Laurentius Alvin (he/him, 30 y/o) graduated 2021 from the University of Bonn with a Masters in European and Asian art history. His interests between fine art and video games expands to include postcolonial perspectives. Before starting his volontary work in the State Arts Collection of Dresden he wrote a couple of game studies texts pertaining to games in and around his birth country, Indonesia.
The restaurant at the end of the world: food in postapocalyptic games
FROG 2024 – Talk
Despite being a substantial part of a broad genre of games, food items – both as ingredients and/or in its cooked forms – remained a rather sidestepped theme in game studies, with Agata Waszkiewiczs’ book being one of the few basic repertoire on the theme. However, the book’s focus on coziness means that postapocalyptic games – more often connected to conflict than cozy – remained unstudied. In this CfA I’ll attempt to look into how games with postapocalyptic settings shows multiple food cultures and foodways, whilst parallely asking our real life connection to food and consumption.
The post in postapocalypse is roughly comparable with postcolonial and postsocialism – it denotes a before and after, a point of (unwanted) changes and parallelly attempts of continuity. Whilst cooking practices were continued, they were affected by change in environment and also its past (Fallout series). Some of these settings could also change out relationship towards meat, especially those of the mutated human kind (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. G.A.M.M.A.). Some others asked us what foods and foodways do we keep from and how do we – the universalized humans – remember our past, and how do we react with new ‘foods’ from the universe especially when earth as we know it is no longer there (Starfield). Lastly, as a nod back to Waszkiewicz, I’ll be arguing if food in the end can also be cozy – and what it takes to create this coziness. These are the select questions I’ll be serving this time in the restaurant at the end of the world: food in postapocalyptic games.
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