Tag Archives: Games

Find me at EGU26 – April 2026

This last month has seen me survive my first half-semester of full-time teaching. The job feels like it fits me like a glove though and I am definitely in my happy place in the classroom. Teaching weeks can feel relentless, delivering your material and making sure you have stuff prepared for future sessions, as well as keeping on top of the many admin tasks. My ADHD brain works best when it is this just-in-time mode of working but the sustained focus is exhausting. The Easter break therefore has been very welcome!

As well as time off, I have had a bit of space to prepare some teaching in advance, aware that I am away for two weeks in the next month and need to get ahead. I’ve also had a little bit of time to think about research, beginning conversations with collaborators about an exciting new project for the summer – more on that in a future post, I’m sure.

The European Geoscience Union General Assembly 2026

The EGU general assembly is a big date in my annual diary. If I’m honest, it’s the highlight of my year and something I really look forward to. I’ve been very fortunate to have been awarded internal funds from York St John University to attend this year, and I am set to have a busy week, as I explain below.

I will be attending virtually on Monday 4^th May, travelling Tuesday 5^th, and attending in person Wednesday 6^th to Friday 8^th, travelling back on Saturday 9^th May. If you’d like a catch-up/chat, please get in touch at c.skinner@yorksj.ac.uk and we can put something in the diary.

Most importantly, I am delivering two presentations, both on Friday 8^th May:

At EGU25, a bunch of us discussed starting a network to support neurodivergent geoscientists. We also ran a survey to capture the experiences of neurodivergent attendees at the conference. It led to the start of an online community and the submission of a report to the EDI committee. In this presentation, I will talk about this experience.

EGU26-5395 | Posters on site | HS2.2.7 | Adventures in Model Land: Using tabletop roleplay games to explore the abstract worlds of numerical models | Christopher Skinner, Erica Thompson, Jessica Enright, Rolf Hut, Sam Illingworth, and Elizabeth Lewis | Fri, 08 May, 16:15–18:00 (CEST) Hall A | A.1

If you have been reading my newsletter for a while, you will be familiar with Adventures in Model Land already (if not, read more here). Last year I shared a poster in the Games for Geoscience session and this year I’m presenting to modellers in one of my favourite sessions, led by Diana Spieler.

On Adventures in Model Land, I will be seeking interest in a project pairing modellers up with artists to conceive and create new model lands. If you’d be interested, please get in touch using c.skinner@yorksj.ac.uk

In addition, I’m involved in two other presentations that will sadly happen on days I’m not there or am travelling:

EGU26-13856 | ECS | Posters on site | GM3.3 | The role of sediment transport in amplifying flooding | Josh Wolstenholme, Christopher Skinner, Christopher Hackney, Matthew Perks, and Daniel Parsons | Mon, 04 May, 10:45–12:30 (CEST) Hall X3 | X3.13

This is some really exciting modelling work led by Josh that reveals how sediment transport during a single flood event can exacerbate flood risk. These are processes not represented in traditional hydrological and hydraulic models used for flood risk planning and forecasting, potentially meaning we are underestimating real flood risk.

EGU26-18054 | Orals | EOS1.1 | Communication within the UK flood hydrology community: bridging the gaps between science and practice | Linda Speight, Emma Ford, Anita Asadullah, Louise Slater, Sally Brown, Helen Harfoot, Owain Sheppard, Chris Skinner, Clare Waller, and Thomas Willis | Tue, 05 May, 10:00–10:10 (CEST) Room 0.15

This work, led by Linda, shares research conducted by the Science and Technical Advisory Group (STAG) of the UK Flood Hydrology Roadmap (UKFHR). The work sought expert views from the hydrological community on why the latest hydrological science and approaches were not leading to innovation in operational practice, and how we can improve this situation.

Geoscience Games Day 2026 @ EGU!

In addition to my presenting duties, I will also be leading activities for the annual Geoscience Games Day at EGU on Wednesday 6^th May. This will be the 9^th one in a row! You can get the full lowdown over on the Games for Geoscience webpages but below is a summary of the activities:

Activities kick off at 16:15 with our usual science sharing session, this year in interactive PICO format! This year we have 15 presentations covering both analog and digital games, each with a 2-minute lightning talk followed by an interactive display.

Geoscience Games Night @ EGU25

NET15 | Geoscience Games Night | Conveners: Christopher Skinner, Lisa Gallagher, Maria Elena Orduna Alegria^ECS, Rolf Hut, Elizabeth Lewis | Wed, 06 May, 18:00–19:30 (CEST) | Foyer D

We then immediately run off to the world-famous Geoscience Games Night. This event gets busier and busier each year, so make sure to come along and play the latest in geoscience gaming. Don’t forget to bring a game or two with you too!

As it will be the 10^th anniversary of Games for Geoscience next year, I’m exploring the possibility of marking it with an edited volume or a special issue. I will be seeking interest at the conference and feel free to express interest to me on c.skinner@yorksj.ac.uk

Teaching

Last year during my River Management module I used Vienna and the development of the ‘three Danubes’ as a case study. Whilst at EGU, I’m planning on using an early morning walk to capture footage with my 360 camera to make a simple virtual field trip for my students next semester. Some of that footage might even make it to a 360 flood tour on my GeoSkinner 360 YouTube channel!

A 360 flood tour of Prague on GeoSkinner360

See you in Vienna in May!

Chris

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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.

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:

Imagination Engines – August 2025

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Welcome to August’s issue of Imagination Engines! Thank you for reading.

This summer I have been given a wonderful opportunity to develop a brand new module on River Management for York St John University’s Geography courses. I am so excited for this and have been loving designing the module and beginning to put the elements together. It’s hard work – fun hard work – and consequently I’ve had to reprioritise how I use my spare time.

It does not change my long-term goal of writing a book. In fact, I think the whole process is excellent practice and brings that goal closer. However, I need to temporarily change how I use this newsletter – I have been using it as a motivator to get me writing regularly and to explore different ideas, with 3-4 articles each month. I just don’t have capacity for this now but want to maintain a monthly publication schedule. Instead, I will focus on giving short updates on my main projects that are listed on the front page of my website.

Ongoing Research

I have a new paper out this month as a co-author. The work was led by my former supervisee, Josh Wolstenholme, and covers his PhD field work on the geomorphic change induced by the installation of leaky woody dams. It is a timely reminder that rivers move and change, especially if you stick stuff in them.

Wolstenholme et al (2025). Localised geomorphic response to channel-spanning leaky wooden dams. Earth Surface Dynamics. DOI:10.5194/esurf-13-647-2025

Adventures in Model Land

This is an open-source system to make game worlds based on the numerical models we use to learn about the world around us and predict the future. It is inspired by the world building used in tabletop roleplay games (such as Dungeons & Dragons) and just needs your imagination. You find out more and download the free guide here.

I’ve also started a Discord server for Adventure in Model Land as a place to discuss the system, share the game worlds you create, and to get help from others. Join it here.

FloodSkinner YouTube Channel

I had a new Short out in the last month. I came across some videos discussing rumours and leaks about the (long) upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6, including some indications it might include a dynamic weather system. The rumours suggest that the weather system would interact with the terrain and influence the game – it rains, water pools, and roads flood and become inaccessible.

This is obviously very exciting for me so I put my thoughts into a Short. I was short on time and cutting all the clips together was quite laborious – unfortunately I didn’t get chance to do a full set up and did not light my greenscreen properly, so this is a bit messy (the kitten also moved the screen partway through filming and messed it up more…). Despite this, it did moderately well, with >1,100 views.

Games for Geoscience

After the annual General Assembly of the European Geoscience Union (EGU), summer is pretty quiet for Games for Geoscience. With the call for sessions for the 2026 General Assembly now out, in the coming month I’ll be pulling the team together and proposing what would be the 9th Games for Geoscience session.

I still have ambitions to make it more than just an EGU event, with year-round activity and a community. If you’re interested, you can join the Discord server.

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®

In the last month I had the great pleasure of the supporting the Geography staff at York St John University with a LEGO SERIOUS PLAY inspired workshop. I was asked to support the department as they considered the best ways to support the future employability of their students and the creative approach of the workshop led to some valuable insights.

A table filled with Lego and models and surrounded by people — Making models with York St John’s Geography staff.

I’m looking forward to October this year where I will be returning to Southampton to once again deliver a Play you PhD workshop to the new cohort of Flood CDT students.

Project Prospero

Project Prospero is my hobby project where I am combining two pillars of geekdom into one nerdy-monster – a Warhammer-themed train set! The setting is the homeworld of the Thousand Sons Space Marine Legion, Prospero, as it is being pillaged by the Space Wolves Space Marine Legion. I am using models from the Legions Imperialis game and n-gauge tracks and trains. The centrepiece will be the giant pyramid of the Pyrae Cult, partially destroyed, using a Playmobil pyramid as its base.

This month I have been progressing the models and mocking up the layout to get some idea of scale. Because I don’t have space to leave out a layout, it will need to be fully modular. Check out a video I made from my mock up below:

About this Newsletter

I am Chris Skinner, a science communicator, STEM professional, and ADHDer. I am on a mission empowering people to unlock their full potential by transforming imagination into a powerful, actionable skill. This newsletter tracks my journey. I would like you to join me, so please subscribe. This newsletter is free and I do not offer a paid tier. If you would like to say thank you and/or help me in my mission please buy me a coffee using the link below.

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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!

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:

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: