3 Minutes to Midnight is an interactive game developed with Unreal Engine. The game takes its starting point from the moment in 2007, when climate change was added as a factor affecting the Doomsday Clock. The Doomsday Clock was introduced in 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and is a metaphorical, non-linear clock which represents scientists’ estimation of how close we are to global catastrophe. In 2007, the Bulletin expanded the clock to include climate change as one of the greatest man-made threats to humankind. At that point, the time jumped to 3 minutes to midnight.

The game inhabits this temporality, the time of impending apocalypse, a time in fairytales associated with the breaking of a spell and a time that relates to our age commonly referred to as the Anthropocene; a time of great urgency and consequence. Research into Donna Haraway’s articulation of the Chthulucene informs the work along with a more focussed interrogation of multi-species survival with a particular focus on fungal networks and interspecies communication. There are three main characters in the game who live in different environments that are reflective of their species. So far, I have been working on worldbuilding, character development and the game's narrative. I am at a crucial point where building interest in the game and sharing the world seems very important.

I have delivered game development workshops as part of this project with partners such as Redriff School in Rotherhithe and Site Gallery in Sheffield. Through these workshops I have also managed user testing and experience which is helping to shape the further development of the game.

Science Fiction and fantasy greatly influence Sophie Roger's work, in particular, when considering worlding and worldbuilding. Rogers uses digital software including Cinema 4D to create simulations of imagined places taking human and world entanglement as the starting point.

“SF is storytelling and fact telling, it is the patterning of possible worlds and possible times, material-semiotic worlds, gone, here and yet to come.” Donna Haraway’s articulation of worlding and writing around entanglement ties together the key elements of my practice. I am interested in the ways in which the entanglement is visible; through mushrooms decomposing radioactive waste and footage of sharks eating internet cables that lay under the sea. When looking at this messy, confusing entwinement, it evokes ideas of hybrid creatures and fictional ecosystems that would inhabit this in-between space. I am also interested in emotional entanglement; how humans develop deep connections with machines and other forms of technology.

Imagination is integral to the way I make work and I am compelled by the use of imagination as a faculty for thinking.

Strange, organic forms inhabit my technicolour landscapes, which are brought to life by animation and sound. The bright colours and textures I use within my work are aesthetic choices, but they also refer to the promise of new technology which has always been central to my research, especially when considering new worlds and imagining futures. Most recently, I have become particularly interested in games and their deep emotional capacity."