[Commlist] Video Games and Animation: A One-Day Conference

*Video Games and Animation: A One-Day Conference*
*University for the Creative Arts, Farnham*
*Friday 19 June 2026*

Discussing the history of animation, Maureen Furniss (2017) coins the 
term ‘animated games’ to describe the arcades, consoles and digital 
games which emerged in the late twentieth century. Furniss’ term appears 
at odds with the approach taken by many game designers, journalists and 
academics, who have more consistently framed digital games as a 
cinematic or literary experience. This reorientation of the video game 
as a distinctly animated ludic experience, necessitates a significant 
historical, technological, cultural, pedagogic and aesthetic reappraisal 
of the medium.

The tendency for commentators to align digital games with more 
established art forms overlooks clear proximities between animation, 
cartoons, comics and other less-respected forms of entertainment. This 
is despite the evident fact that video games, with very few exceptions, 
are animated screen media. Arcade games were among the first popularly 
circulated experiences of digital animation. The games industry has 
contributed significantly to developments in film and television 
animated effects. Many popular and long running franchises, from Mario 
to Splatoon, have more in common with Looney Tunes than Hollywood cinema.

Reflecting the fact that games are an animated media, Games Animation 
may be considered a subject area in its own right. Within the games 
industry, the Games Animator occupies a distinct role, focusing 
exclusively on the movement of assets and their implementation within a 
game engine. The technical skills for this role are relatively 
well-defined (Cooper 2021). What appears less evident is whether this 
contribution to games design can be considered a specialised craft, or 
whether it has sufficient theoretical underpinnings to be considered a 
standalone field. If the latter then, we may ask, what are the key 
theoretical ideas that form the basis for this subject, and how do we 
teach them within a higher education context?

This one-day conference seeks to explore the neglected relationship 
between animation and digital games, from historical, theoretical, 
pedagogic and industrial perspectives, together with Games Animation and 
the Games Animator as a subject area. We invite contributions from 
scholars, practitioners and industry professionals. Potential topics 
include:
•     Theories of Games Animation
•     Games, comics and graphic novels
•     Nintendo’s animation brand
•     Animation in virtual and augmented reality
•     Television animation, cartoons and games
•     Pedagogy of Games Animation
•     Game juice and animation
•     Game animation technologies
•     The role of animation in kinaesthetic gameplay
•     Games Animation as craft or subject area
•     Retro games and pixel art
•     Kinetic Characterization: avatar movement and identity
•     Games Animation as craft v subject area
•     Videogames and The Walt Disney Company
•     Traditional animation in contemporary games
•     Criteria for assessing quality in gameplay animation
•     The distributed performance between player and animator
•     Kinetic Literacy: teaching animation for games


Please send a 200-word abstract for 20-minute presentations, accompanied 
by 50-word bio, by Friday 24 April 2026 to: (Ewan.Kirkland /at/ uca.ac.uk) and 
(Gavin.Lewis /at/ uca.ac.uk).

This event is primarily intended as an in-person conference, but the 
organisers do have some programme capacity for online presentations.

See our website <https://vga2026.edublogs.org/> for further details.

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