Unravelling Narratives of Empire in No Man’s Sky
cytuj
pobierz pliki
RIS BIB ENDNOTEChoose format
RIS BIB ENDNOTEUnravelling Narratives of Empire in No Man’s Sky
Publication date: 2022
Arts & Cultural Studies Review, 2022, Issue 4 (54) Playing While the World Burns: Games in a Time of Crisis, pp. 585 - 598
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.22.039.17093Authors
Unravelling Narratives of Empire in No Man’s Sky
Many scholars have looked at how players engage with games of Empire in ways that both reproduce and subvert capitalist-colonial narratives of resource accumulation, war, and conquest. This article examines the 2016 release of No Man’s Sky, and how the colonial conquest and resource gathering that are central to the gameplay quickly unravelled as players spent time with the game. Firstly, this article will explore how the release of No Man’s Sky initially replicated the myth of terra nullius, as well as an understanding of the environment as resources-in-waiting. This is contrasted with the fact that No Man’s Sky did not replicate the traditional triple-A structure of action, which leads the player to a playthrough that focuses on ‘bearing witness’ to the environment, rather than harvesting its resources to strengthen the player-character and progress through the game. However, major updates to No Man’s Sky fundamentally changed the player’s relationship to the game-world, further obscuring many of the moments of speculation that the initial release provided. This analysis demonstrates how games of Empire can create affective experiences that can inadvertently challenge the very narratives that they are enmeshed in. These moments are fleeting but provide a valuable insight into the role that games play in the crises of the Anthropocene.
Abraham B., Jayemanne D., Where Are All the Climate Change Games? Locating Digital Games’ Response to Climate Change, “Transformations” 2017, vol. 30.
Ahmed S., Happy Objects [in:] M. Gregg, G. Seigworth (eds.), The Affect Theory Reader, Duke University Press, Durham, NC 2010, pp. 29–35.
Ahmed S., The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2014.
Berlant L.. Structures of Unfeeling: Mysterious Skin, “International Journal of Politics Culture, and Society” 2015, vol. 28 (3), pp. 191–213.
Bogost I., Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2008.
Bogost I., Videogames and Ideological Frames, “Popular Communication” 2006, vol. 4 (3), pp. 165–183.
Butler J., Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, Routledge, New York 1994.
Byrd J., Playing Stories: Never Alone, Indigineity, and the Structures of Setter Colonialsim, Cornell Video, 2017, http://www.cornell.edu/video/jodi-a-byrd-video-games-indigeneity-settler-colonialism (accessed: 23.01.2018).
Cairns P., Cox A., Nordin A.I., Immersion in Digital Games: Review of Gaming Experience Research [in:] M.C. Angelides, H. Agius (eds.), Handbook of Digital Games, Wiley Books, Hoboken 2014, pp. 767–798.
Diver M., New ‘No Man’s Sky’ Footage Leaves Us Thinking, ‘That Escalated Quickly’, Vice, 8.07.2015, https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/avaaak/new-no-mans-sky-footage-leaves-us-thinking-that-escalated-quickly-025 (accessed: 26.07.2017).
Dyer-Witheford N., Peuter G. de, Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2009.
Dyer-Witheford N., Peuter G. de, Postscript: Gaming While Empire Burns, “Games and Culture” 2021, vol. 16 (3), pp. 371–380.
Fanon F., Black Skin, White Masks, Grove Press, New York 2008.
Farca G., The Emancipated Player, DiGRA/FDG, 2016, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gerald-Farca/publication/309232213_The_Emancipated_Player/links/5806486308aeb85ac85f3e34/The-Emancipated-Player.pdf (accessed: 26.11.2022).
Fordyce R., Play, History and Politics: Conceiving Futures Beyond Empire, “Games and Culture” 2021, vol. 16 (3), pp. 294–304.
Foucault M., The Subject and Power, “Critical Inquiry” 1982, vol. 8 (4), pp. 777–795.
Freud S., Civilization and Its Discontents, W.W. Norton & Company, New York 1989.
Galloway A., Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2006.
Gregg M., Seigworth G. (eds.), The Affect Theory Reader, Duke University Press, Durham, NC 2010.
Hamilton K., No Man’s Sky: The Kotaku Review, Kotaku, 26.08.2016, https://kotaku.com/nomans-sky-the-kotaku-review-1785383774 (accessed: 26.07.2017).
Hello Games, No Man’s Sky, 2016.
Hemmings C., Invoking Affect: Cultural Theory and the Ontological Turn, “Cultural Studies” 2005, vol. 19 (5), pp. 548–567.
Higgins Ch., No Man’s Sky Would Take 5 Billion Years to Explore, Wired, 18.08.2016, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/no-mans-sky-planets (accessed: 26.07.2017).
Hillier B., No Man’s Sky Reviews: Is This the Most Divisive Game of 2016?, VG247, 12.08.2016, https://www.vg247.com/2016/08/12/no-mans-sky-reviews-round-up/ (accessed: 26.07.2017).
Ho Sang N., I’m Struggling With No Man’s Sky, Kotaku, 21.08.2016, https://kotaku.com/imstruggling-with-no-mans-sky-1785553692 (accessed: 26.07.2017).
Jayanth M., White Protagonism and Imperial Pleasures in Game Design #DIGRA21, Medium, 2021, https://medium.com/@betterthemask/white-protagonism-and-imperial-pleasures-in-game-design-digra21-a4bdb3f5583c (accessed: 14.09.2022).
Kharpal A., ‘No Man’s Sky’: Would You Play a Game That Takes 584 Billion Years to Explore?, CNBC, 10.08.2016, https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/10/no-mans-sky-release-would-youplay-a-game-that-takes-584-billion-years-to-explore.html(accessed: 26.07.2017).
Lyons S., Jaloza L., More Human Than Non/Human: Posthumanism, Embodied Cognition, and Video Games as Affective Experience, “The Philosophy of Computer Gmaes Conference” 2016.
Majkowski T., Geralt of Poland: The Witcher 3 Between Epistemic Disobedience and Imperial Nostalgia, “Open Library of Humanities” 2018, vol. 4 (1).
Malabou C., The Brain of History, or, The Mentality of the Anthropocene, “South Atlantic Quarterly” 2017, vol. 116 (1), pp. 39–53.
Malabou C., What Should We Do with Our Brain?, Fordham University Press, New York 2009.
Marx K., Capital: Volume One, Dover Publications, New York 2019.
Massumi B., What Animals Teach Us About Politics, Duke University Press, Durham, NC 2014.
Morton T., Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2013.
Mukherjee S., Playing Subaltern: Video Games and Postcolonialism, “Games and Culture” 2018, vol. 13 (5), pp. 504–520.
Ngai S., Ugly Feelings, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 2005.
No Man’s Sky Reviews, Metacritic, 2018, http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/nomans-sky (accessed: 26.07.2017).
Orland K., How Sky-high Hype Formed a Storm Cloud Over No Man’s Sky’s Release, Ars Technica, 8.11.2016, https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/how-sky-high-hype-formed-a-storm-cloud-over-no-mans-skys-release/(accessed: 26.07.2017).
Painter L., No Man’s Sky NEXT Release Date, Gameplay Details, and More, Tech Advisor, 24.07.2018, https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/feature/game/no-mans-sky-next-3531001/ (accessed: 16.08.2022).
Ryn L. van, It Takes Food to Make Food: Survival and Sustainability in Don’t Starve, DiGRAA, 2020.
Said E., Orientalism: Western Representations of the Orient, Penguin, London 2003.
Sean Murray May Have Replaced Morgan Freeman as God, Late Show with Stephen Colbert, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqeN6hj4dZUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqeN6hj4dZU (accessed: 26.07.2017).
Strickland D., Sean Murray Gives Rare Talk on No Man’s Sky Triumphs, Woes, TweakTown, 2019, https://www.tweaktown.com/news/65314/sean-murray-gives-rare-talk-mans-skystriumphs-woes/index.html (accessed: 13.08.2022).
Tomkins S., Affect Imagery Consciousness: Volume II: The Negative Affects, Springer, New York 1963.
Westerlaken M., Self-fashioning in Action: Zelda’s Breath of the Wild Vegan Run, Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, 2017, https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1407940/FULLTEXT01.pdf (accessed: 8.12.2022).
Wetherell M., Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding, Sage Publications, Los Angeles 2012.
Information: Arts & Cultural Studies Review, 2022, Issue 4 (54) Playing While the World Burns: Games in a Time of Crisis, pp. 585 - 598
Article type: Original article
Titles:
Unravelling Narratives of Empire in No Man’s Sky
Unravelling Narratives of Empire in No Man’s Sky
Monash University, Australia
Published at: 2022
Article status: Open
Licence: CC BY
Percentage share of authors:
Article corrections:
-Publication languages:
EnglishView count: 885
Number of downloads: 377