“Postcoloniality, Ecocriticism and Lessons from the Playable Landscape”
Abstract: What methodological lessons for ecocriticism may be learned from previous critical game studies interventions? Specifically, I consider the political work undertaken by postcolonial critiques of video games, and their pertinent address of human-centered understandings of the land, within the context of larger issues of inclusion, representation, diversity, and the challenging of hegemonic power structures. What can ecocritical games’ crucial visual culture function be, in operating against the grain of profit and innovation-driven ends—or even the very real problems of raw resources needed for their existence? Can the context of games and play provide any lived-world intervention into the urgent ecological challenges that are becoming an existential threat? This work is an extension of a larger discussion about the functions of postcolonial and other critical cultural scholarly interventions. This article asserts that ecocriticism and postcolonial critique exert a doubled pressure on rote forms of play design, and present meaningful possibilities for video games as a maturing cultural form.
SORAYA MURRAY 