This is an in-person only event in the British Library Eliot Room.

With over three billion regular gamers, the videogame industry is a cultural titan. It surpasses the revenues of music and film combined and is on track to generate half a trillion dollars annually by 2027. The finals of Counter-Strike and League of Legends now captivate more viewers than many top-tier sports championships. Grand Theft Auto releases are the highest-grossing cultural artefacts of all time. And yet gaming has been overlooked as a space for political change.

Everything To Play For asks if videogames can serve egalitarian goals instead of fuelling hyper-materialist agendas. Combining cultural theory with accessible language and personal anecdotes, industry insider Marijam Did engages both novices and seasoned connoisseurs. From the innovations of Pong and Doom to the intricate multiplayer or narrative-driven games, the author highlights the stories of the games' communities and the activists who organise amongst them.

In conversation with Emma Reay, Marijam Did uses a rich array of examples to argue for a nuanced understanding of how videogames are challenging the status quo and shaping our world.

Doors and Bar open at 18:00. If you’re attending in person, please arrive no later than 15 minutes before the start time of this event.

Half price tickets available for Members, Students, Under 26 and other concession groups.

Marijam Did is a Lithuanian-Tatar games industry critic dissecting the intersection between videogames and politics. Her work has been published by the Guardian, VICE, GamesIndustry.biz, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and others. Marijam was a Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, and is currently a Senior Marketing Executive at a Bafta-winning videogames studio. In 2019 Marijam was nominated for GamesIndustry.biz’s 100 Women in Games as well as Campaigner of The Year at MCV UK Awards.

Dr. Emma Reay is a Senior Lecturer in Emerging Media at the University of Southampton. She is a clinical trustee for the gaming mental health charity Safe in Our World, a researcher for the initiative A Good Death?, and a board member of the indie studio Taralumen. Her first monograph, ‘The Child in Videogames’, is published with Palgrave Macmillan.

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