Low-level Eschatology: Ruins in Computer Games

Abstract

The ruins are a well-studied object in the history of culture. The article examines the ruins not only in terms of established approaches, but also from the perspective of media theory, visual ecology and game studies, new humanities oriented on exploring digital experience. Ruins in computer games, continuing the tradition of artificial ruins in European history, load the digital space with meaning, metaphysics, memory, stitch game and non-game contexts together and become a medium in its purest form — an intermediary that leads the gamer to the fragments of his identity, to the ruins of his inner experience. Digital ruins, fragmentary and partial in nature, reveal to us the pleasure of fragmentation and deconstruction that precede the new assemblage of reality. The article deals in addition with digital catastrophism, eschatology and ruinization in 11 bit studios games — This War of Mine (2014) and Frostpunk (2018).