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Games and Culture

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It’s Not Always About You: © The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/15554120231179261

Entanglement in Video journals.sagepub.com/home/gac

Games

Nicky Heijmen1 and Joost Vervoort2

Abstract
In the face of a global ecological crisis, culturally dominant framings of subjective expe-
rience as separate from living ecologies are no longer sufficient. Games might offer
ways to break down these divisions. Alenda Chang has proposed bringing game ecol-
ogies to life. To complement her position, in this paper, we aim to inspire game design-
ers and researchers to explore ways in which video games can remodel the perceived
player subject as a pathway to ecological entanglement. We investigate four strategies
for decentering and deconstructing the subject. These are: (1) deconstructing the
subject to foreground internal sources of entanglement; (2) dismantling, distorting,
ignoring, and/or invading the visual perspective; (3) conceptual deconstruction and
reframing of a sense of self; and (4) decentering the subject through shifting contexts.
For each of these, we introduce relevant examples of narrative and gameplay design in
existing video games and suggest steps for further development in each direction.

Keywords
video games, game design, ecology, sustainability, subjectivity

1
Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
2
Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Corresponding Author:
Nicky Heijmen, Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences,
Amstelcampus, Wibautstraat 3b, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: n.heijmen@hva.nl
2 Games and Culture 0(0)

“As the jewel of my mind begins to fall apart.”

- Sufjan Stevens

Introduction
Our global ecological crisis tends to immobilize and suffocate. It involves a world that
faces compounding catastrophes, driven by deeply broken political and economic
systems and their underlying ideologies (Haraway, 2016). A changing global
climate, rapidly decreasing biodiversity and other irreversible, precipital shifts mean
that there is an urgent need for transformative change across human systems
(Steffen et al., 2015). Such transformative change requires new ways to imagine rela-
tionships between humans and the ecologies we are inextricably a part of (Bai et al.,
2016).
Amid all of this, we might not be inclined to look at forms of play for ecological
guidance. Yet, as a massive global industry and highly influential form of media,
video games potentially allow large audiences to engage with interactive worlds and
experiment with new roles, new rules, and new narratives (Vervoort, 2019;
Vervoort et al., 2022). So far, the medium has shown a rich though mostly unrealized
potential to evoke environments that feel very much alive (Chang, 2011). Such vivid
game ecologies might encourage players to recognize and act upon in-game ecosys-
tems (Taylor et al., 2015), stimulate awareness of ecological needs (Freitas Rangel
et al., 2022), engage with sustainability concerns (Kelly & Nardi, 2014), and
discard urges to conquer and control in favor of queerer relations (Heijmen &
Vosmeer, 2022; Ruberg, 2017).
However, in practice, many commercial video games perpetuate culturally presid-
ing modes of individuals dominating and/or exploiting environments (Chang, 2020).
In those environments, in-game components stand reserve. They are not portrayed
as part of a complex lifeworld, let alone as having a sense of agency. Designed to
be overcome by combinations of skill, resources, and assets, these components are
mostly—and often purely—there to enable or prohibit further progress. To put it
more bluntly: within these worlds, goblins exist to be slain, kingdoms exist to be con-
quered, catgirls exist to be wooed, and player characters exist to succeed. Because of
this, it does not come as a surprise to see earlier research describe games as fundamen-
tally embodying a contest of power (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003), in which represen-
tational qualities are seen as mere instruments to engage with underlying rules
(Aarseth, 2004). Recent research too highlights video games as resistant objects in
constant, equal rivalry with their players (Janik, 2021), to whom the existence of an
in-game problem implies the expectation to overcome it (Van de Mosselaer &
Gualeni, 2020). Thorough postcolonial critiques have been levied at games in this
Heijmen and Vervoort 3

regard (Dyer-Witheford & De Peuter, 2009; Mukherjee, 2016). This includes the
notion that, in many games, there is a messianic mission for players to regain order
(de Wildt et al., 2020). Nevertheless, we find the medium ought not to be seen as inher-
ently limited to conquest and dominance. At the end of the day, video games are mul-
tilayered texts, coshaped by players with divergent types of knowledge and habits.
This includes players that gleefully and/or unknowingly bend a developer’s intended
or implied experience (Schleiner, 2017).
We believe there are many more ways in which games can deliberately shift away
from normative subject–object-oriented power fantasies—and toward experiences of
ecological entanglement. With ecological entanglement, we refer to an experiential
understanding that everything, including the subject, is fundamentally entangled
with everything else (Haraway, 2016) and how the proximity, specificity, and multi-
plicity of these connections construct a shared environment. This ecological entangle-
ment entails a fundamental decentering of the human (Haraway, Ibid) and runs counter
to the romantic division between the human and “nature as something out there”; an
often considered contributing factor to the paradigm that feeds ecological dominance
and destruction by humans (Morton, 2016).
With the above in mind, we offer a complementary approach to existing ideas by
building on previous work by Chang (2020), who mainly focused on bringing game
environments to ecological life as a source of experiences of ecological entanglement.
Throughout this paper, we focus on strategies employed in games that decenter or
deconstruct the player’s sense of a subject and of perceived agency. The other half
of the equation in the subject–object relationship is, after all, the subject or experiences
of the subject. Given that, in this context, those terms are rather ambiguous, a little clar-
ification is required. With decentering the subject we mean drawing attention away
from one main subject’s perspective and toward an involvement in game ecologies.
With deconstruction of the subject we mean breaking apart the perceived coherent
sense of a subject to focus on its parts, its discontinuities, its inconsistencies, and its
gaps. We hypothesize that this deconstruction and decentering of the subject in
video games is a potentially valuable pathway toward experiences of ecological entan-
glement. In the following chapter, we begin by discussing Chang’s manifesto for envi-
ronmental game design. Then, we will go on to describe four distinct strategies for
decentering and deconstructing the subject. We provide examples of video games
that touch on these strategies—even if partly or briefly—and discuss their potential
connections. From there on, we discuss what further development in these directions
might look like.

Ecological Entanglement: Environments and the Subject

In Rambunctious Games: A Manifesto for Environmental Game Design, Chang
focuses on game environments’ potential to function less as backdrops for play and
more as game ecologies. The goal then is to step away from environments as a collec-
tion of usable assets—and have them be a network of diverse and intertwined factors,
4 Games and Culture 0(0)

of which the game subject—being the subject the player directly controls—is merely
one. This way, game environments can avoid antienvironmental tendencies and chal-
lenge a player’s normal palette of possible actions, their understanding of success, and
their sense of enjoyment (Chang, 2020). The earlier described “fun through exploita-
tion,” then, ought not to be seen as the medium’s be-all and end-all. Rather, by featur-
ing rambunctiously vivid ecologies, video games can extend a wide array of emotion
and reflection, and make alternatives to the dominant status quo of divided humans and
nature experientially available.
Chang thus proposes ten design goals for those who desire to build more environ-
mentally intelligent games, of which the first six are most important for our own pur-
poses: (1) Game worlds should be substrates, not vessels; (2) Games should suggest
the power of nonhuman agency; (3) Game worlds ought to surprise us; (4) Games
should entangle us; (5) Games should support a wider range of player–environment
interaction; and (6) Games should leverage scale.
In this paper, we offer a design direction that is complementary to Chang’s proposal
about game environments: that there is great potential in altering and experimenting
with the game subject as it is experienced, steered etc. by the player. What can be
done with and to the subject to open up more decentered and entangled ways of
being in game ecologies? We speculate that investigating various ways to change or
disrupt the subject side of the subject–object relationship in games can create transfor-
mative player experiences. Besides that, such approaches might help to express the
urgency and darkness that characterize ecological entanglement in our current time
and avoid the trap of the subject engaging with “nature” as an aestheticized romantic
object that is part of an essentially consumerist dynamic (Morton, 2016). After all,
video games’ flirtations with Casper David Friedrich are often blazingly straightfor-
ward (Kagen, 2022) and a little change of palette could clear some of the medium’s
overly romantic fog.

Four Strategies for Decentering and Deconstructing

Subjectivity
The following sections aim to be an inspiration for game design and research to explore
various ways in which the game subject can be decentered and deconstructed. They are
also meant to be an inspiration for empirical research: what happens to people when they
play games that reframe, open up, and otherwise “mess” with subjectivity? For each strategy,
we draw on examples of video games that already employ this strategy in one way or another.

Deconstructing the Subject to Foreground Internal Sources of Entanglement

Chang (2020) proposes that video game environments should entangle us. To comple-
ment this, might it be possible to find sources of entanglement in the multidimensionality
Heijmen and Vervoort 5

of the individual human subject, in its own internal ecologies, and how it is
co-constructed by its environments?
An example of entanglement coming from within the subject appears in the criti-
cally acclaimed role-playing video game Disco Elysium (ZA/UM, 2019). Set in an
alternative universe that nonetheless shares many of our modern world’s characteris-
tics, the player controls a middle-aged, male detective who is tasked to solve a peculiar
murder case. To develop an understanding of this murder, the characters involved, and
this world’s political dimensions, there are 24 character skills to engage with and
strengthen throughout the game (Figure 1). Divided into the categories of “intellect,”
“psyche,” “physique,” and “motorics,” these skills partly make up the game subject’s
sense of self, as they are characterized by an internal voice and distinctive perspective
that only the protagonist—and thus in turn, the player—can hear. What is useful for
our purposes is how this structure pushes the level of the singular subject to the back-
ground, in favor of intrasubjective elements, emphasizing their connections and reac-
tions to the world.
The skill “Inland Empire,” for instance, portrays an intrasubjective perspective that
eagerly senses the hidden mysteries behind the more concrete elements of the world. It
is primarily steered by gut feelings and keen to strike up conversations with inanimate
objects. “Authority” as an intrasubjective character and voice tunes in exclusively on
the power dynamics that are at play; desiring dominance in a clearly defined hierarchi-
cal structure. “Esprit de Corps,” on the other hand, leeches upon previous social expe-
riences with coworkers to interpret others’ behaviors. Rather than the game subject

Figure 1. 24 Skills that allow for various forms of engagement with the game subject’s
surroundings (ZA/UM, 2019).
6 Games and Culture 0(0)

having full control of these internal voices, they unexpectedly push themselves
forward and entangle themselves with occurring actions and dialogues. As the
player cannot predict when or if a voice pushes itself forward, this form of gameplay
effectively breaks down the barrier between internal and external impulses and expe-
riences. By doing so, it simultaneously contests a normative sense of one absolute,
whole, and contained identity; while also potentially foregrounding the complexity
of its implicit assumptions and ideological biases (Vella & Cielecka, 2021).
Besides foregrounding sources of entanglement in the game subject, Disco Elysium
also has an interesting way to re-contextualize its game subject in relation to the game
world. Where most of the available skills focus on concrete impact by verbally, phys-
ically, or intellectually engaging with their surroundings, one particular skill,
“Shivers,” subverts the need to directly engage (Figure 2). Instead, it causes the pro-
tagonist to briefly step away from his direct radius and situation and “tune in to the
city” (ZA/UM, 2019). This tuning-in is underlined by having the camera gently
zoom out, followed by a description of a seemingly unrelated but environmentally
interwoven event:

“A traffic jam. Rain thrumming on the roofs of motor vehicles. Inside, drivers watch water
streaming down their windshields. The statue of a king shudders, he too is cold. The canal
bridge has been raised.”

These environmental musings do not favor the game subject from a pragmatic per-
spective. They do not progress in-game objectives nor do they carry valuable hints or

Figure 2. “Shivers” describes a world that is felt and exists presumably just out of view
(ZA/UM, 2019).
Heijmen and Vervoort 7

insights that could help to progress. Through Shivers, the game subject momentarily
switches from a micro to a macro perspective, even visually. By pushing aside other-
wise goal-oriented movements, the skill acknowledges ways in which the environment
presumably not only acts and reacts amid but also beyond the character’s own physical
presence. For a mere fraction of seconds, this world no longer revolves around those
potentially involved in an unsolved murder case but is portrayed as an expansive,
layered, and breathing environment. Shivers then, contrary to the game’s other
skills, shifts away from an otherwise hierarchical structure—being that NPCs,
objects, and events ought to be used in various ways for the player to progress.
Where it can be seen as a simple mechanic that makes the game world feel larger
and more “alive,” it also challenges the game’s hierarchical topology by suggesting
a world that exists—and continues to exist—outside of the player’s interference.1
This does not only decenter the player through temporarily disabling their input but
also recontextualizes their sense of importance and power, highlighting that, outside
of the game subject, there is a multitude of subjects involved, who all may or may
not carry the same multipersonal complexity. This way, Shivers combines Disco
Elysium’s focus on sources of entanglement from within the subject with the rambunc-
tious world ecology that Chang (2020) proposes.
Although Disco Elysium gives us one example of how a video game could portray
forces of entanglement in the subject—and how this subject can be (re)contextualized
by the game world—we wonder what more could be done with this design direction.
Firstly, skills are only one way to break down the organization of subpersonal experi-
ence and embodiment. Other examples that could be given voice, perspective, and
agency might be: memories, organs, cells, symbiotic organisms, foods, moods, and
habits. This does not necessarily need the narrative complexity of a Disco Elysium.
One could, for example, look at QWOP (Foddy, 2008) for a simple but striking
video game in which multiple limbs of a track runner ought to be controlled separately
and simultaneously to move forward (often creating a hilariously uncoordinated
effect). There might also be different ways to engage with subpersonal organization
—like making the management of the body ecosystem a strategy or management sim-
ulation game, or engaging with different biological patterns as a rhythm game. As
shown by Shivers, there is much potential in connecting internal entanglements with
rich world ecologies, and this could be explored further. Another approach could be
to take the agency aspect further by turning the individual subject into a multiplayer
game—in the example of Disco Elysium, one player would play Shivers, another
Authority, and so on. Or, in the words of Inland Empire: “What if *you* only
appear as a large singular body, but are actually a congregation of tiny organisms
working in unison?” (ZA/UM, 2019)

Dismantling, Distorting, Ignoring, and/or Invading the Visual Perspective

Vision, perspective, and subjectivity are fundamentally connected. As sight is often
treated as the primary human sense, this has deeper implications for how we
8 Games and Culture 0(0)

experience ourselves. There is a long history of work on the relationships between this
emphasis on sight and how it creates an observer self, with associations of “insight”
and a sense of removed, head-located knowing and awareness (Lakoff, 1980). In
video games, this sense of a separate—and thereby not wholly involved—perspective
is arguably amplified by how most information is typically perceived through a screen.
Recognizing this means that one way to decenter the player is by disrupting or disman-
tling sight as a stable, primary perspective. This can go beyond mere disorientation, as
with the removal of sight comes the removal of an easily taken-for-granted power,
exposing the subject’s vulnerability, and forefronting its reliance on various other pro-
cesses, structures, and beings. Can we then find and/or envision games that confront us
with and push us beyond our reliance on sight as an experienced metaphor of
subjectivity?
One approach could be to design games that do nothing with the sense of sight
whatsoever in favor of foregrounding other senses. Although our hearing might
appear as an evident go-to, sadly, very few examples of purely audio-based games
exist so far. There is the binaural mobile horror game Papa Sangre (Somethin’ Else,
2010) in which the player walks across environments guided by audio cues, pressing
one of two buttons to adjust the character’s walking speed. Comparably, A Blind
Legend (Dowino, 2015) is an entirely audio-based adventure game in which one
embodies a knight, who set out to rescue his imprisoned wife. To do so, the player
relies on 3D stereo sounds to navigate environments that can be interacted with
through touch commands. Aside from these examples, however, it seems that naviga-
tion through audio landscapes offers much scope that is still largely unexplored. The
same goes for other senses such as smell and taste, though such games may be harder to
realize, as current hardware largely ignores these senses, despite the stressed need to
queer our game controls and controllers (Marcotte, 2018; Sicart, 2017).
Alternatively, games might more actively try to block, shut down, or distort sight.
Visuals that mess with the continuity of sight using disrupted and rapidly changing
abstract imagery might impact the sense of sight and through this the experienced
subject. An example of the distortion, dismantling, and invasion of the visual perspec-
tive is found in NieR: Automata (PlatinumGames, 2017). This third-person action
game involves a long, complex, dramatic story that focuses on the end of humanity,
and what it might mean for artificial intelligence to carry forward—and engage
with—the echo of human ideas, cultures, and experiences. There is a moment in its
multipart story where the android protagonist gets infected by a “logic virus.” This
virus dismantles and distorts the skills and information the player has come to rely
on, including the game’s visual field and user interface (Figure 3). This fundamental
distortion—and arguably invasion—of the play experience, is set up expertly by the
game’s established convention that parts of the player experience are in fact contingent
upon in-game conditions. Namely, parts of the playable android can be installed or
uninstalled to make certain forms of play possible. Some of these interchangeable
parts dictate what the android character can and cannot do by enhancing, decreasing,
unlocking, or removing combat skills, speed, or duration. Others provide navigational
Heijmen and Vervoort 9

Figure 3. The logic virus distorts the player’s view and glitches the earlier reliable user
interface (PlatinumGames, 2017).

tools for the player by adjusting the game’s overall interface, showcasing enemy data, a
mini-map, fishing spots, and sound waves. What is unique about NieR: Automata in
this, is that these alterations are treated not as simple menu options, but as alterations
to the player character. The game even allows the player to disconnect the android’s
CPU, causing the game to end as the android cannot function without it. Like with
the invasion by the logic virus, this interchanging of components underlines the fragil-
ities and dependencies of what at first appears to be a singular, indestructible being.
What more might be possible in this direction of visual distortion and invasion to
deconstruct the subjective game perspective? Much more intense, complex, and chal-
lenging visual disruptions and distortions might be interesting as a central theme, given
it only plays a minor part in NieR: Automata’s overall experience. Alternatively, the
relationships between visual input and other elements of the game (sound, controls,
and movement) might be disconnected and distorted, temporally, or otherwise.
From a multiplayer perspective, different senses might be distributed and distorted
between different players, highlighting a cooperative requirement to progress or
obstruct progression. Overall, the disruption of sight opens up questions about the
medium’s flexibility concerning the transfer of information between the player and
the platform.
What is perhaps far less immediately obvious here, when compared to the example
of Disco Elysium, is how the distortion and deconstruction of the character perspective
relates to ecological entanglement. Interestingly, NieR: Automata does decenter the
player’s perspective through its narrative design. After a first playthrough of the
story, the game can be replayed from another character’s point of view. In this
second playthrough, characters who the player might have assumed to only play
10 Games and Culture 0(0)

a minor part—as they have previously appeared more off-screen—turn out to be essen-
tial to the survival of the game’s previous protagonist. This starts more conventionally
with a shift to the “sidekick” android character but culminates in the player taking over
what seemed to be support droids having the main philosophical conversations to con-
clude the game. This way, NieR: Automata reduces and reframes the heroic experience
that is so common within video games and repositions our focus to highlight the inter-
wovenness of its actors. This means that visual distortion, deconstruction, and invasion
are at least thematically resonant with the decentering achieved by switching charac-
ters. But how might these two approaches be more intimately connected? What
possibilities exist for creating more direct experiences of entanglement in the gaps,
inconsistencies, and distortions of the subject?

Conceptual Deconstruction and Reframing of a Sense of Self

A third direction we think is worth investigating is how video games might conceptu-
ally and philosophically decenter and deconstruct a sense of self as part of the player’s
identification with the game subject. In Soma (Frictional Games, 2015), the game’s
protagonist, Simon Jarrett, undergoes an experimental new brain scanning method,
hoping it might heal his mortally injured brain. With very little transition, Simon
wakes up from the scan, about a century in the future, trapped in an ocean floor
base. It takes Simon—and the player, depending on their interpretative skills—some
time to understand that he is in fact a copy of the original Simon’s consciousness,
having inherited everything—from his personality to his sense of embodiment.
Rather than having a human body, this copied consciousness inhabits various
machines, as Simon’s original body decayed long ago. Yet, because it is programmed
to see its mechanical parts as human limbs, it still perceives itself as a fully functioning
human (Figure 4). As the story progresses, Simon casually transfers his consciousness
to different substrates and wakes up and shuts down the conscious brain copies of
others—who also see themselves as fully alive. Through this, the game pushes
forward its biggest narrative question: whether and when you are “you” and they
are “them.” In his naivete, every time Simon thinks he “transfers” himself or others
to other devices or bodies, or whenever he restarts a consciousness, he actually
makes a copy instead. In the process, he either kills the original consciousnesses,
including himself, or leaves them behind; conscious but immobile. When it comes
to Simon himself, this leads to a very particular and paradoxical type of decentering:
the realization that you—as the player’s perspective—are continuously switching
between new or old copies of Simon. Although the player at all times engages with
the game through its first-person perspective, and through this acquires a sense of
“being” Simon, from a narrative perspective they never truly embody the same
game subject for a longer period of time.
What is important to mention is how this realization is used and contextualized.
Soma was born out of the interest of developer Frictional Games to follow up its
work on the hit horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Frictional Games, 2010)
Heijmen and Vervoort 11

Figure 4. A robot identifying itself as Carl Semken; in pain and oblivious to its nonhuman body
(Frictional Games, 2015).

with a type of horror that was more existential (Engadget, 2015). Soma’s setting is a
postapocalyptic world in which humanity has largely disappeared, and in which the
survivors in the ocean floor system are either copied and/or corrupted consciousnesses.
This leaves no “real” humans alive, making those consciousnesses what is left of
humanity. These copies are to be launched into space on “the ARK”: a virtual paradise
that is meant to take humanity’s last (virtual) members off of the destroyed planet and
into a future that—while still rather hopeless—is at least less certain. Combining this
sense of being among the last humans with the experience and insights of being a copy,
and the disposal of consciousnesses that experience themselves as alive, can have a
profoundly alienating, defamiliarizing effect (Drugoja, 2022; Reddit, 2018).
So, what is the design element here that might be taken further and mobilized as
another pathway for decentering the self? The game leads the main character, and
by extension potentially the player, to question the special reality status afforded to
the sense of “me.” There might be directions to take this beyond existential horror.
In Soma, the horror and tragedy come not only from the realization that I myself am
a copy no matter how real I feel but also that this also goes for all the other characters.
They are undeniably digital copies encased in objects, yet very clearly experience
themselves as people. Empathy and understanding are generated through experiencing
the painful paradox of being a consciousness and an object that has no special status
compared to the rest of reality. Soma highlights the contingent, fragile nature of expe-
rience and consciousness, which can be used as a source of connectedness to others
and to reality. What if other games take this further and find new ways to let the
player engage with this contingency and fragility of experience? This could be
done, for instance, by investigating how ordinary human experience is similarly
12 Games and Culture 0(0)

fragile and contingent upon many factors; and that this goes for other types of con-
sciousness as well—playing up the painful paradox of experiencing other beings as
“things” but understanding that they have their own experience of being. Interesting
future pathways might include mobilizing psychology insights to create awareness
of the interdependent, emergent nature of experience as it continually arises from
and in relation to memories, experiences, and sensations (Conway, 2005).
Combining this development direction with world-building and the experience of
the paradox of others a la Soma might prove powerful.

Decentering the Subject Through Shifting Contexts

Finally, a game’s contexts and environments can also be mobilized specifically to
decenter the subject and to break its continuity with its surroundings—and obscure
it. An example of a video game that continually reframes and obscures the game sub-
ject’s relation to its surroundings can be found in Paratopic (Arbitrary Metric, 2018).
Through the jump-cut-esque manner by which the game’s environments are intro-
duced, a feeling of disorientation is created. One moment, the game subject is at an
American diner, the other they stand in front of an elevator, only to swiftly find them-
self positioned among pine trees and rock formations. By reducing player control
through this unexpected changing of scenes, the game continuously appeals to a
need for the player to reposition themself and understand the environment anew.
The effect may be a lack of habituation. It is never directly clear what these environ-
ments ask of the player to do, nor can they directly backtrack previous progress to
acquire a more concrete perspective.
To add more fuel to this disorienting fire, Paratopic regularly changes what the
player can and cannot do depending on the scene in which the game subject
appears. Like with the abrupt change of scenery, this change of mechanics brings
forward the need to recontextualize, as all of a sudden the game subject drives a
car, holds a gun, or strikes up a conversation. Where video games often establish a
context that clarifies what character the player embodies, Paratopic does not signal
whether we are playing as a smuggler, birdwatcher, or assassin. Instead, it uses its
exchanging environment and mechanics to give a probable interpretation of the situa-
tion and thus the game subject the player embodies. When suddenly positioned behind
the wheel of a driving car, the player drives it over the dark, daunting road in front of
them. When carrying a camera, they scout for a prominent red bird that keeps flying
away. When all of a sudden holding a gun, they fire it at the first unexpected encounter
with another being. Because the game provides the bare minimum of those mechanics,
combined with a lack of context and situations or environments that do not require
complicated actions, the player is allowed to take a step back. This, in turn, creates
room for questions concerning the player’s own actions and how their agency is entan-
gled with their environment, as the motives of the character that they inhabit are not
only clouded but also not necessarily their own (Figure 5).
Heijmen and Vervoort 13

An ambiguous setting combined with the slow realization of what/who the game
subject embodies and what their actions encompass might account for a strong combi-
nation to constitute a greater ecological awareness within a player base. Where
Paratopic uses these techniques to successfully create a disorienting, Lynchian expe-
rience and unconventional narrative, it is not a stretch to imagine games in which the
player takes on the role of a variety of agents within a network, learning their move-
ments and relations before unraveling the types of organisms they embody. This could
be particularly interesting to learn about the habitats and livelihoods of nonhuman
animals as well as floral behavior but could also give insight into the material
effects of bureaucratic decisions.

Discussion
Games have a unique potential to help players experience and experiment with new
relationships with ecologies because they can involve inhabiting roles, complex
rules, intricate world-building, and dynamic storytelling. Additionally, given the dom-
inant role games play in culture, not just through play but through game communities,
streaming, secondary media, and more, such new relationships with ecologies could
become culturally influential (Milkoreit, 2019). However, most games position the
player as a dominating force in an otherwise separate environment. This paper
responds to—and builds on—the manifesto for environmental game design by
Chang (2020) who, in her first six principles, calls for games that help players
engage with ecological entanglement by reimagining how game environments might
be designed. We have proposed another design direction that complements this valu-
able manifesto: to find ways for ecological entanglement in and through the experience

Figure 5. “You,” driving a car, seemingly transporting a suitcase (Arbitrary Metric, 2018).
14 Games and Culture 0(0)

of the subject and the self, and the various ways in which it can be decentered and
deconstructed. We have used various examples of games that begin to engage with
the subject in these ways. Our discussions of these games are meant to inspire a
new game design that takes each direction (much) further, as well as inspire research
that investigates the potential effects of such games.
Returning to Alenda Chang’s manifesto, more connections can still be made. First
of all, various approaches can be imagined that combine (1) making more vivid game
environments and (2) decentering the game subject. How would these combinations
complement and support each other? In this paper, we have mostly focused on
Chang’s first six manifesto points. These points largely focus on the functions and
forms of games and game environments. Her last four points, however, link games
and real-life environments in various ways. What would the equivalent of such links
look like when the focus is on the self and the subject? For instance, what is the
“self/subject” equivalent to making the game sector more sustainable (point 7)?
Might game development, as a form of work, be connected to various experiences
of the self and entanglement from the perspectives of game developers; in turn contrib-
uting to different and more sustainable industry practices? How might various ways to
engage with the subject and self be combined with games taking us outside (point 8)?
Regarding point 9—graphics should not be everything—we can see and have dis-
cussed, an obvious benefit to games trying to use nonvisual means to dismantle the
sense of subjectivity. Finally, point 10—games should help us mourn—seems to be
compatible with games that help us experience the contingency and entanglement of
the self.
More research can also be conducted into the diversity of player experiences. The
player forms an important, unmistakable aspect of the medium as a complete text
(Fernández-Vara, 2019), and there is significant diversity between player preferences,
backgrounds, and more. It is very likely that just as different players are attracted to
different games,2 different forms of engaging with the subject/environment split will
be engaging and/or effective to varying degrees depending on the player.
The potential significance of fostering experiences of ecological entanglement
through changes in the self or subject has not, so far, been studied in the context of
games. But its potential has been investigated in the context of other experiences
that alter the sense of self, such as mindfulness and meditation (Britton et al., 2021)
and psychedelics (Lebedev et al., 2015; Letheby & Gerrans, 2017). Such research is
particularly interesting for our purposes as it has developed elaborate and multidimen-
sional conceptions of how the self is experienced that may translate to various ways in
which games can entangle and change such experiences. In fact, experiences of eco-
logical entanglement associated with psychedelics could be considered a model for
game-based experiences (Vervoort, 2022). More generally, the theory and methods
currently used to investigate game psychology and mental health would likely be valu-
able for research into the ecology and the self (Granic et al., 2014).
Shifting human experiences away from disconnection and toward entanglement
with ecologies seems vital in our time of global ecological crisis. Or, to cite
Heijmen and Vervoort 15

Morton, “if we could not merely figure out but actually experience the fact that we
were embedded in our world, then we would be less likely to destroy it” (2016).
Although games have yet to prove themselves more significantly in terms of their
potential to create such experiences of ecological entanglement, we believe that path-
ways through the experience of the self and the subject are crucial. Experimentation
with the subject and the self promises to be a rich and exciting direction of develop-
ment and research. Wonderfully surprising game experiences and insights may arise
on the way.

Acknowledgments
This article was partly supported by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) who funded the NWO Vidi
project ANTICIPLAY (project number VI. Vidi.195.007) and its research team. The article was also
supported by the CreaTures project. This project has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870759. Finally, the
research was inspired by the Unusual Collaborations Grant project Playing with the Trouble.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Nederlandse Organisatie
voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, (grant number
195.007, 870759).

ORCID iDs
Nicky Heijmen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3230-7520
Joost Vervoort https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8289-7429

Note
1. A more extreme example of limited player agency can be found in the indie-game Mountain
(Double Fine Productions, 2014). Besides setting up some conditions for a mountain to be
generated, and controlling the camera to witness its evolution throughout a 50-hour
runtime, the player is not given any control over the game world.
2. Given how most of the examples in this paper are narrative-focused, postapocalyptic single-
player experiences, there are many different types of games that are just as valuable to
approach. Considering their popularity and accessibility, “casual” mobile/browser games
might provide a rich source of inspiration.
16 Games and Culture 0(0)

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Author Biographies
Nicky Heijmen is a lecturer, video games scholar, and designer based at the
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
Joost Vervoort is an associate professor of Transformative Imagination at the
Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University. He focuses on
the intersection of games, politics, imagination, and transformative futures.