Starboard Vineyard Tours 10: The World Is Born From Zero: Understanding Speculation and Video Games, Kunzelman

This month, we took a brief dip into a different medium with The World Is Born From Zero: Understanding Speculation and Video Games (2022), by Cameron Kunzelman, and got into the mechanics of speculation. This book crosses both science fiction studies and game studies, with a significant infusion of speculative materialism/realism, so there’s a number of new ideas to juggle as we talk over Kunzelman’s approach to science fiction video games. We discuss “speculation” as a philosophical category, and the way Kunzelman locates it in game mechanics, as well as his case studies in games like VA-11 Hall-A’s cyberpunk job training, The Last of Us’ use and misuse of speculation in perspectives, and the various models of climate-change strategy game. We also discuss pessimistic scholarship, grindset nazgûl, and how neither of us know that much about Metal Gear Solid. The book talk we mention in the episode can be found here.CONTENT WARNING: The third chapter of The World Is Born From Zero discusses anti-black violence and racism in The Last of Us’ narrative structure in detail, and so our discussion from 1:39:52 - 1:50:47. Topics: Speculation, speculative realism, cognitive estrangement, video gamesNote: we learned after recording the episode that A Hand With Many Fingers uses archival information about the Nugan Hand Bank scandal, which we did not know about at the time, and assumed based on its discussion in the book was fictional.Next episode's reading is TBD, so watch this space!