Video games have spent the last few decades (re-)imagining dystopian and post-apocalyptic scenarios, as in, e.g., Fallout (1997-2018), The Last of Us (2013-2020), Horizon (2017-2022), Plague Inc. (2012), AWAY: The Survival Series (2021), Stray (2022),  Endling: Extinction is Forever (2022), or Frostpunk (2022). Often, these scenarios enact fantasies of (de-)extinction, requiring the player to actively participate and embrace their own agency within the game world. Yet, what exactly is the place of video games in the Sixth Mass Extinction? How do video games depict extinction, and how does the player experience it? What can be learned from these playful representations of annihilation? The international symposium Imagining Extinction in Video Games aims to bring these questions to the forefront and to provide fresh perspectives on the subject. This one-day event will take place online on Friday, April 26, 2024, and it will feature special guests and dialogic sessions at the intersection of game and extinction studies.

It is undeniable that scholarship on the subject of extinction and the environmental humanities is proliferating in literary, cultural, and film studies, as a quick survey of these fields makes clear. However, there is a large corpus of video games which has yet to grab the attention of these scholars. Likewise, within game studies, extinction is rarely approached from a strong theoretical standpoint. As both game studies and extinction studies emerge as important fields of study in the arts and humanities, why has so little scholarship engaged in depth with both?

In biology, extinction refers to the end of a given species. In the environmental humanities and other transdisciplinary fields of study, the discourse on extinction includes social, cultural, and ecological dimensions which characterise our present moment. It has been contested on grounds of colonialism, taxonomy, bioethics, and for its many other conceptual blind spots. Science fiction has, at times, romanticised extinction in depictions of the dinosaurs, the dodo, and more recently in imagining de-extinction as a scientific possibility. Moreover, video games have been nurturing a particular interest for dystopian and post-apocalyptic scenarios, with performances of destruction, liberation, and survival. The play of extinction is not only in content but it also involves player subjectivity and their perception of virtual and empirical worlds. To contemplate on these issues is to ponder on the nature of video games, the nature of extinction, and the nature of nature. Thus, this symposium will reflect on questions such as these, namely:

• How do video games, as both privileged forms of entertainment and escapism in the digital age and rich objects of study, reflect on (the issue of?) extinction?
• Whose extinctions are imagined in video games? Non-human animals, plants, humans, dinosaurs, languages, cultures, ways of being…?
• Which are playable characters: humans, non-humans?
• Is procedural rhetoric employed, presenting arguments about humankind’s relationship to the environment and other species?
• Is extinction merely an afterthought of the dystopian landscapes of video games, or is it crucial to the gameplay and the ecological depth of the games?
• Is extinction romanticised in apocalyptic flights of wonder, or is it depicted in an ecologically conscious way?

We aim to nurture a sustained scholarly discussion around these questions, and call attention to the importance of approaching the representation of extinction in digital media. Furthermore, the aim is to debate how video games contribute to the contemporary cultural discourse surrounding extinction, oftentimes challenging fatalistic worldviews in the face of the multiple global and planetary crises of our own times, insisting on the possibility of better alternatives, despite the profound impact of wars, geopolitical unrest, climate change, and uncertainty which characterise the Anthropocene and the Sixth Mass Extinction.

Imagining Extinction in Video Games will host special talks and responses by experts, as well as sessions with shorter working papers and discussions. The emphasis will be on the conversational, dialogical, interactive, figure-it-all-out-together sort of environment. We will problematise questions, arguments and statements regarding the main themes in focus, so as to contribute to the advancement of the study of video games and extinction.

The symposium will feature special guests:

• Benjamin Abraham (After Climate)
• Edmond Y. Chang (Ohio University)
• Patrick Whitmarsh (College of the Holy Cross)

Attendance is free but registration is required:
https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYscuugrTgpHtB2U08o2kVMJ77ke-E31tO7