It's Not Always About You: The Subject and Ecological Entanglement in Video Games

Nicky Heijmen; Joost Vervoort

doi:10.1177/15554120231179261

It's Not Always About You: The Subject and Ecological Entanglement in Video Games

Nicky Heijmen^*, Joost Vervoort

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

In the face of a global ecological crisis, culturally dominant framings of subjective experience as separate from living ecologies are no longer sufficient. Games might offer ways to break down these divisions. Alenda Chang has proposed bringing game ecologies to life. To complement her position, in this paper, we aim to inspire game designers and researchers to explore ways in which video games can remodel the perceived player subject as a pathway to ecological entanglement. We investigate four strategies for decentering and deconstructing the subject. These are: (1) deconstructing the subject to foreground internal sources of entanglement; (2) dismantling, distorting, ignoring, and/or invading the visual perspective; (3) conceptual deconstruction and reframing of a sense of self; and (4) decentering the subject through shifting contexts. For each of these, we introduce relevant examples of narrative and gameplay design in existing video games and suggest steps for further development in each direction.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	743-760
Number of pages	18
Journal	Games and Culture
Volume	19
Issue number	6
Early online date	Jun 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120231179261
Publication status	Published - Sept 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023.

Funding

This article was partly supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) who funded the NWO Vidi project ANTICIPLAY (project number VI. Vidi.195.007) and its research team. The article was also supported by the CreaTures project. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. Finally, the research was inspired by the Unusual Collaborations Grant project Playing with the Trouble. The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, (grant number 195.007, 870759).

Funders	Funder number
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, Horizon 2020 Framework Programme	195.007
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
Horizon 2020	870759
Horizon 2020

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Cite this

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It's Not Always About You: The Subject and Ecological Entanglement in Video Games

Abstract

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