Table Of ContentCameron Kunzelman
The World Is Born From Zero
Video Games
and the Humanities
Edited by
Nathalie Aghoro, Iro Filippaki, Chris Kempshall,
Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Jeremiah McCall
and Sascha Pöhlmann
Advisory Board
Alenda Y. Chang, UC Santa Barbara
Katherine J Lewis, University of Huddersfield
Dietmar Meinel, University of Duisburg-Essen
Ana Milošević, KU Leuven
Soraya Murray, UC Santa Cruz
Holly Nielsen, University of London
Michael Nitsche, Georgia Tech
Martin Picard, Leipzig University
Melanie Swalwell, Swinburne University
Emma Vossen, University of Waterloo
Mark J.P. Wolf, Concordia University
Esther Wright, Cardiff University
Volume 8
Cameron Kunzelman
The World Is Born
From Zero
Understanding Speculation and Video Games
ISBN 978-3-11-071832-4
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-071945-1
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-071947-5
ISSN 2700-0400
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022932716
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Cover image: Lichenia, © Molleindustria, 2019.
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Acknowledgements
ThisbookbeganwhenIwasworkingontheprospectusformydissertationwhile
completing my PhD at Georgia State University. Looking at the works I had se-
lectedtowriteabout,IrealizedthatIhadaccidentallybecomeasciencefiction
scholar,anddecidedtocommittothatratherthantodisavowit.AlisonSperling
suggestedthatIattendtheScienceFictionResearchAssociationconference,and
thereIencounteredavibrantscholarlycommunity.Thatencounterwithscience
fiction studies, and the friction I felt when trying to line up how my home dis-
ciplinesofgamestudiesandfilmstudiesunderstoodtheirobjectsofstudy,pro-
duced this book.
I could not have completed any of those initial investigations in graduate
schoolwithoutthecriticalsupportofmycolleaguesatGeorgiaState.Alessandra
Raengo, my advisor for many years of graduate school,taught me how toread.
Iwouldnot have accomplished muchwithout thattool,and I am alwaysgrate-
ful. Discussions with Jennifer Barker, Angelo Restivo,Ted Friedman, and Ethan
Tussey were critical to developing how I understood media objects and what
theycan do. Aclass on feminist theory with Amira Jarmakani literallychanged
my life. I am deeply thankful to my fellow graduate students who helped me
learn in immeasurable ways: Laurel Ahnert, Adam Cottrel, Jason Derby, Daren
Fowler, Jenny Gunn, Justin Horton, Jazmine Hudson, Kristin Juarez, Dewey Mu-
sante,andJennOlive.AspecialthankyouisreservedformyfriendJohnRoberts,
who is alwayswilling togo on an absurd intellectual journey in order to figure
out a hard philosophical problem.This book would also have been impossible
without the support and critique of Lauren Cramer, who is a brilliant scholar
and has always pushed me to think more deeply and complexly about the
world that we all live in.
Since coming to Mercer University, I have had the benefit of enjoying the
company of, and critical discussions with, a number of excellent colleagues.
Thank you to Natalie Bourdon,Tom Bullington, Kevin Cummings, David Davis,
Frank Macke, Mary Alice Morgan, Michele Prettyman, Deneen Senasi, Laura
Simon, James Stanescu, and Vasile Stănescu. Ben Dunn and his work at the
McEachern Art Center has been crucial to my psychic life here. My students
and teaching have also been critical to the development of the ideas in this
book, and I want to thank Cam Wade, Luke MacIver, and Mallory Morgan for
theirintellectualcontributionsalongtheway.EmilyBartlettperformedsomere-
searchwork for this book that I am extremelygrateful for. Finally,the personal
andfinancialsupportprovidedbyDeanAnitaGustafsonandtheCollegeofLib-
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110719451-001
VI Acknowledgements
eralArtsandSciencescannotbeunderstated,andtoherIextendaveryspecial
thanks.
Inmyprofessionalacademiccommunities,thereareliterallytoomanypeo-
pletonamewhohavehadadirectimpactontheideasinthisbook.GerryCan-
avan hasbeen a constantchampion. Alison Sperling is probably the entire rea-
son I went down this road at all, and I value our friendship highly.Thank you
specifically to Ben Abraham, Stina Attebery, Ian Bogost, Stephanie Boluk, Ka-
therineBuse,ChrisCarpenter,YussefCole,PawełFrelik,KishonnaGray,Michael
Hansen,DarshanaJayemanne,StephenKearse,ReidMcCarter,PatrickLeMieux,
Maddy Myers, Marielle Niesler, Laine Nooney, Joshua Pearson, Danielle Rien-
deau, Steven Shaviro, Rebekah Sheldon, Austin Walker, and Rob Zacny.
Pieces of this book have appeared in other places in radically different
forms. Some of the arguments in the first chapter about mechanics of specula-
tionwere published in“The Click of a Button:Video Games and the Mechanics
ofSpeculation,”ScienceFictionFilm&Television11,no.3(2018).Thegermofthe
thirdchapterappearedinBulletPointsMonthlyunderthetitle“Destroyedinthe
Cut.”Thefinalchapterongamesandclimatechangeappearedinaslightlydif-
ferentformas“VideoGamesasInterventionsintheClimateDisaster,”Paradoxa
no. 31 (2019–2020).
My extended thanks goes out to my editor Rabea Rittgerodt and the entire
production team at De Gruyter, all of whom have been excellent in shaping
and preparing this book for publication. Esther MacCallum-Stewart and Sascha
Pöhlmann provided truly helpful early feedback on the manuscript, and the
anonymous peer reviewers were supportive when it was helpful and critical
whenitwasnecessary.IamdelightedtoalsothankPaoloPederciniforallowing
me to use images from Lichenia for the book’s cover.
MichaelLutzhasreadmorethingswithmethanprobablyanyoneelseatthis
point,andthereareveryfewideasinthisbookthathavenotbeenbouncedoff
ofhim.Itishardtoimaginethisbookactuallybeingfinishedwithoutthosecon-
versations.
Finally, I want to thank Kelly.
Contents
Introduction 1
Solid Snake’s War Dystopia 1
Science Fiction and Video Games 4
Thinking with Video Games 14
Several Notes About This Book 17
The World Is Born From Zero 19
Chapter 1
A Method for Thinking Speculation, Science Fiction, and Video Games 21
What is Speculation? 21
Speculation in Science Fiction 22
Contingency and Facticity 36
Hume’s Problem 37
Mechanics of Speculation 41
The Plenitude of Speculation 52
Chapter 2
Potential Labor: On VA-11 HALL-A 54
Introduction 54
Immaterial Labor 57
Games, Subjectivity, and Speculation 63
VA-11 HALL-A and the Speculative Bartender 78
Potential Labor Beyond the Workplace 88
Subjectivity in Third Person 90
Thinking Like A Chicken Fryer 93
Coda: Radicalizing the Subject 97
Chapter 3
Anti-Blackness and the Aesthetic Grounding of Speculation: On the Last of
Usand the Last of Us Part 2 101
Introduction 101
A Note On This Chapter 103
Game Studies and the Racial Imagination 104
The Last of Us: Henry, Sam, and the Void 114
Left Behind: Riley’s Bite 126
The Last of Us Part II: Nora, The Basement, and the Prompt 129
VIII Contents
Chapter 4
The Politics of Design in Climate Change Games 141
Introduction 141
The Capabilities of Modeling 149
Affective Climate 158
Direct Intervention in the Climate Disaster 169
Beyond Intervention 175
Conclusion 178
Bibliography 180
Media 192
Index of Names 194
Index of Subjects 197
Introduction
Solid Snake’s War Dystopia
InMetalGearSolid4(Konami2008),warhaschanged.Privatemilitarycorpora-
tions(PMCs)performthevastmajorityofwarfare,andtheydosoatthebehestof
governments and private interests. Behind the scenes, their operations are sur-
veilledandcontrolledbyanartificialintelligencesystemnamedSonsofthePa-
triots(SOP).Operatingwithandthroughnanomachinesinjectedintoeverycom-
batantworldwide,SOPisauniversalmarketplacethatallarmedwarfaremustgo
through. All guns are registered to specific users, and those users are the only
people who can fire those guns. The bedrock of the global economy is arms
sales. It is a warfare utopia, and it is one of the most popular science fiction
video game settings.
Players experience this fiction through the character Solid Snake.The pro-
tagonist of Metal Gear Solid (Konami 1998) and a critical ally in Metal Gear
Solid2:Sons of Liberty (Konami 2001), Solid Snakeis an archetypalsciencefic-
tionprotagonist.HeisthecloneofthegreatestColdWarrior,thepatriot-turned-
mercenaryBigBoss.HecameofageintheUnitedStatesspecialforcesunitFox-
hound during the waningdaysof the Cold War. After retiringduringthe 1990s,
hewaspulledbackintotheworldofclandestineopsandsneakingmissionsfor
the so-called Shadow Moses Incident.¹ During that mission, he met his clone
twin Liquid Snake and he discovered a cybernetically enhanced ninja who, it
turns out,was the resurrected corpse of his war buddy Grey Fox. He was aug-
mented with nanomachines,which allowed his handlers to monitor his condi-
tion from afar,but at the same time he became an unknowingvector for a tail-
oredviruscalledFOXDIEthatkillednearlyeverymajorcharacterhemetwitha
simulatedheartattack.AttheendoftheIncident,itwasrevealedthatavastcon-
spiracy of techo-political origins existed in the heart of international politics.
Metal Gear Solid 2 then explored this from a near-future angle,with the setup
including a massive faked environmental disaster, world-spanning AI control
programs, and the resurrection of the now-dead Liquid Snake from an arm
that has been grafted onto a man named Revolver Ocelot. Metal Gear Solid 3:
Snake Eater (Konami 2004), rather than continuing from this point, headed
back into the 1960s to depict the rise of Big Boss in the wake of his mentor,
and mother,The Boss. In this game,we learned that the late twentieth century
TheeventsofMetalGearSolidaretheShadowMosesIncident.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110719451-002
2 Introduction
(in this fictional world) is really justa shellgame between a man named Major
Zero and Big Boss over how to carryon the memory of The Boss.
Thisisanextremelyelaboratesetofhistoricaleventsthatledtotheeventsof
MetalGear Solid4, and I am recounting it all in brief heretonotethe spiraling
waythatthesciencefictionelementsoftheseriesconstantlybuildononeanoth-
er.Releasedoverthecourseofmorethanadecade,thesegamesareemblematic
ofacomplexifyingstylethatcharacterizesmanysciencefictionvideogamesand
their worlds.This isnotabookabouttheMetalGear Solidseries,but this elab-
oration of the history of a science fiction world allows us to begin to think
through a core concept of this book: speculation. In order to ground their
pastsandfutures,thesegamesskipbackwardandforwardintime.Thisrelation
between what we know and what we assume to know, or what we speculate
about, in science fictionworlds is critical to the following book.
When MetalGearSolid4begins,then, itisby-the-booksciencefiction.Itis
our world, and its post-Cold War problems, recast through a different lens and
projected forward from that skewed perspective. Following Geoff King and
Tanya Krzywinska, I hold that “science fiction deals with the problems and
promises offered by science, technology and rationality in an imaginative con-
text,” and in relation to video games, it is the games themselves that give
theseproblemsandpromisesshape.²Whileourfirstthoughtsaboutsciencefic-
tiontendtofocusinonpossiblefutures,asMaryAnnDoaneremindsus,science
fiction’s futural projections are often “bound up with issues of reproduction—
whether in its constant emphasis upon the robot, android, automaton, and an-
thropomorphically-conceivedcomputeroritinsistentreturntotheelaborationof
high-tech, sophisticated audio-visual systems.”³ The tracing of technological
warfarehistorythroughthesciencefictionalmode,fromTheBoss’reproductive
systemtocloningtogenetherapytoautotelicAIsystems,isonelongtrajectory
ofspeculativethoughtthatengageswiththecoreofthegenre.WhenSolidSnake
appearsonthebattlefieldofanunnamedMiddle Easterncountry(thegeopolit-
icalracismofwhichisalsoapartofthespeculativeeconomy),heappearsasa
figure of history who is able to show us, precisely, how war has changed. His
family line, of birth and cloning and weaponized subjectivity, is the map of
how warischanging.He’sacharacterbornoutofthemachineryofsciencefic-
tion, and his world is permeated by familiargenre expectations.
Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska, Science Fiction Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace
(London:Wallflower,2000),2.
MaryAnnDoane,“Technophilia:Technology,Representation,andtheFeminine,”inLiquid
Metal:The Science Fiction Film Reader, ed. Sean Redmond (New York: Columbia University
Press,2007),188.
