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Can the past save sustainability’s future?

Adalberto Fernandes

Published 2025 in MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research

ABSTRACT

Retro video games play a role in fostering a circular economy of nostalgia within the broader context of climate change. The reutilization of older games contrasts sharply with the increasing consumption of resources dedicated to the production of new video games and consoles, which, in turn, exacerbate the issue of technological waste. How does this material retro circular economy intersect with the environmental meanings embedded in these games? Employing Actor-Network Theory methods, we conducted an analysis of retro video games developed for the Atari 2600 console. The findings indicate that these video games encourage a gameplay experience that perpetuates unsustainable forms of engagement with the environment, representing it in an anthropocentric manner as 1) exploitable and controllable, as well as 2) gendered and racialized. However, these older games also reveal post-anthropocentric ways of relating to the environment when they depict nature as 3) morally neutral and 4) supernatural and unnatural, thereby opening up post-anthropocentric modes of environmental engagement.

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