What is the Antifascist Game?

A symposium for committed makers, players and organizers of games

London – July 11, 2025

Fascism, yesterday and today, is a sick and deadly game. What role, if any, do play and games take in defeating it?

In cooperation with Games Transformed (“a London festival for discussing, making and playing radical games”) and Weird Economies (a platform for tracing the “economic imaginaries extraordinary to financial arrangements of our time”), RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab presents What is the Antifascist Game?, a one-day symposium of game-makers, game-thinkers, game-players, game-artists and game-interventionists to consider this vital question.

This symposium is organized in conjunction with the 2025 Games Transformed Festival, which will take place the following day, July 12, at the same location.

In solidarity with internationalist material struggles to defeat fascism in the streets and with broader struggles to build radical democracy, we will gather to pose common questions about the growing threat, including but not limited to:

How are today’s forms of fascism (dangerously) playful and with what consequences? How are they mobilizing games? How do they make use of gamified platforms, from (Twitch, YouTube, Discord)? Does this gamification make them different from their 20th century ancestors?
How are fascist games and play entwined with the hyper-capitalist and games industry and its exploitation of workers throughout its supply chains, from the extractive mining operations to the self-exploitative hustle of “independent” developers? How are they entangled with the broader tendency towards capitalist gamification, and with the even broader climate of capitalism that feels, to so many people, like an unwinnable game?
How are these phenomena connected to resurgent patriarchy, racist nationalism, colonialism and genocide (in Palestine and beyond), revanchist politics, and rampant and murderous transphobia?
How do mainstream and alternative games (digital and analogue) promote or encourage fascist attitudes in either content or form (or both)?

We will also ask questions of resistance, rebellion and renewal, including:

What role (if any) do play and games play in defending our communities from and ultimately abolishing fascism?
How can anti-capitalist, queer, feminist, crip and other forms of “gaming from below” coordinate with anti-fascist efforts?
How shall we, who care about the power of games, draw the line and hold the line against fascist imaginaries? How shall we recognize enemies and encourage our allies?
What games will help us win a new postfascist, postcapitalist world? How will games and play feel after we win? What games will we play on the way?

These intentionally provocative questions are intended to excite, rather than limit the imagination about what kind of work and thinking might be welcome at our gathering.

When we speak of games, we are not only thinking of the massive digital games industry. We also want to expand our attention to include board games, role-playing games (tabletop, live action/LARP and more), sports, the gamification of… everything, sexual and romantic play, educational games, and the broader concept of play. When we speak of fascism, we are thinking historically and in the present, both in the thing we call “The West” and also “The Rest,” about not just an ideology and political organization but also a reactionary set of attitudes, dispositions and orientations that entrench and celebrate power and domination.

We welcome a plurality of responses to our call from people including game designers, interactive theatre practitioners and artists, scholars and intellectuals (with or without institutional affiliations and credentials), community organizers who share an opposition to fascism and a recognition of its entanglements with racism and nationalism, with patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia, with capitalism, with ableism, and with other systems of domination.

Format

The exact format of this symposium will depend on the participants, however it will not be a conventional presentation of academic papers. Rather, we will devise a well-facilitated format that prioritizes sharing ideas, meeting like minds, posing important questions, and generating new connections and collaborations. We welcome participants who are genuinely curious and interested in collaborative thinking, not grandstanders and know-it-alls.

Most of the day’s events will be private, for registrants. There will be one public-facing panel, which will also be recorded and appear as the final episode of the Weird Economies podcast The Exploits of Play, Season 2: Against the Fascist Game.

Logistics

10am-5pm on July 11
At a central London venue
The event is free
Lunch will be provided
Limited small travel and care subsidies are available
Stick around for the Games Transformed 2025 festival, beginning on the evening of the 11th and continuing all day on the 12th.

Organizer

RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab is a workshop for the radical imagination, social justice and decolonization based in Thunder Bay (Canada) with activities around the world. It is directed (and this symposium is hosted) by Dr. Max Haiven, Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination, creator of the board game Billionaires and Guillotines, the producer of the podcast The Exploits of Play and author of many books, including the forthcoming The Player and the Played: How the Game of Financialization led to Fascism.

Apply

Please apply by 2 May 2025.

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