The project
Ludicactivism.com is an open-access repository that collects and makes visible ludic activism projects: creations that use play and playful experience as tools for critical thought, political action and civic participation.
About the project
The site began with a catalog of the Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina and Uruguay) and opened up to the rest of Latin America and the world. The catalog is a living document: it grows with each new addition and is open to contributions.
It is part of the Proyecto Investigación 2025, funded by the Fondo de Fomento Audiovisual, 2025 Call, of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage (Folio 764322), with the support of Río Junto Art Collective and Ludocrítica.
Principal investigator: Nico Valdivia Hennig (University of Chicago / Niebla Games / Río Junto).
Contribute
The catalog is built through crowdsourcing. If you know a game, a workshop or a reading that should be here, send it through the form.
About the translations
The site was written in Spanish. The versions in other languages are translations that may contain errors; the titles of works and bibliographic citations are kept in their original language. If you find something to correct, write to us.
Criteria
Each entry has at least one verified source and links that were active at the time of publication. In curating, we are guided by a few questions that remain open:
- Consulting is not co-designing. Mulaka validated its content with an anthropologist and a cultural governor, but there is no Rarámuri co-authorship. Huni Kuin, Contos de Ifá and Prison X offer other models, and Meneses's article discusses the limits of the first. For the site, a simple label could be useful: community authorship / collaboration / external representation.
- Who speaks memory. Corrientes de Memoria was made with the Colombian Navy, and Gesta Final is a production of the Cuban state. The guiding definition speaks of “not imposing hegemonic positions”; these cases put that criterion to the test.
- Funding. Reconstrucción had support from German development cooperation; Purunmachu won a jam convened by the US Department of State. This does not disqualify them, but it is worth making it visible in the entry.
- The “empathy” debate. Anna Anthropy rejected the reading of dys4ia as an “empathy game,” and Freedom: The Underground Railroad is debated for turning enslaved people into game pieces. They are good cases for a curatorial text on the site.
- Preservation. Part of the canon (Darfur is Dying, Ayiti, Against All Odds, Molleindustria's Flash games, Vagamundo) no longer runs in browsers. For an open repository, linking to Flashpoint or the Internet Archive, or documenting with screenshots and video, is part of the work.
- Content warnings. Dirty Wars (torture), Hawk & Puma (already has one), Operación Camaleón and the larps about camps and occupation need a warning before the link.