Post-optimism: Chants of Sennaar, Norco and the Problem of Optimism in Environmental and Ecogames Gamestudies
Conor McKeown
Ecogame scholarship, the subdiscipline of videogame studies concerned with environment, has a shortcoming. I establish how ecogames changed from a deeply critical to a problematically optimistic field. Reflecting on recent developments I suggest ecogames must take a stance against optimistic climate rhetoric. I analyse two games: Chants of Sennaar (Moya and Panuel 2023) and Norco (Yuts and Gray 2022) arguing they highlight the potential and pitfalls of games as environmental texts. Chants of Sen