Category Archives: Games

Introducing GeoSkinner

I’ve changed my name! Well, my ‘brand’ and social media handle anyway.

I’ve been ‘FloodSkinner‘ since around 2015 after I change my Twitter handle from ‘CloudSkinner‘. CloudSkinner came about as my PhD was related to clouds and I made the switch as my first post-doc role was related to flooding.

After I left my last academic role and started using FloodSkinner as a catch-all for my personal projects, I considered using a different name. However, logistically it was challenging and my Twitter account had >4,000 followers at that point. I decided against it.

A few years down the line and I am increasingly unhappy with FloodSkinner as a name, or a brand, or whatever it is. It does not accurately capture my range of interests and the things I create and work on.

An example – just 8 out of my 23 YouTube videos on my main channel are about flooding. Just 4 of my 30 Shorts have a flooding theme.

Ultimately, I’ve just had the feeling that the name was inhibiting the growth of my content.

The new brand I am using is GeoSkinner – I am a geographer and a geoscientist, so Geo was the natural choice. I feel it is a much better fit and pretty much all my videos and Shorts feel relevant to the name.

To make the change, I’ve had to: update my logo; change handles on the LinkedIn page, BlueSky, LinkTree, Ko-Fi, and Discord; purchase a new website domain and add it to my website; and update profile pictures all over the place. My Instagram and Threads stay as GeoGamesMaster as GeoSkinner was already taken there.

One things I haven’t done yet is extract my FloodSkinner email account from the places I’ve used it and transfer over to a GeoSkinner one – this is being a bit tricky.

The final thing I’ve done is update my YouTube channels, including rebranding the existing main and Extra Life channels as GeoSkinner.

My 360 videos have never done well on the main channel, they get views but people stop watching very quickly – I guess if you’re pushed a 360 video you are not expecting, you won’t stay long. I’ve started a GeoSkinner 360 channel and moved my existing 360 videos onto it. I also took the chance to collate and upload my previous 360 content onto this one channel.

I feel very happy about the change and hope it makes a positive difference. In the three days before I switched domains this website had 24 views and 81 in the three days after. Now it’s time to make some higher quality content!

13 Beavers – A Game We Played

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I love a computer game called Timberborn. It’s a city builder game where you manage a colony of anthropomorphised beavers as they build a colony in the ruins of humanity, presumably now extinct. It is gentle, lovely, has a great sense of humour, and is highly addictive.

This is probably why Amy chose the board game 13 Beavers by Format Games as a silly Christmas gift for me. It’s a nice little game aimed at kids but we still had fun. The game has its own lore that tells of 13 legendary beavers who made it to beaver paradise*. These 13 beavers, each with its own theme such as a ninja, a robot, and a cowbeaver, form the artwork of the cards in the game – numbered 1 to 13, you move by correctly guessing whether the next card is higher or lower than the last.

The 13 Beavers game board. Colourful cartoon style, with board squares along a rapid flowing river. A player's hand is using a small fishing rod to catch magnetic fish.

The very simple game play is supplemented by some fun additions, including a magnetic fishing rod and fish that can either give you a bonus or set you back. There is also the opportunity to take a huge shortcut via the ‘tempting tunnel’ if you are able to correctly guess the exact value of the next card – something Amy did the first time we played, crossing the finishing line whilst I was still rooted to the start.

13 Beavers was lots of fun to play – it is funny, fast, and often frustrating (in a good way), whilst also being quite charming. It comes with a colourful board, a deck of attractive cards with the beaver artwork, a magnetic fishing rod and fish, and wooden beaver and dam playing counters. It’s recommended for ages 7+ and for 2-6 players. If you’re looking for a fun game for the family that doesn’t take too long or lead to arguments, this would fit the bill.

The reintroduction of beavers to UK landscapes is a hot topic these days. Beavers can bring great benefits as they create areas of wetland in wooded areas, which in turn increases biodiversity. Areas with beavers have greater resilience to forest fires and by allowing water to pond behind their dams they have potential to contribute to flood risk management too. 13 Beavers is not intended as an educational game but could make a fun hook for younger audiences as part of engagement work involving beaver reintroductions, facilitating conversations.

*I built beaver paradise in Timberborn so I imagine it looks a bit like this.

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Views expressed in this newsletter are mine and do not represent those of my employer. Content and links are provided for informational purposes and do not constitute endorsements. I am not responsible for the content of external sites, which may have changed since this newsletter was produced.

Exploring Games for Environmental Solutions at Play for the Planet 2

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In April I had the opportunity to attend and present at the second Play for the Planet network meeting in York. It brings together people of different backgrounds who all use games to address environmental issues. Firmly within my interests and the remit of my work with Games for Geoscience, I attended the inaugural event in 2024 and jumped at the chance to attend again.

In the build up to the event, the venue was moved from the main University of York campus to their King’s Manor location in the city centre. It left me reflecting how ridiculously fortunate I am to have an environmental games conference held within a ten minute walk of my house! A big change from the bus-train-bus trek I had to make (and self-fund) from North Lincolnshire last year. In 2024, I did not really have much to share so I presented on my thoughts about the relationship between models and games.

The presentations this year were in the form of research blast talks – 1 slide, 3-mins. This was a fun format and allowed for more people to share their work in the meeting. It was also pretty friendly to my easily distracted brain. For my research blast, I showed off the latest version of the Adventures in Model Land system I have been working on (see above for more). Following the research blasts there was a ‘world café’ style discussion where we debating crucial topics including ‘what is a game?’, ‘how do we best market environmental games?’, and ‘how do we evaluate our games?’.

Following the lunch break there was a chance to play demos of some of the games. This also gave the developers an opportunity to playtest and get feedback. For example, Games for Geoscience 2024 keynote Matteo Menapace was testing a streamlined card-based version of the immensely popular Daybreak game, provisionally titled Dawn.

I enjoyed catching up with my former University of Hull colleague, Steven Forrest, who was sharing the excellent work the Energy & Environment Institute have been doing with The Flood Recovery Game. This game is played with flood risk stakeholders, including community groups, to identify and better understand systemic gaps in the process of recovering after flooding. I’m sure I’ll do a summary of the research behind it in the near future.

Another highlight for me was playing the 2D city-builder game Oxygen Not Included. Whilst this is a commercial game, it was being used by Truzaar Dordi to help students understand how complex and coupled human-environment systems operate. This, along with some of the earlier discussions, reminded me of the power of good game (and model) design to effectively simulate complex systems whilst steering clear of becoming complicated. Complex is good, complicated is not.

As much as I enjoyed Play for the Planet, I did reflect on the lack of professional games designers at the meeting. There is a strong desire from that community to be part of the work tackling environmental issues, evidenced by the success and growth of movements like Playing for the Planet Alliance and the Global Green Game Jam. I would like to see much more interaction between those networks and our own academic networks like Play for Planet and Games for Geoscience. How? I’m still figuring that one out…

The Play for Planet network was established by and is run by the York Environmental Sustainability Institute (YESI), led by Linda Dunlop, Prasad Sandbhor, Pen Holland, Judith Krauss, Anna Morfitt, and Daisy Kemp. It is open to games designers, researchers, and educators with an interest in using games to address environmental crises. You can learn more and join the network here.

*I must remember to take photos when I attend things but I was having too much fun!

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Creating Game Worlds from Models: Adventures in Model Land

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Model Land is a concept proposed and explored by Professor Erica Thompson in her monograph Escape from Model Land. The idea will be well-known to those of us who use numerical models:

Models are built to simulate real world systems but to be useful they have to simplify the sheer complexity of nature. The way those simplifications are made is determined by the requirements, knowledge, experience, and biases of the model builder. Consequently, what these models simulate is not the real world but a world of its own making, a model land.

Erica implored us to get out of model land – to understand how the simplifications of the models make them wrong and use them carefully when they are informing real world decisions. This is absolutely vital, especially in my professional area where models are used to help us make decisions on flood risk. The key word in that last sentence is ‘help’ as models should never be making decisions for us otherwise, as Erica would likely say, that decision is made in model land and not the real world.

But when I hear the term model land, I have additional questions: what does a model land look like? What would it be like to explore one? How would life survive in one and could people call it home? These are probably not the most important questions for a modeller or decision-maker but wouldn’t it be fun?!

Quote by Frank Lantz, Director of the New York Games Center. "Making a game combines everything that’s hard about building a bridge with everything that’s hard about composing an opera. Games are basically operas made out of bridges.”

If games are ‘operas made out of bridges‘, models are simply bridges made out of bridges, or at best are very low quality operas. A game is a model of a system (sometimes often built using multiple models itself) – the bridge bit – that uses story and art to immerse players within it and bring it to life – the opera bit. Consequently, game worlds are themselves model lands. When you step into Link’s shoes and explore Hyrule in any game of the Zelda series, you are actually exploring a simplified representation of Hyrule, optimised for the purpose of the game and the hardware available. You are entering a model land.

What separates the model lands created by numerical models and game worlds is that paucity of opera. That’s all.

And we can fix that by using the Adventures in Model Land system and our imaginations.

Adventures in Model Land has been created by myself, Erica, Liz Lewis, Sam Illingworth, Rolf Hut, and Jess Enright as an open-source resource for numerical modellers. The latest version, v0.2, still in the beta stage, provides a step-by-step guide for the ‘operafication’ of any numerical model to create an explorable model land/game world. It leans heavily on the world-building methods of tabletop roleplay games (TTRPG) and the intention is to allow modellers to lead players on quests within their model lands.

A visual description of the steps used in the Adventures in Model Land system. — Summary of the Adventures in Model Land system.

At EGU this year, I led a short course using the v0.2 of Adventures in Model Land, leading over thirty participants through the worlding process, creating model lands and writing postcards describing their experiences. It was a great opportunity to test the idea out, gather some feedback, and further refine the system. We even had people designing new games based on the model lands they had brought to life! I think there is great potential in using the system as a workshop with modelling groups and the users of models to help them better understand the models used to make decisions – something I am working towards.

You can download the system for free and use it whatever you like. However, we would really appreciate feedback on the system and how you have used it. Please do also share your model lands and the games you create, our plan is to produce a compendium of our favourites in the future. I plan to release an update to the system later this year as a v1 – subscribe to this newsletter to keep up to date with progress and new releases.

This post was originally published as part of the Imagination Engines newsletter. To get my content earlier and straight to your email, subscribe using the box below:

Celebrating the EGU Games Day: A Look Back

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April 30th 2025 was officially the eight edition of the (unofficial) European Geoscience Union Games Day! Where does the time go, eh? In this post I take a look back at the origins of the Games Day and the story so far.

For the uninitiated, the General Assembly of the European Geoscience Union, often just referred to as EGU, is Europe’s largest gathering of geoscientists. Each year, around 21,000 of them converge in Vienna to share science and schnitzel. For the last seven years, Wednesdays have been what I have dubbed the Games Day, featuring our science sharing session – Games for Geoscience – and our social event – the Geoscience Games Night.

It all began when Sam Illingworth and Rolf Hut approached me in 2017 about convening a gaming session as part of the education and outreach programme. The following year we held the first ever Games for Geoscience session, thankfully with enough abstracts for both a session of talks and a session of posters.

Sam Illingworth and Rolf Hut stand in front of the EGU conference centre entrance. Sam wears a suit and trainers with a bowtie. Rolf wears jeans and a long leather coat. — Rolf and Sam at EGU 2019, amazingly not deliberately cosplaying as two generations of the Dr.

We also held a Games Night. The first one being in a small room in the basement. I remember forking our around £500 from my research funds to purchase 80 bottles of beer and a few crisps for the players. The room and the beer were nowhere near sufficient for the event. Since then we have had very generous support from the EGU team, with the Games Night taking place in a much larger space with access to the free refreshments in the neighbouring poster halls (although security guards added an additional difficulty level to this in 2025!).

It also started the tradition of my awful promotional images for social media. I’m no artist and my design skills are minimal. I also have no budget for this (but apparently I did for beer…) and have a determination to do things myself. Each year I have made some form of crappy image in PowerPoint to drive abstract submissions and make people aware of the Games Night.

In 2019, were joined by Dungeon Master Liz Lewis and Volcano Explorer Jaz Scarlett. We even expanded over the pond, with Rolf heading up a Games for Geoscience session at the American Geophysical Union meeting, with quest speaker Isaac Kerlow, created of the EarthGirl games.

The Covid-19 lockdowns forced EGU online in 2020 and 2021 and the organisers did a phenomenal job in pulling together the meeting during this time. I hosted Games for Geoscience from my bedroom, whilst the 2020 Games Night saw the convenor team live stream a game of Monster Flux – not geoscience-themed but needs must! In 2021, the Games Night took to Gather Town where I hosted a pub quiz in a bespoke games room I designed. The convenor team changed, as we said goodbye to Sam and Jaz, and welcomed in Lisa Gallagher and Malena Orduna Allegria.

The meeting in 2022 was fully hybrid, with onsite and online connection. The Games Night returned to a physical setting and we tried a return of the Games Room hosted event. Sadly, there was not much demand for it and since the Games Night has remained an onsite only event.

I was so happy to be offered the chance to attend EGU in person again in 2024, my first time in five years, and host the Games for Geoscience session and the Geoscience Games Night live. I was back again this year too and the whole Games Day just keeps going from strength to strength. I think this year was our busiest ever Geoscience Games Night. It is an event that relies of organised chaos and I am worried we may be reaching the limits of that working successfully – we may need to adapt to expand. For now, watch this space!

Visit the Games for Geoscience website and join the LinkedIn group.

This post was originally published as part of the Imagination Engines newsletter. To read my content earlier, subscribe using the box below: