Auroral Heliotropes of the Anthropocene and Wandering the “Quiet Apocalypse” of The Long Dark (2017)
First author: MooreYear: 2024
Abstract
Focusing on the survival video game The Long Dark, this chapter will read the aurora borealis as a heliotropic representation of the relations between technological development and environmental impact. The Long Dark is a survival-crafting sandbox that strands the player on Great Bear Island in the months following a solar flare that destroyed electronic and telecommunication infrastructures across the planet; the aurorae present throughout the game are the remnants of the disaster. Much has been written about the neoliberal imperatives valued by survival-crafting gameplay parameters, a genre whose ludic frameworks involve the negotiation of investment versus cost in a way that, argues Benjamin Abraham, represents “dynamics of industrial accumulation and life under capitalism” (Abraham, Benjamin. 2018. 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). Unlike other crafting games, however, the sense of precarity present in The Long Dark forces a thoroughly disempowered player to face urgent questions regarding the effect of neoliberal capitalist hegemony, ecological disaster, and the fragility implicit in the perception of environmental mastery conferred by technology. In order to conceive of this fragility, this chapter will employ the “heliotrope”—the metaphor of “sun and radiation as an invisible yet permeable sign of the Anthropocene” (DeLoughrey, Allegories of the Anthropocene, Duke University Press, Durham, 2019)—to figure the aurora borealis of The Long Dark as an inflection point from which to critique, in the words of philosopher Frédéric Neyrat, the Anthropocene as an epoch where “nature as an independent entity and force has been overtaken by the techno-industrial power of humanity” (Neyrat, Frédéric. 2018. The Unconstructable Earth. Translated by Drew S. Burk. New York: Fordham University Press.). Ultimately, the auroral heliotrope offers a powerful metaphor with which to reckon with the Anthropocene thesis as well as the technologies that both enable it and are enabled by it, while illuminating alternative modes of interacting with nature beyond the affordances of technological infrastructures.Details
Language: EnglishCountry of affiliation: United States
Published in: Video Games and Environmental Humanities: Playing to Save The World
Publication type: Book chapter
Source: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67980-3_12
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