Star Trek is the most popular and longest running Sci-Fi franchise in American history. Created by Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek follows the various crew of Starfleet in their missions across the galaxy. This presentation showcases the inspiration behind Star Trek, how the Federation came to be, examines the post-scarcity economy featured in their future Earth society, and explores the philosophies of all of the major alien cultures shown throughout the Star Trek series.

Fallout is a well known post-apocalyptic role-playing video game series set in post nuclear war America. This presentation unpacks the significant lore from the Fallout franchise, including the divergence from our Cold War history to their Great War, the economic challenges of living in a post apocalyptic environment, and the motivation and goals of every major faction from Fallout 1 to Fallout 4.

System Shock is a cyberpunk themed video game by Looking Glass Studios and Irrational Games, home of infamous AI villain SHODAN. This presentation explores the common themes related to cyberpunk, including futurism, megacorporations, artificial intelligence, the exponential growth of technology and the power that it enables. It also examines the lore of the System Shock franchise and its original characters, including SHODAN, Anatoly Korenchkin, and The Many.

This presentation on the Philosophy of Bioshock draws heavily from the lore & book “Bioshock: Rapture”, as well as the original game released in 2007. It features the life of Andrew Ryan, Rapture’s backstory, the many challenges that the inhabitants of Rapture faced, and how Rapture’s downfall also mirrors our own turbulent times. Bioshock was inspired from the works and the life of Ayn Rand – depicting the glory of heroism, the triumph of the individual and the success of capitalism – which is all set against the historic backdrop of early Russian and American society.