Climate Change Ethics in Harvestella: Weirding, Disquietude, Choice
First author: DuckertYear: 2024
Abstract
On the surface, the combination role-playing-game-and-farm-simulation Harvestella (2022) is neither a climate change game, insofar as it never explicitly mentions climate change, nor an ethical game, insofar as it has no structured ethical framework. Yet the human-destroyed Earth, planetary colonization, and mission to “save the world” from a “season of death” evoke deeply controversial ethical debates about climate (in)action, responsibility, and redemption. By posing real-world ethical dilemmas in another world, the game fulfills some of the best virtues of speculative fiction. Plotlines and dialogue present urgent crises that the game mechanics actively prevent the player from resolving and that are easy to forget in the game’s beautiful aesthetics and strange blend of futuristic and fantastic elements. Player impotence in the face of a weird world marks Harvestella as a video game in the New Weird tradition, although the game eventually subverts the acceptance that characterizes that genre’s response to weirdness and lack of agency. In doing so, the game questions the ethical implications of ambivalence in the Anthropocene and poses difficult questions about the ethics of living in and during a time of catastrophe. Ultimately, Harvestella’s only meaningful decision point, whether to use the genocidal computer Protocol Harvestella, argues for a response to the crisis that is not New Weird ambivalence or Old Weird terror but a resolve to pursue a better future, even if that future is uncertain. In this light, Harvestella is both a climate change and ethical game and a novel example of both.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_15
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