Skip to content
1981
Volume 16, Issue 3
  • ISSN: 1757-191X
  • E-ISSN: 1757-1928

Abstract

This article examines how the video game demonstrates the enmeshment of video games with the material conditions of our planet during an era of compounding ecological crises. This article focuses on ’s engagement with apocalypse, both as a fictional backdrop and as a form of for the player. Exercises of labour undertaken by the player and their avatar, and their involvement in the proliferation of communication technologies within the gameworld, are shown to be ruinous in ways that are resonant with our contemporary conditions of crisis. Through this analysis an understanding is developed of how enlists players in the process of repeating apocalypse(s) and invites reflection upon the place of video games and play in these fractious times.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/jgvw_00107_1
2025-01-29
2025-02-09
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Abraham, Benjamin (2018a), ‘Video game visions of climate futures: ARMA 3 and implications for games and persuasion’, Games and Culture, 13:1, pp. 7191, https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015603844.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Abraham, Benjamin (2018b), ‘What is an ecological game? Examining gaming’s ecological dynamics and metaphors through the survival-crafting genre’, TRACE a Journal of Writing Media and Ecology, 2, http://tracejournal.net/trace-issues/issue2/01-Abraham.html. Accessed 6 December 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Abraham, Benjamin (2022), Digital Games after Climate Change, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Alaimo, Stacy (2016), Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Apperley, Thomas H. and Jayemanne, Darshana (2012), ‘Game studies’ material turn’, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 9:1, https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.145.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Aravamudan, Srinivas (2013), ‘The catachronism of climate change’, Diacritics, 41:3, pp. 630, https://doi.org/10.1353/dia.2013.0019.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Ballard, Susan (2021), Art and Nature in the Anthropocene: Planetary Aesthetics, New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Bartoloni, Paolo and Bianchi, Enea (2024), ‘Rethinking the apocalypse: Zeno’s Conscience and Death Stranding’, Journal for Cultural Research, 28:1, pp. 1433, https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2291356
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Bergthaller, Hannes (2020), ‘A tale of two systems: Anthropocene politics, Gaia, and the cybernetic image of the planet’, Ex-Position, 44, pp. 3752, https://doi.org/10.6153/EXP.202012_(44).0002.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Bubandt, Nils (2017), ‘Haunted geologies: Spirits, stones, and the necropolitics of the Anthropocene’, in A. Tsing, H. Swanson, E. Gan and N. Bubandt (eds), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. G12141.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Cetina, Karin Knorr (2009), ‘The synthetic situation: Interactionism for a global world’, Symbolic Interaction, 32:1, pp. 6187, https://doi.org/10.1525/si.2009.32.1.61.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Chang, Alenda Y. (2019), Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Cohen, Jeffrey J. and Duckert, Lowell (2015), ‘Introduction: Eleven principles of the elements’, in J. J. Cohen and L. Duckert (eds), Elemental Ecocriticism: Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 126.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Crutzen, Paul J. and Stoermer, Eugene F. (2000), ‘The “Anthropocene”’, in W. Steffen (ed.), Global Change Newsletter, Stockholm: International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, pp. 1718.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Davis, Heather (2019), ‘Life and death in the Anthropocene’, in S. Chattopadhyay and J. White (eds), The Routledge Companion to Critical Approaches to Contemporary Architecture, New York: Routledge, pp. 8090.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Davis, Heather and Turpin, Etienne (2015), ‘Art & death: Lives between the fifth assessment & the sixth extinction’, in H. Davis and E. Turpin (eds), Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, London: Open Humanities Press, pp. 330.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Dyer-Witheford, Nick and de Peuter, Greig (2009), Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Felczak, Mateusz (2020), ‘Ludic guilt, paidian joy: Killing and ecocriticism in the theHunter series’, Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 12:2, pp. 183200, https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw_00013_1.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Furuhata, Yuriko (2022), Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Gan, Elaine, Tsing, Anna, Swanson, Heather and Bubandt, Nils (2017), ‘Introduction: Haunted landscapes of the Anthropocene’, in A. Tsing, H. Swanson, E. Gan and N. Bubandt (eds), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. G114.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Green, Amy (2021), Longing, Ruin, and Connection in Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Guins, Raiford (2014), Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Haraway, Donna J. (2016), Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Hird, Myra J. (2017), ‘Proliferation, extinction, and an Anthropocene aesthetic’, in J. Weinstein and C. Colebrook (eds), Posthumous Life: Theorizing beyond the Posthuman, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 25169.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. House, Ryan (2020), ‘Likers get liked: Platform capitalism and the precariat in Death Stranding’, Gamevironments, 13, https://doi.org/10.26092/elib/408.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. jagodzinski, jan (2018), ‘Introduction: Interrogating the Anthropocene’, in jan jagodzinski (ed.), Interrogating the Anthropocene: Ecology, Aesthetics, Pedagogy and the Future in Question, Cham: Springer, pp. 171.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Jayemanne, Darshana, Keogh, Brendan and Abraham, Ben (2022), ‘Hideo Kojima, Death Stranding (2019)/Reconnecting in the time of climate change’, in I. Yoshinaga, S. Guynes and G. Canavan (eds), Uneven Futures, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 22128.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Kagen, Melissa (2020), ‘The worries of a patriarchy: Death Stranding, Hideo Kojima (2019)’, Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 12:1, https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw_00009_5.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Kalaidjian, Andrew (2017), ‘The spectacular Anthropocene’, Angelaki, 22:4, pp. 1934, https://doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2017.1406044
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Kelly, Shawna and Nardi, Bonnie (2014), ‘Playing with sustainability: Using video games to simulate futures of scarcity’, First Monday, 19:5, https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v19i5.5259.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Kojima Productions (2019), Death Stranding, Tokyo: Sony Interactive Entertainment.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Loftus, Alex (2012), Everyday Environmentalism: Creating an Urban Political Ecology, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Long, Christian (2023), ‘The infrastructure of the Planets of the Apes’, in J. Stümer and M. Dunn (eds), Worlds Ending: Ending Worlds, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 13956, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110787009-009.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Malm, Andreas (2015), ‘The Anthropocene myth’, Jacobin, 30 March, https://jacobin.com/2015/03/anthropocene-capitalism-climate-change. Accessed 4 August 2024.
  35. Masco, Joseph (2018), ‘The six extinctions: Visualizing planetary ecological crisis today’, in R. A. Grusin (ed.), After Extinction, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 71105.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. May, Lawrence (2021), ‘Confronting ecological monstrosity: Contemporary video game monsters and the climate crisis’, M/C Journal, 24:5, https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2827.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. May, Lawrence (2024), ‘Undead ecosystems: Death Stranding and the contemporary videogame zombie’, in L. DiTommaso, J. Crossley, A. Lockhart and R. Wagner (eds), End-game: Apocalyptic Video Games, Contemporary Society, and Digital Media Culture, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 27184.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. McBrien, Justin (2016), ‘Accumulating extinction: Planetary catastrophism in the Necrocene’, in J. W. Moore (ed.), Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism, Oakland, CA: PM Press, pp. 11637.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. McKibben, Bill (2010), Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, New York: Time Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Mirzoeff, Nicholas (2014), ‘Visualizing the Anthropocene’, Public Culture, 26:2, pp. 21332, https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2392039
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Moore, Jason W. (ed.) (2016), Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism, Oakland, CA: PM Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  42. Nancy, Jean-Luc and Ricco, John Paul (2015), ‘The existence of the world is always unexpected: Jean-Luc Nancy in conversation with John Paul Ricco’, in H. Davis and E. Turpin (eds), Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, London: Open Humanities Press, pp. 8592, https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/33191. Accessed 4 August 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Newman, Sheila (2008), ‘In the end: Thermodynamics and the necessity of protecting the natural world’, in S. Newman (ed.), The Final Energy Crisis, London: Pluto Press, pp. 30913.
    [Google Scholar]
  44. Nicoll, Benjamin (2023), ‘Enjoyment in the Anthropocene: The extimacy of ecological catastrophe in Donut County’, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 25:1, pp. 3755, https://doi.org/10.1080/1600910X.2023.2188439.
    [Google Scholar]
  45. Nixon, Rob (2013), Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  46. O’Lear, Shannon, Masse, Francis, Dickinson, Hannah and Duffy, Rosaleen (2022), ‘Disaster making in the Capitalocene’, Global Environmental Politics, 22:3, pp. 211, https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00655.
    [Google Scholar]
  47. op de Beke, Laura (2021), ‘Pastoral videogames: industry, entropy, elegy’, Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities, Cappadocia University, 2:2, https://doi.org/10.46863/ecocene.51.
    [Google Scholar]
  48. Ouellette, Marc (2021), ‘Society doesn’t owe you anything: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas & video games as speculative fiction’, Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, 8:1, http://journaldialogue.org/issues/v8-issue-1/society-doesnt-owe-you-anything-grand-theft-auto-san-andreas-video-games-as-speculative-fiction. Accessed 4 August 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  49. Parikka, Jussi (2015), A Geology of Media, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  50. Scherer, Bernd (2020), ‘When humans become nature’, in G. Dürbeck and P. Hüpkes (eds), The Anthropocenic Turn: The Interplay between Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Responses to a New Age, New York: Routledge, pp. 15056.
    [Google Scholar]
  51. Shaviro, Steven (2015), No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  52. Sloterdijk, Peter (2015), ‘The Anthropocene: A process-state at the edge of geohistory?’, in H. Davis and E. Turpin (eds), Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, London: Open Humanities Press, pp. 32740.
    [Google Scholar]
  53. Starosielski, Nicole (2016), ‘Thermocultures of geological media’, Cultural Politics, 12:3, pp. 293309, https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-3648858.
    [Google Scholar]
  54. Stümer, Jenny (2023), ‘Introduction: Understanding apocalyptic transformation’, in J. Stümer and M. Dunn (eds), Worlds Ending: Ending Worlds, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 118.
    [Google Scholar]
  55. Swanson, Heather, Tsing, Anna, Bubandt, Nils and Gan, Elaine (2017), ‘Introduction: Bodies tumbled into bodies’, in A. Tsing, H. Swanson, E. Gan and N. Bubandt (eds), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. M112.
    [Google Scholar]
  56. Tiessen, Matthew (2018), ‘Making our way in a world of our making: The Anthropocene, debt-money, and the pre-emptive production of our future’, in j. jagodzinski (ed.), Interrogating the Anthropocene: Ecology, Aesthetics, Pedagogy and the Future in Question, Cham: Springer, pp. 13352.
    [Google Scholar]
  57. Virilio, Paul (2005), The Information Bomb, London: Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  58. Woodard, Ben (2013), On an Ungrounded Earth: Towards a New Geophilosophy, New York: Punctum Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  59. Woods, Derek (2014), ‘Scale critique for the Anthropocene’, The Minnesota Review, 83, pp. 13342, https://doi.org/10.1215/00265667-2782327.
    [Google Scholar]
  60. Yusoff, Kathryn (2021), ‘Geologic realism: On the beach of geologic time’, in L. Badia, M. Cetinić and J. Diamanti (eds), Climate Realism: The Aesthetics of Weather and Atmosphere in the Anthropocene, New York: Routledge, pp. 98120.
    [Google Scholar]
  61. Yusoff, Kathryn (2022), ‘Epochal aesthetics: Affectual infrastructures of the Anthropocene’, in N. Axel, D. A. Barber, N. Hirsch and A. Vidokle (eds), Accumulation: The Art, Architecture, and Media of Climate Change, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 1326.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/jgvw_00107_1
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test