Anti-Games, Fantasy Consoles, and the Rise of Speculative Game Development on Itch.io

2025

A conference paper on the community of creators claiming game design as personal art form, focusing on “anti-game” jammers and fantasy console communities.

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Curious how developers are responding to escalating precarity and anti-developer practices in the tech industry? Dr. Berge’s new paper explores how creators on game marketplace itch.io are designing “unplayable” works and building imagined consoles—not to sell products, but to experiment creatively, build community, and push back on commercial pressures from the industry. The speculative design communities, she argues, offer a fresh look at how game design can open up space for more inclusive, imaginative play.

Presented at at the Foundations of Digital Games conference held in Austria from April 15-18, 2025.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
FDG ’25, Graz, Austria
© 2025 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
ACM ISBN 979-8-4007-1856-4/25/04
https://doi.org/10.1145/3723498.3723739