The Manchester Game Centre is pleased to announce a symposium dedicated to Games Workshop’s games and fictions. Join us at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester for a day of talks and gaming that will cover Black Library’s fictions, transmedia in Warhammer 40,000, Ancient Egypt in the Warhammer’s Old World, and a cultural history of Jervis Johnson’s fantasy football game Blood Bowl.

This event is free and is open to everyone. Places are limited. Please book your ticket now.

Schedule

9:00-9:30 Registration

9:30-10:10 Mikko Meriläinen, ‘Plastic Crack and Fifty Shelves of Grey: The Pile of Shame Phenomenon in Miniaturing’

10:10-10:50 Paul Wake, ‘Blood Bowl: A Cultural History’

10:50-1110 BREAK

11:10-11:50 Jenny Cromwell, ‘Tomb Kings, Necrons, and Horus: Games Workshop’s Use of Ancient Egyptian Imagery’

11:50-12:30 Aasa Timonen, ‘Transmedia Worldbuilding in Warhammer 40,000’

12:30-13:15 LUNCH

13:15-14:15 Marc Gascoigne, ‘The Black Library’

14:15-17:00 Gaming. We’ll have a selection of Games Workshop games on hand for those who’d like to stay and play.

Schedule is subject to change – check the Games Centre website for updates

Speakers

Jenny Cromwell is Reader in Ancient History at MMU, specialising in ancient Egyptian history. Increasingly, her research focusses on the reception of ancient Egypt in games (both analogue and digital) and what this says about popular understanding of Egyptian history.

Marc Gascoigne is a science fiction and fantasy book publisher. He is the author of more than fifty novels, including numerous Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and the original Games Workshop Judge Dredd role-playing game. As Head of Black Library Publishing he established the fiction wing of fantasy giant Games Workshop, before going on to launch the science fiction and fantasy imprint Angry Robot at HarperCollins, and Aconyte Books, the book publishing arm of the Asmodee Group of games companies.

Mikko Meriläinen is an Academy Research Fellow at Tampere University. His research focuses on gaming as part of everyday life, and he is currently conducting the research project Beyond hegemony: Rethinking men and masculinities in game culture. In his previous work he has extensively addressed young people’s gaming, miniaturing, and online gaming conduct.

Aasa Timonen is a PhD researcher from Tampere University Game Research Lab. Her research is focused on the transmedia practises of analogue games. Aasa’s upcoming dissertation work is about transmedia worldbuilding of Warhammer 40,000, how it has changed over the decades and how players navigate in the ever-changing and shifting worlds of the grim darkness of far future, both on the tabletop and outside of it.

Paul Wake is Professor of Game Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research interests include games and culture, games and communication, and, more recently, games and the climate crisis. He is currently working on a book-length study of Games Workshop’s Blood Bowl which will be published by The University of Michigan Press in 2025.