the way to the dumpster when Midway was closing, as well as materials he and other employees had saved on their own.

The speakers urged the aspiring game designers in the audience to help preserve this history. “Keep a diary,” said Parkin, who has conducted oral histories of the game world. Tsui encouraged everyone to keep copies of their work and to make sure nothing gets thrown away.—C. C.

What’s olde is new again

For a weekend, medievalists became game designers.

What makes medievalists special, and what unique perspectives can they bring to the table as game designers? These questions, posed during the first afternoon of the three-day Medievalists Design Games symposium on a chilly Friday in December, helped warm up the room of scholars, some of whom had come into the weekend of board game creation with little to no game design experience. The event was organized as part of the Year of Games by medieval scholar Thomas C. Sawyer, a writing specialist in the University’s Writing Program.

Suggestions were slow to come at first, but soon ideas—and Latin phrases—were flowing. Games were a huge part of daily life in the Middle Ages, one participant volunteered: Many documents from the time include lists of games and rules (sometimes in the form of poetry). One attendee suggested that after the fall of Rome, Europe was in a period of reinvention, a good fit for the open-endedness and world-building involved in games. (The conversation was briefly derailed here by a scholarly spat, with another professor arguing that at this time most Europeans still saw themselves as Roman.) Medievalists are “consistently the most eclectic group of weirdos,” someone admitted, and perhaps liable to bring weird and eclectic approaches to game design.

There could even be a medieval game that isn’t set in medieval times, suggested a participant. Others agreed: Why couldn’t you communicate something essential about life in the Middle Ages from a game set in contemporary Chicago? Now they were starting to think like game designers.

By Sunday afternoon, after two days of discussions, mentorship from game designers, and workshopping, the medievalists were ready to show off some board game prototypes. In the MADD Center, each of the four teams had a game board sketched on a giant writing pad, plus an array of playing pieces, dice, cards, and tokens.

As participants had discussed on Friday, one problem with existing medieval games is they often borrow the aesthetics of the Middle Ages without teaching players anything about what it was like to live in the period. Two teams took on the challenge of making daily life their subject.

The game Healers and Heretics attempted to replicate the inherent danger of being a doctor many centuries ago: Players do their best to treat patients, but there are elements of chance that may cause a patient to die, even if their ailments do not seem life-threatening (maybe they come in to have a tooth pulled but catch cholera from the patient before them). As the doctors weather these events, they begin to accumulate infamy tokens, reflecting the growing suspicion of the townspeople. Late in the game a witch hunt begins, at which point you’d better hope you’re the least infamous doctor in town—or that you’ve healed enough patients who can vouch for you.

The last team to present kept the name of their game covered. Imagine that your child was injured by your neighbor’s pig, one team member prompted. Rather than blaming your neighbor, you hold the animal responsible. For his crimes, you decide to put the pig on trial. A teammate removed the piece of paper covering the gameboard with a flourish. “THE PIG MUST DIE,” it read. In this game, players are members of a medieval community putting animals on trial—a common phenomenon in those days—for crimes ranging from defecation to eating the Holy Eucharist. In an attempt to replicate how the trials could impact the morale and mindset of townspeople, the game takes place over four trials and four seasons, during which time players track the humors of the townspeople: More sanguine humors would lead the community to feel energetic and inclined to take action, but a phlegmatic mob would be more inclined to apathy.

After the presentations, some of the students who had been playing video games nearby joined conference attendees to test out these new games—and maybe get a new perspective on medieval history.—C. C.

Play to win

One theme, nine teams—and $3,500 in total prizes.

Over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend, UChicago students competed in the third annual Winter Game Jam, sponsored by Career Advancement and the recognized student organization UChicago Game Design. The challenge: Build a video game from scratch in 72 hours.

The MADD Center opened early over the weekend to accommodate competing teams. Around the room students wrote code, sketched out ideas on sheets of notebook paper, and drew visuals on tablets, with teams dividing roles based on skill sets.

First-year Elaine Jiang was in charge of story writing for her team. “It’s similar to writing a play,” she said. “You’ve got to think about what happens on the screen, and then you have to allocate lines to different characters.” She wrote for a bit longer, then looked up with curiosity. “Alumni are going to see this?” she asked. “If anyone’s looking for interns in their game company …”

The next week students displayed their games at a showcase in Ida Noyes. Games were judged on craftsmanship, originality, and adherence to this year’s theme—inverted perspective—by four Chicago-based game developers, including UChicago researcher Ashlyn Sparrow, senior research associate at the Weston Game Lab.

At the showcase students and industry professionals bounced from table to table, donning headphones, crowding over computer screens, and discussing gameplay. Team members offered encouragement. “You got this, bro,” Jiang said to a player attempting her team’s game. “It took me 12 tries.”

Each of the nine teams took the theme in a different direction. One game involved playing as the narrator, another as the game’s developer, and another as the constructor of a dungeon—a subversion of the “dungeon crawler” genre, in which a player must navigate a treacherous, mazelike environment.

After an hour of mingling, Career Advancement liaison Joey Velez announced the winners. The first-place team was composed of third-year Ravi Mangar and second-years Kin Ching Ip and Elijah Tan. Their game, I Want the Click, in which you play as a button in a video game wondering why it never gets pressed, was developed after an epic brainstorming session that weekend in the basement of Kent Chemical Laboratory. “On our drawing board we had some references to, like, Gilgamesh,” Mangar said. “Catholic religious imagery,” Tan added. All three team members—but really, everyone there, on every team—had a palpable belief in the power of games to have a cultural impact.

When asked about what makes a great game, the team grew thoughtful. “If a game subverts your expectations, it subverts your expectations in real life,” Ip said at last. “It makes you think about your life in relation to the game in a different way.”—Shiloh Miller, Class of 2026

Games on the big screen

In Winter Quarter, Doc Films joined the Year of Games for Screen Play: Cinematic Visions of Video Games and Sports, a series programmed by Chris Carloy, PhD’18, assistant instructional professor; Kent Lambert, associate director of MADD Center Arts Labs (Hack Arts Lab and Weston Game Lab); and Sierra Wilson, a production specialist at the University of Chicago Press. The first four films relate to video games and the last four to traditional sports, with the 2013 film Computer Chess serving “as a bridge between the two,” reads the description on Doc Films’ website.—C. C.

  Battle Royale (2000)
  Mortal Kombat (1995)
  The Wizard (1989)
  Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019)
  Computer Chess (2013)
  Love & Basketball (2000)
  Raging Bull (1980)
  Bend It Like Beckham (2002)

Games and UChicago from A to Z

• Among Us (2018): Nathan Blau, AB’14, worked on content strategy and design.
• Bungie: Studio founded by Alex Seropian, SB’91, and Jason Jones, EX’94.
• Cards Against Humanity (2011): Cocreated by Eliot Weinstein, AB’11, MPH’25.
• Danchi Days (2026): Codeveloped and produced by Melos Han-Tani, SB’13.
• ESCHVR (undated): Developed by Tallon Hodge, SB’23.
• First Monday in October (2026): Designed by Talia Rosen, AB’04.
• Gaming Islam: Research initiative led by Alireza Doostdar, associate professor in the Divinity School and the College, and Ghenwa Hayek, associate professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies.
• Haven (2024 and 2025): Developed by UChicago scholars and students.
• Indigenomicon: American Indians, Video Games, and the Structures of Dispossession (Duke University Press, 2025): Book by Jodi A. Byrd, professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity.
• Journey (2012): Produced by Robin Hunicke, AB’95.
• Koehne’s Games: Board game company founded by James Koehne, AB’19.
• League of Legends (2009): Noor J. Amin, SB’23, works on game design.
• Manifold Garden (2020): Developed and published by William Chyr, AB’09.
• Ninja Gaiden for Atari Lynx (1988): Held in the UChicago Library’s games collection.
• OpenEndedGroup: Digital art studio cofounded by Marc Downie, associate professor of practice in the arts in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, Media Arts and Design, and the College.
• Plant-land (undated): Developed by Alvin Shi, SB’21.
• Qix for Nintendo Game Boy (1990): Held in the UChicago Library’s game collection.
• Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (Princeton University Press, 2022): Book by Lorraine Daston, visiting professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought.
• Sonic the Hedgehog: Title and subject of Spring 2026 course taught by assistant instructional professor Chris Carloy, PhD’18.
• Twilight’s End (2025): associate content production by Kat Waterman, AB’25.
• The Unseeing Eye (2023): co-creation, art direction, and design by Eren Slifker, AB’24.
• Videogames and Genre Storytelling: Spring 2026 course taught by Ian Bryce Jones, PhD’15, lecturer in Cinema and Media Studies and Media Arts and Design.
• Weston Game Lab: Space to collaborate on the research and development of games (part of the MADD Center).
• Xbox (2001): Console held in the Weston Game Lab’s Retro Bay.
• Yars’ Revenge for Atari (1981): Held in the UChicago Library’s game collection.
• Zygote Games: Tabletop game company founded by Diane Kelly, AB’90, and James Cambias, AB’88.