Broadening Horizon - Essays on Environment, Culture, Identity and Myth in the Game Franchise

Increasingly, digital games center their narratives during or after the apocalypse. In 2017, the action role-playing game Horizon Zero Dawn offered a new take on society after the end of the world. Horizon has since become a multimedia franchise, with a second video game released in 2022, in addition to comic books, a board game, and other adaptations in development.
This collection analyzes the Horizon franchise and its presentation of the apocalypse, ecology, gender, history and more. Game story and game mechanics are fundamental to each essay and contributors offer a close reading--or close playing--of the games from perspectives as diverse as hauntology, postcolonialism, contemporary feminism, and historiography. This first collection on the Horizon franchise argues that we now live in an Apocalyptic period in the same way previous periods were known as Romantic, Modernist or Realist Periods, and makes the case that Horizon belongs at the crest of this new Apocalyptic Period and at the center of contemporary gaming and of game studies.

List of contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

After the End of All Things: A Ludic Eschatology of Hope in Horizon ¿ Matthew Wilhelm Kapell

Part One: On Environmental Concerns

Ghosts Are Part of the Future: Holographic Hauntings Through Premediated Environmental Concerns ¿ Hannah A. Barton

Climate Catastrophe as Virtual Holiday: An Ecocritical Close Playing of Horizon: Zero Dawn ¿ Carolin Becklas

Horizon's Anthropocene: Conservation Psychology and Environmentalism ¿ Todd O. Williams

The White Savior of Meridian: Environmentalism and Ethnocentrism ¿ Jason C. Cash

Part Two: On Cultures and Societies

More Than Just a Side Quest: The Cultural Mechanics of Appreciation vs. Appropriation ¿ Vanessa Hemovich

Of ­All-Mothers and ­Sun-Kings: Gendered Societies in the Horizon Franchise ¿ Kenzie Gordon

Aloy as Feminist Icon? Exploring Feminism and Postcolonial Identity in the Horizon Series ¿ Ashley P. Jones

Part Three: On the Identity of Aloy and Others

"Survive!" Gender, Loss, and ­Post-Apocalyptic Landscapes in Horizon and The Last of Us ¿ Joanna Starzynski

Aloy, Artificial Life, and the Abstraction of Mothering ¿ Marshall Needleman Armintor

Girl, Living in a ­Post-Apocalyptic World ¿ Tanja Sihvonen

"In you, all things are possible": Aloy's Postmemory Identity Through Datapoints and Walking Simulator Design ¿ Lis Moberly

"This is what I am now; what I overcame": An Analysis of Disability and Ableism in the Horizon Videogame Series ¿ Lauren Rouse

Part Four: On Myth, History, and Understanding

Mythology in Play: Reading the Apocalypse Myth in Horizon ¿ Michä K¿osi¿ski

Myths of Future Past: Horizon: Zero Dawn's Representation of the Feminist Descent Narrative ¿ Rebecca Käpernick

Girl with a Silver Focus: Ancient Archives and Preserving More Than Vermeer ¿ Jamie Henthorn

Part Five: On the Board Game

"Between Disc and Board": Analyzing the Game Mechanics in Horizon: Zero Dawn: The Board Game ¿ Maren Kraemer

Our Apocalyptic Period: Ludic Hadiths and the Ink of the Scholars ¿ Matthew Wil­­helm Kapell

About the Contributors

Index

About the author

Matthew Wilhelm Kapell teaches American studies, anthropology, and writing at Pace University in New York.

Product details

• Assisted by: Matthew Wilhelm Kapell (Editor), Matthew Wilhelm Kapell (Editor)
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 27.02.2025
• EAN: 9781476691923
• ISBN: 978-1-4766-9192-3
• No. of pages: 286
• Illustrations: Raster,schwarz-weiss
• Series: Studies in Gaming
• Subjects: Guides > Hobby, home > Games, quizzes; GAMES & ACTIVITIES / Video & Mobile, Computer games / online games: strategy guides