Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds - Volume 15, Issue 1, 2023

Eric Barone’s 2016 indie ‘country life simulator’ video game Stardew Valley has yet to be evaluated through the dual lenses of neo-liberal capitalism and ecocriticism. Given his intention for the game to have real-world messages, including the importance of community organization against corporate domination and of environmental conservation, there is a need to evaluate the intent and execution of his vision to determine if the resulting gameplay truly conveys those messages to his audience. This article draws on neo-liberal capitalist video game theory, or the simulation of capitalist circuits in video games as theorized by Kline and Golumbia, and ecocritical video game theory, or environmental modelling strategies in video games as discussed by Chang and Condis, to argue that video games are political texts, that the game mechanics within demonstrate the process-oriented ‘work as play’ mentality that simulates capitalist circuits and that the misrepresentation of environmentality through selective reproduction of real-world processes detrimentally impacts the agency and responsibility of consumers of video games. After engaging in an analysis of Barone’s representations of the in-game economy and environment via the player character’s origin story, methods of production, community organization and environmental interactions, this article concludes with a final discussion about the limitations of video game design, defence of Barone’s intent and execution and submission of suggestions for improvement and reflections on future study.

In this examination of spatio-temporality’s representation in two- and three-dimensional video games, diegetic time and how a game’s overriding metaphors may be reflected in both gameplay and a storyworld’s virtual environment are considered at length through the idealist philosophy of George Berkeley, with an important adaptation of what Ludwig Wittgenstein referred to as ‘information-time’ experienced by conscious players operating in ‘memory-time’. After considering a number of examples from Outer Wilds and the Legend of Zelda franchise, the question as to whether video games are ontically presentist is resolved by way of a synthesis between the expression of time in spatial terms and every video game’s minimum of interactivity, a distinction I adapt from Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The continual creation of a digital world, while materially a fact of hardware limitations, is shown to lend itself metaphorically to an eidetic reading, bound to our intuitive association of time and space with inhabitation.

This article demonstrates how one can distinguish a digital game auteur based on works conceived by Martinican designer Muriel Tramis. Eight games (M.wilo, Freedom, Emmanuelle, Geisha, Fascination, Gobliiins, Lost in Time and Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth) have been selected to extract the characteristic features of Tramis’s contributions. The research results identify four leading features: sophisticated puzzles, subversion of pornography, critique of racism and colonialism and the extensive use of authorial signatures. By engaging with the work of Tramis, the author of this article hopes to spark further academic interest in rediscovering the output of non-canonical (female) designers outside the trans-Pacific circle.

Review of: Cyberpunk Culture and Psychology: Seeing through the Mirrorshades, Anna Mcfarlane (2022)

New York: Routledge, 180 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-36753-568-1, h/bk, USD 136.00