Play the Future
The visions of the future appearing in video games are more and more complex and thought-provoking.
We’ll take a look at three Polish projects: Liberated - a cyberpunk dystopia, The Invincible - a game based on Stanisław Lem’s novel of the same name, and Gamedec - a story about a detective investigating crimes in virtual worlds.
Then, we’ll have a discussion with Prof. Paweł Frelik, a science fiction and video game researcher. We’ll talk about the visions of the future found in games and reflect on the extent to which they are accurate or flawed.
Paweł Frelik
Professor at the University of Warsaw’s American Studies Center where he heads the Speculative Texts and Media Research Group.
He researches science fiction, video games, other audiovisual media (film, television, music videos), and non-popular culture. He wrote over 100 international publications in these fields and he’s a member of editorial boards at Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation, and Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds as well as the co-editor of the New Dimensions in Science Fiction book series published by University of Wales Press. Between 2012 and 2014, he was the president of the Science Fiction Research Association and the organisation’s first board member from outside the USA and Canada. Since 2017, he has headed the Science Fiction Section at the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. In 2017, he became the first non-English-speaking winner of the Thomas D. Clareson Award for his contribution to science fiction research.
Paweł Schreiber
Doctor, lecturer at the English Linguistics Department at Kazimierz the Great University in Bydgoszcz, and a specialist in contemporary British drama. As a theatre critic, he has written for Teatr, Didaskalia, and Chimera magazines. Co-author of the Jawne Sny (‘Lucid Dreams’) blog on video games and their links with other branches of culture. He has written about games for magazines such as Przekrój and Pixel, as well as dwutygodnik.com.
