Middle Ages in Modern Games, October 5-7 2026: Programme

The seventh Middle Ages in Modern Games Asynchronous Conference will take place on 5-7 October 2026. The conference themes this year are Possible Worlds and Possible Pasts and we have three days of written and recorded papers addressing these themes and a variety of other issues relating to the Middle Ages and Medievalism in games of all sorts. These papers will be released from our website at the times listed in the programme below (all times UTC+1). We hope you can join us!

Monday October 5th

9h45 – Opening Address
– Vinicius Marino Carvalho and Tess Watterson

10h – Keynote Lecture
‘Why we play the Middle Ages? A proposition for engaged thinking’
– Leandro Wallace

Session 1 – Design case studies
14h – ‘KAFLI 141”: An Interactive and Immersive Heritage Gamification Experience of the Acoustics of Lögberg, Þingvellir National Park (UNESCO World Heritage Site, Iceland)’
– Emilio Marx & Ginebra Raventós de Volart, Acoustic Heritage Collective
14h20 – ‘Playing the Irish Annals: Narrative Agency and the Gamic Mode of History’
– Vinicius Marino Carvalho
14h40 – ‘Sources and Serendipity: Experimenting with randomisation and medievalism’
– James Baillie

Session 2 – Modding
16h – ‘Reconquering Lloegyr in Crusader Kings III: Modding as a counterfactual historiographical exercise’
– Maxime Kremer
16h20 – ‘Skyrim Puzzles Mods: Finding Indie Freedom within Mainstream Gaming’
– Andrew Griffiths

Session 3 – Ecology and the Non-Human
18h – ‘Tides of Pestilence: Mechanizing Eco- Anxiety within a Fourteenth-Century Dystopia’
– Blair Apgar
18h20 – ‘The wilderness, self-reliance and community in Medieval Dynasty’
– Poppy Tester
18h40 – ‘Temporal Experience and Medieval Contemplation in The Longing’
– Jéssica Iolanda Bispo

Tuesday October 6th

Session 4 – Time and death
10h – ‘Possible Medieval Pandemics? How A Plague Tale Constructs a Playable Apocalypse’
– Ron Heckler
10h20 – ‘Death as Procedure: Sacred Language and Undead Labour in Graveyard Keeper’
– Baykar Demir

Session 5 – Analogue perspectives
12h – ‘Possibles Lives: An Autoethnographic Journey into a Lifetime Engagement with One TTRPG/LARP’
– Anastasija Ropa
12h20 – ‘From “Docufiction” to “Lawplay” — On Speculative Engagement with Early Medieval Law’
– Thom Gobbitt
12h40 – ‘The Dark Ages over Innistrad: Medievalism and Gothic Horror intersection in Magic the Gathering’
– Jakub Ivanecky

Session 6 – Morality & Ideology I
14h – ‘Between Feudalism and Empire: Liminal Temporality and (un)Grounded Aesthetics in Final Fantasy XVI’
– Johansen Quijano
14h20 – ‘Reimagining Medievalism in Chinese- Language Games: Wind Fantasy III and IV’
– Quangang Li
14h40 – ‘Medievalisms and Opposition to Institutionalised Religion in Worlds Beyond Number: The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One’
– Hannah Victoria

Session 7 – Lore analysis & in-game histories
16h– ‘Reading the Response to Bero’s Speech in Skyrim as a historical text’
– Phillip Wallinder
16h20 – ‘“Some may call this junk. Me, I call them treasures”: Invisible Trade Networks and Possible Worlds in The Elder Scrolls Series’
– Ricardo Santana
16h40 – ‘When an era comes to an end: agency, memory and micro-history in Pentiment’
– Ian Regueiro-Salcedo

Wednesday October 7th

Session 8 – Gender
10h– ‘Queens of Hell: Kleopatra, Lilith, and Possible Pasts in Medieval Fantasy Games’
– Kurtis Pope
10h20 – ‘‘I do not seek a marquis title but peaceful seas’: The imagination of an alternative Chinese maritime history in Uncharted Waters IV’
– Hanjun Shi

Session 9 – Nostalgia and Presentism
12h – ‘Between the Hearth and the Kremlin -Nostalgic Entanglements: Gender, Affect, and Materiality in Digital Depictions of Medieval Rus’’
– Kristina Wittkamp
12h20 – ‘Virtual Battles for the Past: Medievalism as Propaganda and Counter-Propaganda in the Russo-Ukrainian War’
– Yaraslau Kot
12h40 – ‘When the Past Returns as the Future: Video Games, Roman Imaginaries, and Historical Possibilities’
– Lu Yahuai

Session 10 – Alchemy and Deviance
14h – ‘The Sign Is Added Later: Blood Magic and the Moralisation of Possible Worlds’
– Peter Färberböck
14h20 – ‘Agendered Alchemy? Postmodern Rebis Analysis in Elden Ring’
– Marcus Jensen
14h40 – ‘The Problem with Paladins: Eulogising Crusaders in CRPGs’
 – Robert Houghton

15h – Closing Remarks
– Vinicius Marino Carvalho and Tess Watterson