Abstract

This essay analyzes Death Stranding, the 2019 release from contemporary game auteur Hideo Kojima. Here, I discuss the unique potentialities of this game world, detailing the ways in which Death Stranding expresses ecological perspectives. Asynchronous multiplayer serves as a unique metagame, helping to prove that play is a process of action which facilitates ecological thinking. The world of Death Stranding is filled with strange objects. The nonhuman entities that the player encounters throughout the game, for example, seem entirely alien. And yet, when these entities are properly understood, we realize that their inclusion is necessary--and natural. Your "job" in the game is to deliver packages. The player is made aware that here, in this digital world, objects have an unusual weight. What can we learn when we play this game? As the player becomes increasingly immersed in this digital world, Death Stranding motivates deeper thinking about the world outside of the game. Although this is a work of fiction, play helps us to consider our impact on the world at large. Death Stranding affords things their proper power and considers human existence in context with a larger, ecological whole.

Degree

College and Department

Fine Arts and Communications; Theatre and Media Arts

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