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Games for Change Asia-Pacific 2025 @ ACMI

Posted on by Susie

I was incredibly honoured to give the closing keynote at this year’s Games for Change Asia-Pacific Summit, held at ACMI in Melbourne. My talk explored social empathy in game design – and I spoke about how games can help us understand each other’s experiences more deeply, and how design choices can invite compassion, connection, and reflection through inciting Social Empathy.

It was such a joy to share the day with so many wonderful speakers from across the region – I learned so much from the sessions on sustainability, behaviour change, mental health, education and training, and accessibility and representation. The range of ideas and perspectives was inspiring, and it reminded me how much potential games have to create meaningful change in the world.

As part of my keynote, we hosted a live play session of Life (Re)Sounding, turning the whole cinema into a collaborative play experience! Huge thanks to the incredible tech team who made sure everything ran smoothly — and a special shout out to the XBox controller extender dongle, which somehow worked for almost the entire length of the cinema!

Thank you so much to the organisers, and especially to Daniel Teitelbaum and Ceri Hutton, for all their hard work bringing the best conference of the year to life.

I can’t wait for next year’s summit! 💖

Games for Change Asia Pacific 2025!

Posted on by Susie

I’m so excited to be speaking at Games for Change Asia Pacific this Melbourne International Games Week!

I’ll be giving a closing keynote on Games and Empathy on Wednesday the 8th of October, and sharing the day with some amazing speakers from a broad range of areas – I can’t wait! There is also a showcase on the 7th and 9th showcasing some amazing games that incite change!

G4CAP is such an amazing conference and I’m so lucky to be a part of it again. If you’re going please say hi – I’d love to see you there!

Tickets and full schedule available here: https://g4capac.org/

DiGRA Australia Adelaide 2025!

Posted on by Susie

Last week Erik Champion and I were honoured to Co-Chair DiGRA Australia, the national games research conference.

It’s the first time the conference has been held outside of the Eastern states and we were so proud to host here in Adelaide! Thanks so much to all our wonderful volunteers from UniSA, Flinders and UoA who really made the conference come alive!

As well as a traditional track, the conference also featured an Experimental Track with lots of games and demos on display for attendees to play.

DiGRAAustralia 2025 National Conference

Posted on by Susie

We are proud to announce that the 2025 DiGRAA National Conference will be held from Wednesday, February 5 to Friday, February 7, at the University of South Australia, City West Campus in Adelaide. Registration is free, and all are welcome!

Get your tickets here: https://events.humanitix.com/digraaustralia-2025-national-conference

Event Details:
 Hosted by DiGRA Australia and the University of South Australia, this three-day hybrid conference invites game researchers, critics, designers, developers, artists, and enthusiasts at any career stage to come together and engage with the diverse and dynamic world of Game Studies. This year’s theme, “Communities of Practice and Play,” focuses on the roles, experiences, and cultures surrounding games and gameplay. Both in-person and online participation options are available, making the conference accessible to all interested in hearing about, and discussing games, players, and gaming culture.

What to Expect: Attendees will experience a range of presentations, interactive discussions, and engaging exhibitions. Alongside traditional talks, the Experimental Track will showcase creative, interactive works—from digital games to tabletop card games that invite hands-on exploration. 

Highlights Include:

  • In-Person and Online Sessions: Enjoy live presentations and talks with game scholars and creators from across Australia.
  • Experimental Track Exhibit: Discover innovative and playful experiences, including demos, installations, and other interactive projects.
  • Networking Opportunities: Meet fellow attendees and presenters to discuss and explore insights and projects in the world of Game Studies and game development! 

Important Information:

  • Conference Dates: Wednesday to Friday, February 5–7, 2025
  • Location: Bradley Forum, University of South Australia, City West Campus, Adelaide, South Australia. 
    The Bradley Forum is located on Level 5 of the Hawke Building on the City West campus, 50-55 North Terrace, Adelaide
  • Format: Hybrid – join us either in person or online

Games for Change Asia Pacific

Posted on by Susie

I’m looking forward to speaking at the Games for Change Asia-Pacific Festival in Melbourne on the 4th of October! Together with Samuel Whiting we’ll be speaking about our game vignette LifeResounding designed to raise awareness of growing up neurodivergent in a world created for neurotypical people.

We would love to see you there! You can learn more about Games for Change Asia Pacific and see the schedule here: https://g4capac.org/festival-2024/

AVCON 2024!

Posted on by Susie

This year AVON (Anime and Video Games Convention) was held at the Adelaide showgrounds. There were so many great things to see at AVCON – from the indie games room to the tabeletop games, there was something for everyone!

The Indie Games Room was again sponsored by UniSA and in there I was able to play some great games by South Australian developers across all domains – it’s so great to see the support for our local devs!

This year I was lucky enough to speak on a panel all about different paths to becoming a game developer, and the variety of skills that are useful in the game development industries. The panel was chaired by Associate Professor at UniSA Stewart Von Itzstein and alongside me on the panel was the wonderful game developer Billy Bizilis and aficionado of all things audio John Oestmann.

We were able to cover quite a few topics during the session but I think some of the big points were the importance of social growth in the game development industry – the importance of understanding that when we are creating games with others, we all think and approach things in a different way. I love that making games with passionate people gives me the opportunity to learn more about how different people develop their ideas, and how they work on their projects.

Staying open with our communication and ensuring we are using methods to communicate that suit every brain on our team allows us as developers to ensure the development process goes as smoothly as possible and that our games are as strong as they can be!

Unreal Fest Gold Coast ’24!

Posted on by Susie

In late May I got to escape the freezing cold Adelaide weather and head to the sunny Gold Coast for Epic Games’ Unreal Fest 2024! This was my first ever Unreal Fest and what a great event it was! I got to meet with some amazing people from Unreal’s worldwide education team, and connect with, and gain insights from some awesome educators using Unreal engine across Australia and even the world!

As seasoned Unreal Fest veterans, the wonderful Jason and Cam from Flinders Uni were there to introduce me to everyone (thank you both!) and it was a joy to represent the SA Unreal Engine education scene with them! 😀 Here’s a pic of me and Cam at one of the education sessions:

As well as a bunch of really interesting talks and panels, there was an education roundtable where we were able to talk about the strengths and challenges of using Unreal in education and share our insights with each other. We also got to hear all about the changes to the wonderful academic partnership program, and all the ways the program helps ensure that what we are sharing with our students is industry ready, valuable skills! I’m so proud and excited that UniSA is a part of the education partnership program!

The best part of all was that I got this gorgeous koala pin!

Thanks so much for hosting such a great event to the Epic Games Unreal Engine Team and I hope to attend Unreal Fest in 2025!

GDC: 2024!

Posted on by Susie

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to attend GDC in San Francisco. There were so many interesting talks and speakers that it was a very busy few days for me!

The most interesting talks for me were part of the education stream where I got to learn all about how other universities and lecturers across the world are teaching game design and development. I connected with some amazing people and learned some really great ideas that I’m looking forward to trying in our programs here at UniSA.

I came away with some really interesting insights into how people are creating some wonderfully inclusive and diverse game design programs that value the development process and the learnings of this so much more than the final product – it’s the journey that matters!

Thanks for having me GDC!

GLAM Games: Gaps and Glimmers in the Visitor Experience

Posted on by Susie

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to be able to speak together with the wonderful George Martin & Sophia Booij about escape rooms in the classroom at the GLAM Games conference to be held at UniSA on the 25th of September!

George, Sophia and I chatted about “Escaping the classroom” – engaging students with history. In this talk we spoke about our third year game design students who created an escape room designed to engage high school students with Ancient Egypt. Our amazing students then worked together with the Edmund Rice Flexi School to support the high school students to create their own escape room!

We spoke about the benefits of escape rooms for sharing knowledge and how their design connects to existing pedagogical theories. We also chatted about the advantage of escape rooms not only for those playing them, but also to those building them. It was an extremely engaging and interesting project and it was a joy to see our students grow not only as designers but as mentors throughout the experience.

Graphic Horizons Comics Symposium

Posted on by Susie

On the 14th of September I was lucky enough to speak at the Graphic Horizons Comics Symposium. I was able to share some the work I carried out with David Blaiklock from UniSA around our Augmented Reality Comic project. We spoke about our project ‘Alice’, a digital comic incorporating an augmented reality application that depicts a deepening father/daughter relationship whilst on an Australian road trip. In merging the comics format with augmented reality, this comic facilitates deep engagement leveraging the multiple narrative perspectives & multisensory experiences typical of the comics form. However, extending it beyond its physical surface and primary story into multifaceted times and settings through AR, which the reader/viewer is able to choose, involves the reader/viewer even further in generating the narrative order and content. For example, not only is the reader/viewer is able to discover multiple hidden perspectives by seeing 360 degree imagery from the point-of-view of the character and alternate events, handwritten notes on maps, hear recordings of voices and sound and view video in response to their own physical interactions with the comic, they are also able to manipulate these through elements of game play. This paper will introduce this recent intermedial Australian comic to the audience and explain how and why we took the approach to the comics form that they did to tell this story.

The symposium was a really great opportunity to connect with people from the comics space in a friendly and inspiring setting. I saw some really great presentations and it was so nice to explore a new academic area – comic people seem great! 🙂 Thanks so much to those who organised and took part in the symposium, and for being so supportive and welcoming!