Tijana Rupcic, PhD Candidate, Central European University, Department of History, Austria After finishing a BA in History at the University of Belgrade, Serbia (2011), I’ve completed my MA in Ancient Greek and Roman History and Philosophy at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia (2014) and MA in Comparative History at Central European University, Budapest, Hungary (2020) focusing on the History of Technology and Science and History of Yugoslavia. During my MA studies, I’ve completed the specialization in Archives and Evidentiary Practices at OSA Vera and Donald Blinken Archives, Budapest. I hold an Advanced Certificate in Religious and Jewish Studies. I’ve worked as an archivist in the Historical Archives in Kikinda, Serbia (2012-2019), focusing on preserving damaged documents and creating analytical registries. Currently, I am a doctoral candidate at Central European University in Vienna, Austria. My current research interests are history of technology and science, transhumanism, videogames, relationship between technology and religion.
The Great Unraveling: Exploring the idea of environmental collapse and technology in dystopian video games
FROG 2024 – Talk
Video games, formerly a specialized area of the online community, are now a significant industry, surpassing in revenue even the movie and music industries. The fears of catastrophes tied to global warming, change in Earth’s climate, dangerous technologies, and hyper-capitalist landscapes have already found their way into video games. Video games can stretch our imagination, make us confront unresolved problems, and pose new queries, calling for a new ecological utopia.
This talk aims to explore in which ways are the ideas and imaginaries of catastrophic scenarios of mass extinction and disappearance of resources explored in video game media. Post-apocalyptic games are the most popular form of exploring the idea of extinction and catastrophe in dystopian video games. Post-apocalyptic video games use one of four main fictional periods—during the apocalypse, a few years after the catastrophe, centuries after the event (which is the most popular), or an exceptionally far-off period when our civilization has long since vanished—to guide players toward the end of civilization. Nuclear catastrophes, pandemics, robots and artificial intelligence, asteroids, extraterrestrial invasions, and any type of natural calamity are among the factors that will ultimately destroy humanity. Most of these video games have become ingrained in popular culture due to their success.
In the talk, the author relies on a game-immanent approach to study the narrative of Death Stranding (Kojima Productions, 2019), in which the environmental collapse and war for resources are center of the plot. This video game is spawning a new genre that Ruffino labels as “Post-Anthropocene video games: video games that challenge the centrality of mankind, making it increasingly less essential, forcing players to think of their responsibility and impact on the environment.”
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