Title (eng)
Capturing the Apocalypse. Umurangi Generation and Photography in Apocalyptic Video Games
Author
Description (eng)
Present in many different genres and fulfilling a diverse array of functions, the remediation of the camera and its ludic affordances in digital games is of particular interest for video game scholarship, because the video game’s procedural nature enables a dialogue between the two forms in which the possibilities and limitations of photography can be made overtly graspable. Beyond the ever more popular photography mode, the diegetic simulation of a photographic camera in video games can facilitate social critique through procedural rhetoric.
This paper engages with photography in apocalyptic videogames by providing an analysis of Origame Digital’s 2020 game Umurangi Generation as a case study for an apocalyptic photography game in which photography acts as the central gameplay condition. Umurangi Generation, in its engagement with the (im)possibilities of indigenous resilience in the face of the apocalypse, shows that the photographic camera is inextricably tied to processes of meaning-making rather than passively recording a given event. Through interrelating already existing research on photography in video games with critical scholarship on crisis photography, this paper argues that video games like Umurangi Generation have the capacity to make procedural arguments about the potential of photography to construct a specific image of crisis by means of photographic framing.
Keywords (eng)
photography gameUmurangi Generationprocedural rhetoricphotographyremediation
Type (eng)
Language
[eng]
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Title
Gaming the Apocalypse
ISBN
978-3-903470-30-9
Publication
University of Krems Press
Publication
University of Krems Press
Date issued
2025-11-14
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