Counterfeit Games: Anti-Game Approaches to Playable Experiences

On games that don’t quite want to be games. Rules that refuse to function. Mechanics borrowed and then broken. Moving through Jade’s practice at the cusp of play, art, and film, this talk explores the friction of working with a medium so often organised around progression, reward, and player satisfaction.

“Counterfeit games” is a tentative name for works that sit on a spectrum of playable experiences, using the language of games while refusing to play by their rules. Through small experiments and encounters with the feeling of not quite belonging, this talk traces a creative practice emerging from that refusal.

About Jade Lin:

Jade Lin (aka strawberrycongee) is a London-based computational artist, experimental game maker, and creative technologist working at the intersection of art and play. Through worldbuilding and playable experiences, they explore the structures that shape our lives, attending to the feelings of weirdness, alienation, and absurdity that emerge within them.