Emergent Subjectivities: No Man's Sky and Anthropocenic visualities

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Emergent Subjectivities: No Man’s Sky and

Anthropocenic Visualities

A dissertation submitted to the University of Amsterdam in partial fulfilment of

the requirements for the degree of Masters of Comparative Cultural Analysis.

University of Amsterdam

June 2018

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to my thesis supervisor dr. Maria Cetinić for her guidance and valuable suggestions that made this work possible.

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Table of Figures

Figure 1: No Man's Sky opening screen...11

Figure 2: Mining...19

Figure 3: Terra nullius...20

Figure 4: Avatar view...29

Figure 5: Planetary travel...33

Figure 6: Environmental aesthetics...37

Figure 7: Descriptor pool (gregkwaste)...44

Figure 8: Possible outcomes of descriptor pool (gregkwaste)...45

Figure 9: No Man's Sky's animals...48

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Introduction

Taking video games as serious objects of analysis, beyond a shallow investigation of their potential addictiveness or their role in gun violence, is a task that can potentially provide new avenues for considering the ways in which subjectivity is produced, shaped, and changed. Much has been made of the power of art - its potential to speculate about the social world in which we live, and how our world might be imagined otherwise (Davis and Turpin 12). However, the humanities have been slow to take up a serious analysis of video games. In this thesis I suggest that video games have the same potential as any other artform to generate a speculative experience for their players. Video game analysis is of particular importance in the age of the Anthropocene, where environmental degradation, mass extinction, and global warming are threatening the diversity of life on Earth, due to its potential to influence bodily and affective experiences. The Anthropocene denotes a shift to a new geological epoch, where humans have become a geological force, redefining the relationship between humans and the earth (Steffen et al. 843). The result of the human’s new position is climate change. The Anthropocene is a sensorial phenomenon that changes the world too rapidly for our perceptions to keep up (Davis and Turpin 3, 11). Following this line of thought, this thesis will explore Hello Game’s 2016 triple-A1_{release No Man’s Sky in relation to how we} visualize the Anthropocene and the Anthropocenic subject, as well as the role that No Man’s

Sky plays in undoing Anthropocenic understandings of subjectivity through its gaming

experience.

1 A triple-A release is a video game that is produced by a mid- or large-sized publisher. It is an informal classification, nonetheless it provides an indicator of marketing and production budgets. Due to these higher budgets triple-A games often have much more pressure to generate profit than games developed by smaller publishers.

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No Man’s Sky is an open-world survival video game where the user is free to explore the game-world as they see fit. No Man’s Sky’s world is a procedurally generated universe on the same scale as our, non-virtual, universe. There are approximately eighteen quintillion planets in No Man’s Sky’s universe, each with their own unique lifeforms (Kharpal), colour schemes, environments, and resources that are almost infinitely variable. There are four main elements that make up No Man’s Sky’s gameplay: survival, trading, exploration, and combat. The game was inspired by 1970s and 1980s sci-fi novels and imagery. Due to its procedural generation, No Man’s Sky is not a pre-given entity, but rather a dynamic process that changes as the focus of attention of the game shifts, which provides strong allegorical links to the current environmental crisis.

Most people are now well aware of human-made climate change, rapid sea level rises, and animal extinctions; however, there seems to be little effective movements to change the conditions of the Anthropocene. Dipesh Chakrabarty suggests that this is because humans are affecting the planet on a scale that is beyond our comprehension. This argument assumes that humans cannot understand themselves as a force that impacts the environment on a global scale, as we only experience certain small aspects of climate change (Chakrabarty, “Four Theses” 220-221; Chakrabarty, “Postcolonial Studies” 8). In this thesis, I will challenge the notion that Anthropocenic visualities are the default perspective of humanity, arguing instead that the inability to see our history as inextricably linked to natural history is a symptom of an Anthropocenic mentality. The experience of playing No Man’s Sky articulates a shift in scales of perspective that can begin to undo forms of subjectivity that have caused the Anthropocene.

This thesis will use as a framework anthropologist Anna Tsing’s term ‘polyphonic assemblages’. Assemblages refer to the relationships of component parts. These parts are

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neither stable nor fixed, rather assemblage theory focuses on the fluidity and exchangeability of entities (cite). Tsing’s addition of polyphonic to the concept of assemblage emphasizes the isolation of several different assemblages, as well as the moments of both dissonance and harmony that several different assemblages creates (24). Tsing warns us of the great need for us to collaborate with non-human entities and acknowledge the indeterminacy that makes life possible (20, 28). She hopes that her book will open our imagination to how we might live without the promise of stability (2-5). My experience with No Man’s Sky follows a similar line, where I am constantly confronted with entanglements and temporal rhythms that unravel subjectivity, creating a space for speculation about the Anthropocene.

The “mosaic of open-ended assemblages” (Tsing 5) that unfolds in No Man’s Sky converges with media theorist Jussi Parikka’s understanding of how to analyze media. Parikka suggests that we should start analyzing media from the middle, or at the entanglement of past and present, in order to understand, rather than explain away, the complexity that arises from analyzing any element of modern media culture (Media

Archeology 5). This is how I will approach my analysis of No Man’s Sky. Often video game

analysis is viewed in terms of binaries such as: “game versus player, rules versus fiction, games versus stories, games versus the broader culture, and game ontology versus game aesthetics” (Juul 11). However, I do not wish to draw distinctions between each gaming element. Instead, I will discuss the many levels of neural plasticity that are associated with technogenesis, or the idea that humans have co-evolved with technical tools (Hayles 47). Therefore, I will be exploring digital technologies in relation to the human on a more holistic level. In building the affective relationship between player and video game, I wish to extend my analysis beyond bounded subjects, and bounded subjectivity, in order to detail the environment-subject entanglements that are uncovered through the experience of playing No

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Video games provide a world to explore, as opposed to a place for rationalization (Hellström Reimer 16). Similarly, cultural theorist Brandon Tam Lynn Smith argues that video games can aid ecological engagement, as they provide virtual spaces for environmental consideration and reflection. The fact that the player can interact, engage with, and manipulate the virtual world around them puts them in a position to consider the environment, although often in ways that replicate current problematic relationships (105, 117). Environmental critique is often limited by the procedural rhetoric of the game being played. Many video games conceptualize their environment as a grid, such as in Minecraft, where the environment is made entirely of potential resources (105). Smith takes particular aim at video games that engage with climate change by emphasizing the scale and complexity of the issue, as well as favoring the solution of top-down policy approaches, which tend to paralyze the player, making them feel powerless in the face of global warming (103). This is of particular interest to my discussion of video games and ecology, as many overtly ecological video games actually obscure our ability to think of ourselves across different scales and temporalities, as they overwhelm the player by offering top-down policy solutions. Adena Rivera-Dundas offers an analysis of video games that focus on non-human ecologies. Rivera-Dundas analyzes video games that do not allow for much player intervention in the game world, instead aiming to show the player non-human assemblages. However, her analysis seems to offer the player no counternarrative to the Anthropocene. I wish to demonstrate how No Man’s Sky forces a rupture in a human-centered subjective formation, allowing for other possibilities for subjective formation to open up.

Many critiques of video games suggest that they are a form of escapism. Digital media theorists use the term ‘magic circle’ to denote a virtual world in which the normal rules and norms of society are suspended, protecting the virtual world from the real world (Castronova 147). Game designers Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman posit that when playing

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a game, the player either enters, or creates, a ‘magic circle’ that clearly demarcates the gaming world and the non-gaming world (95). However, I argue against this clear delimitation, instead suggesting that the virtual world of No Man’s Sky both receives form from the non-virtual world and gives form to the non-virtual world. In other words, game design is relational and performative, a place for societal becoming (Hellström Reimer 17-18). Moreover, as video game theorist Ian Bogost suggests, the game world intrudes into the non-virtual world and does not disappear once the player stops playing. Game worlds do not act as artificial spaces or escapes (Unit Operations 134). Instead of theorizing video games in terms of the ‘magic circle’, I will look at No Man’s Sky as an opportunity for players to glimpse the complexity of the environment, and our embeddedness in it. Video games simplify this complexity, providing a “(potentially) fungible insight into the nature of real life, through the successful use and interpretation of the game” (Unit Operations 98). In other words, video games represent a simplified part of the world that we can use to speculate about our understanding of ourselves and the world (Unit Operations 98). This ties in nicely to new materialist theory that suggests that “attention to the material transit across bodies and environments may render it more difficult to seek refuge within fantasies of transcendence or imperviousness” (Alaimo 16). The experiences that we have with video games do not end when we turn off the screen. These two fields compliment each other, and I suggest that video games can provide an experience of new materialist understandings of the environment that open up new possibilities for subjective formation.

The ‘game’ aspect of video games such as No Man’s Sky, as opposed to overtly message-driven games, can also provide an advantage when taking the player through their relationship to the environment, as it tends to feel less like purposeful manipulation, therefore players feel more in control of the conclusions that they draw from their gaming experience (Condis 93). In other words, messages in games are less successful when games are deemed

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‘serious’ or ‘educational’. My analysis is arguing against these clear-cut distinctions between game and serious life, real world and virtual world, serious and playful activities. Moreover, the fact that No Man’s Sky is perceived as something to be played allows the gaming experience greater impact as it positions its user as someone who is playing. Brian Massumi suggests that play puts us in a different form of existence and allows us to think about how our understanding of the political is humanist, and how this could potentially be otherwise (2-3). Limiting a discussion of global warming to humanist assumptions makes it impossible for us to understand the non-human scales and temporalities of global warming. Therefore, moving beyond humanist assumptions regarding global warming is essential. Using animals play-fighting as an example, Massumi elaborates:

The logics of fighting and play embrace each other, in their difference. They overlap in their shared gesture, the simplicity of which as a single act constitutes their zone of indiscernibility. They overlap in the unicity of the performance, without the distinction between them being lost. They are performatively fused, without becoming confused. They come together without melding together, co-occurring without coalescing. The zone of indiscernibility is not a making indifferent. On the contrary, it is where differences come actively together (6).

This active convergence of differences allows the player to experience their subjective formation, and how it is continually reworked on a level that is pre-communication, as play disrupts instincts (5) that are learned through Anthropocenic imaginations. Throughout this thesis, I do not deviate from describing the experience with No Man’s Sky as play, as the indeterminate state of play opens the possibility for the gaming experience to be transformative, where different scales and temporalities of the subject can come together. The experience of No Man’s Sky and non-virtual environmental logics become performatively fused through play.

This thesis details the shift in an understanding of subjectivity that unfolds throughout

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dominant understandings of subjective formation that the player encounters while playing No

Man’s Sky. The material conditions of the Anthropocene are produced and maintained by a

subjectivity that is individualized and bounded. I will demonstrate the unravelling of this Anthropocenic subject through an experience of playing No Man’s Sky. This experiential process is of vital importance, as it provides a speculative experience of how subjectivity might be reconstituted to make way for a more ethical understanding of subjectivity. In this thesis, my core aim is to provide an example of how the Anthropocenic subject could begin to understand themselves in a way that lays bare how the environment is involved in subjective formation, and a new form of ethics that must necessarily arise from this. This thesis also details how mainstream cultural objects, such as video games, can uncover affective shifts that challenge our perceived inability to counter environmental degradation, despite the overwhelming evidence that it is the largest and most immanent threat to our survival. Many people are aware of this urgent danger, but Chakrabarty suggests that this lack of action is due to a failure in how we imagine our own subjectivity. The way in which No

Man’s Sky unravels how we imagine our subjectivity, and how this visualization process can

change, articulates the need for a posthumanist ethical framework through which we can begin to tackle the problem of how we relate to the environment.

To this end, I will utilize my first-person experiential impressions of playing No

Man’s Sky. This approach decenters the importance of both narrative and ludology, which are

two common (Crawford), and I argue inadequate, approaches to video game analysis. A narrative approach to No Man’s Sky is inadequate, as the game itself counters traditional forms of narrativity, therefore analysis of the game cannot rely on a description of narrative. Furthermore, the experiential nature of No Man’s Sky also does not originate from its ludic aspects. It is instead the experience of the game that invokes the affects that I wish to explore in this thesis. Experiential writing provides a point of access to the ruptures, and subsequent

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transformations that playing No Man’s Sky provides, which would not be possible through mere description of the game. Both the experience that unfolds while playing No Man’s Sky, and the theoretical framework that surrounds it in this thesis requires an experiential register that evokes a sense of immanent practice. Therefore, throughout this thesis I use experiential writing to detail the points of rupture that emanate from No Man’s Sky.

The following chapters will bring together video game analysis and literature detailing the subject of the Anthropocene. The first chapter will discuss how No Man’s Sky unfolds a speculative visuality of the Anthropocene. Chapter two will detail how the form of visuality produced by No Man’s Sky is strengthened by the affective connections that are formed between subject and avatar, and subject and environment. Finally, the third chapter will detail how No Man’s Sky provides an experience of entanglement that produces an ethics of relationality that traces back into the non-virtual world. Each chapter will deal with a different aspect of No Man’s Sky by examining specific gaming elements, as well as the wider cultural factors that influence these elements. The third chapter will also detail the ethical consequences that arise from No Man’s Sky’s gaming experience. Each chapter will return to the process of undoing that No Man’s Sky precipitates to investigate how the Anthropocene might become otherwise, in order to open up an affective understanding of the human’s ethical entanglement with the non-human, and the process of co-constitution that is always already occurring.

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Chapter one: Speculative Countervisuality

In this chapter I will build up a theory of speculative countervisuality in order to describe the role of cultural objects in providing a visual representation of the Anthropocene, and ways of thinking that can counteract Western Anthropocenic thought. I will challenge Chakrabarty’s understanding of the relationship between humans and their geological effects through his mischaracterization of the role of the environment in shaping the brain. Theorizing the brain as a way to provide a medium for speculative countervisualities to the Anthropocene is a way to begin to confront ourselves as a geological force. I suggest that this speculative countervisuality to the Anthropocene always already exists, springing forwards in moments of rupture. Not only is No Man’s Sky a moment of rupture, but the imperial, capitalist progress narrative that initially is of central importance to the game falls away the greater amount of time the player spends immersed in the game’s universe. This provides a new mentality (Malabou, “Brain of History”). This affective experience will be further unpacked in both chapter two and chapter three, paying particular attention to bodies and assemblages, while this chapter will focus on the experience of the moment of rupture that creates space for a speculative countervisuality that unfolds throughout the gameplay experience of No Man’s Sky.

Gaming as speculation

Before I begin my analysis, I would like to briefly discuss why video games act as a form of speculation. Bogost details how video games can act as a metaphor, either explicitly or implicitly, that reinforces, questions, or exposes ideology (“Ideological Frames” 170).

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Video games provide a procedural representation of abstract ideas to their players through the use of symbolic, rather than verbal, frames. These frames are also often simplified, allowing players to experience complicated social phenomena in a simplified, and more easily digestible context (Bogost, Unit Operations). Alexander Galloway draws a parallel between gaming and Clifford Geertz’s thick description of Balinese cockfighting to demonstrate that video games can act as an allegory for what is happening in culture. In other words, “video games render social realities into playable form” (Galloway 17). This chapter will take Bogost and Galloway’s claims in relation to No Man’s Sky in order to analyze how the game initially reproduces a representation of capitalist understandings of the individual, and their relationship to the environment. This chapter will go on to demonstrate how No Man’s Sky decenters this in favor of a form of speculative visuality that complicates the subject and their relationship to the environment.

No Man’s Sky is particularly unique in terms of the speculation it induces. In critical

theory, the speculative turn heads away from social constructivism, instead emphasizing reality as independent of human thought (Bryant et al. 2-3). The opening sequence of No

Man’s Sky emphasizes the vastness of the universe that the player inhabits. The solar systems

whiz by so fast that it is impossible to count them, let alone imagine the planets, animals, and plants within. The size of the game suggests that it is not produced on a temporal scale that has humans in mind, instead its scale hints at a speculative form that is other than human. From the moment No Man’s Sky begins the player is reminded that their perspective is not central, due to the sheer size of the in-game universe.

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The brain as environment

Before I begin unpacking what I mean by the phrase speculative countervisuality in more detail, and my experience of this while playing No Man’s Sky, I will briefly explain how Chakrabarty understands our relationship to global warming, and the difficulties of conceptualizing the scale and temporality of this aspect of ourselves. Chakrabarty’s vision of the human is doubled and contradictory, in the sense that we are at once both subjects in the conventional sense, and that we also have a non-human, non-living agency (Chakrabarty, “Postcolonial Studies” 8-11). In other words, we are both an agent with free will able to be reflexive, as well as an inorganic power affecting the globe. Chakrabarty suggests that we need to be able “to think the human on multiple scales and registers and as having both ontological and nonontological modes of existence” (“Postcolonial Studies” 14). This challenges us to move beyond the limits of how we experience ourselves, where we must think of human history and natural history as always-already entwined. However, in his

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analysis, Chakrabarty neglects many cultures that already experience themselves as inexorably connected to the environment, where natural and human history cannot be understood as separate. For example, the Yuin Nation in Victoria, Australia, along with many other First Nations Australian cultures, already understand themselves this way. The creation story of the Yuin Nation details how the Yuin people come from the land and how their language is inextricably linked to the land. Dulmunmun talks about borders not only in the sense of geographical borders, but also the: “borders and boundaries in storytelling …in languages. We can’t take one language inland from the coast because you’re taking it out of its homeland” (Dulumunmun and McConchie 136). Moreover, Yuin Nation’s tree planting ceremony demonstrates how they see trees as a part of their community and believe that their displacement is equivalent to the displacement of peoples and has just as serious consequences (Dulumunmun and McConchie 142).

The omission of cultures that experience themselves as a part of the environment means that Chakrabarty fails to fully detail certain cultural perspectives on the subject, hence he also fails to see that the construction of Anthropocenic subjects as, at least partly, culturally determined. Chakrabarty’s analysis of humans as a geological agent misses out on a crucial element: the brain (Malabou, “Brain of History”). Although Chakrabarty does discuss Daniel Lord Smail’s analysis of the link between biology and the brain, he makes an unnecessary distinction between humans as biological agents and humans as geological agents (Chakrabarty, “Four Theses” 205-207). However, as Catherine Malabou suggests, this distinction does not take into full consideration Smail’s discussion of brain and biology. Smail uses epigenetics to demonstrate how genes are either activated or deactivated by our environment, emphasizing the vast numbers of neurons in our brains that lie dormant because they are not activated by external sources. The plasticity of synapses in our brains link emotions to particular stimuli that are particular to a culture. In other words, hormones are

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affected by the social world and, as a result, are particular to cultures and individuals (Smail 113-116). These cultural factors, in turn, have a material effect on our brain.

This analysis leaves room for the plasticity of the brain to interact, and be influenced by, both cultural and environmental factors. In fact, in this account it is impossible to separate the brain from its environment. Malabou takes this argument in order to critique Chakrabarty’s assertion that understanding collective human agency is beyond our mental capacity. Instead, the Anthropocene produces a particular ‘mental phenomenon’ (Malabou, “Brain of History” 45). This critique is further strengthened when discussing video games, such as No Man’s Sky, as they are particularly good at rendering the conceptual playable. The video game’s ability to turn a conceptual idea into a playable procedural rhetoric gives the player a greater ability to experience themselves in new ways, which challenges Chakrabarty’s characterization of the limits of the human’s ability to think about themselves on multiple scales and temporalities. Instead of seeing our brain as genetically determined, we should look at our brain as plastic and modifiable, particularly by cultural objects such as

No Man’s Sky. Malabou discusses both the capacity of the brain to give form and to receive

form. With this in mind, we can now understand the brain as something modifiable. However, Malabou takes this discussion further, emphasizing the explosive potential of brain plasticity in order to view the brain as not only molding and being molded by the world, but also as an “agency of disobedience” (Malabou, What Should We Do 5-6). This highlights the potential for rupture through speculation, as well as the fact that speculation not only gives form to the brain, but also how speculation can give form to the outside world, through changing human relations to the material world. Once we begin to view the brain in this way the assertion that we cannot change our understanding of our own subjectivity is called into question.

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If our brains are so heavily influenced by our environment then it follows that our conceptualizations of nature, and our relationship to it, are also malleable and informed by our particular cultural context. This is made even more obvious when taking into consideration non-Western cultures, such as the Arrernte Nation in Northern Territory, Australia, whose experiences of social relations and conflict are inseparable from the land (Connell 201). In this thesis, I suggest that cultural objects, such as No Man’s Sky, can be a moment of explosion where we can begin to speculate about the ways in which we are inseparable from the environment, which, in turn, effects the brain. The speculation present in

No Man’s Sky creates a rupture that changes our ability to conceptualize ourselves as

inextricably linked to the environment. Here, I am not arguing that this new mentality produced by No Man’s Sky is a momentous change in the collective consciousness, and there certainly are limitations to this form of speculation that will be discussed throughout this thesis, merely that my speculative experience of No Man’s Sky is one in a series of past, present, and future ruptures that provide moments for us to begin to be able to speculate about the form our subjectivity takes.

Anthropocenic addictions

Chakrabarty argues that humans as a geological force have a non-living agency that we are unable to consciously access. However, Malabou’s discussion of the plasticity of the brain and many First Nations Australian perspectives complicates this notion. Demonstrating that when Chakrabarty makes the claim that ‘we’ cannot understand ourselves as a geological force, he is not talking about a universal ‘we’. Many theorists have astutely critiqued the problematic assumptions of equal blame that arise from characterizing the epoch of global warming as the Anthropocene. TJ Demos critiques the term Anthropocene as it obscures who

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is accountable for global warming (17-19). Zoe Todd also critiques academic disciplines that deal with the Anthropocene, as they often block non-Western perspectives from participating in the conceptual spaces where disasters and their responses are combatted or theorized (244-245). The lack of acknowledgement of First Nations perspectives, coupled with the lack of recognition of the brain, demonstrates that Chakrabarty is discussing capitalist relationships to the environment, as opposed to a universal human phenomenon. This shifts the problem from whether we can understand the human across multiple scales and temporalities, to how our particular form of subjectivity emerges from brains that are structured by capitalist networks. Malabou uses her understanding of plasticity to deconstruct capitalist understandings of the world, of which the Anthropocene is a part. She emphasizes the link between the brain and “the capacity to shape a history” (What Should We Do 6). Despite Malabou’s assertion that no two brains are the same, she acknowledges that repetition and habit play a large role in determining the structure of our brain (What Should We Do 6, 24). Therefore, it is our brains that have the capacity to understand both the world and ourselves in a different way, we just need different habits. These habits are linked to gene expression, which “requires a materialist approach of interaction between the biological and the cultural” (Malabou, “Brain of History” 42). These new habits, or addictions, can map to a new natural history (52). Playing No Man’s Sky is an example of how this shift in habit formation occurs through the game’s relationship to progress narratives and capitalist representations of resources, and what it means to play a video game.

Malabou’s theorization of addiction asserts that the brain uses addiction to adapt to different environments (“Brain of History” 45). Moreover, both Malabou and Smail go further in their characterization of the brain and the environment as inseparable. Smail emphasizes the mood-altering effects of the things that we see and experience (160). This form of brain plasticity manifest in No Man’s Sky. Capitalism has meant that we are

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surrounded by a vast number of products that “stimulate the production and circulation of our own chemical messengers” (Smail 160-161), which Smail terms psychotropic mechanisms. This is a strong characterization; however, one that is apt, as the neurochemical effects of things such as, coffee, television, shopping, music, sex, pornography, and – of course – video games are similar to psychotropic drugs. These psychotropic mechanisms cannot simply be explained away by adaptive reasoning (161-163).

Undoubtedly, video games have mildly addictive properties. They can be played for hundreds of hours, and they often absorb the player for longer than other psychotropic consumer goods, such as books, films, art, and television shows. Moreover, video games regularly reproduce psychotropic mechanisms present in the non-virtual world, for example: the consumption and accumulation driven play of games such as The Sims and Farmville, or the reproduction of international politics’ zero-sum game approach to conflict, as with

Bioshock and Call of Duty. However, I would like to suggest that certain video games, such

as No Man’s Sky, that are structured differently than traditional or mainstream video games, can also provide a new form of addiction that helps us begin to speculate about our current social structures and the limitations they place on our experience, providing an entry point into the production of a new mental phenomenon that challenges the Anthropocene.

Countervisuality

So far, I have used the concept of plasticity to demonstrate that our current ability to visualize the impact humans have on the environment is not fixed, and that it is possible for ecology to “become the new libidinal economy” (Malabou, “Brain of History” 49). However, uncovering new mentalities require more than merely noticing the plasticity of the brain. Nicholas Mirzoeff takes our understanding of visualization back to the battlefields of the

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eighteenth century that became too large to physically see, and thus had to be imagined (216). Mirzoeff makes a parallel between visualizing the battlefield and how we visualize imperialist and capitalist structures that contributed to the Anthropoceneic era. We cannot see the Anthropocene therefore we must use our imagination to visualize it. However, capitalism and imperialism are invested in stunting our imagination in order to maintain the Western imperial project.

The Anthropocene maintains dominance through an “aesthetic anesthesia of the senses” (Mirzoeff 223). Providing an aesthetic countervisuality to the Anthropocene creates a rupture that allows us to see beyond the aesthetic of the Anthropocene. A new mentality of the Anthropocene requires an attunement to new forms of environmental aesthetics, which cultural objects like No Man’s Sky generate. I argue that Chakrabarty’s thesis is a part of this inability to imagine a countervisuality to the Anthropocene, rather than an inherent limitation of the human brain. Aesthetically, No Man’s Sky is striking, and the emphasis that the developers have placed on its aesthetics is clear through its use of vibrant colors for the environment and the ways in which the game’s framing directs the player’s attention to the environment. No Man’s Sky constructs an environmental aesthetic that the player inhabits, centralizing the visual aspects of the in-game universe, as opposed to narrative. This brings visualization of the environment to the forefront and allows the player to speculate about how they imagine the environment, and what it might look like if they were to visualize the environment differently.

In order to combat a form of visualization that is devastating to the planet, Mirzoeff posits a countervisualization of the world that defies the model of the eighteenth-century battlefield. Yet, Mirzoeff astutely observes that a countervisuality of the Anthropocene has always already existed (226). He rails against the individualistic nature of capitalism,

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claiming that we have always already had the capacity to think in common, and that much of the actions of the imperial state arise from an “anxiety that imperial subjects might start to think and act in common” (227). Mirzoeff uses the example of mirror neurons, neurons that fire both when we perform an action and when we watch another animal perform an action, as an example of how this common thinking has always existed. There are always moments of rupture that expose countervisualities, that uncover other modes of visualization that have always-already existed (227-229).

However, this does not happen in a linear way, rather “in moments of rupture, resonance with similar moments in the past suddenly become perceptible” (Mirzoeff 229). It is important to understand the role of imagination in visualization in our understanding of the Anthropocene and climate change. The West is far behind many other cultures that have a much more sophisticated visualization of human’s relationship to nature. This acknowledgement of existing countervisualities is of vital importance not only in terms of recognizing, and taking seriously, non-Western perspectives on the Anthropocene, but also in understanding the ability of cultural objects, such as No Man’s Sky, to both expose the restrictions created by an Anthropocenic visuality and begin to break down these boundaries through our experience of and interaction with these cultural objects, which will be the focus of the remainder of this chapter.

Speculative countervisuality in No Man’s Sky

No Man’s Sky begins in a similar way to many other video games. The first several

hours I play No Man’s Sky I am interested and immersed in accumulating resources. In many video games the player must gather as much as possible in order to progress through the game, or the player must spend time ‘grinding’, fighting low-level enemies in order to level

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up their characters. This reflects the blurring of the boundaries between labor and play in video games (Yee 69). Indeed, there is a whole array of video games, such as Minecraft, where accumulation and resource management are the whole point of the game. The gathering of resources for the sake of accumulating wealth is an explicit simulation of Western capitalist understandings of the environment as resources-in-waiting, characterized by their use-value and their ability to generate profit. In No Man’s Sky I am initially interested in both gathering resources, and classifying plants, animals, planets, and solar systems. I can name anything that I ‘discover’ and receive units (the in-game currency) for these discoveries, which clearly and explicitly replicates colonialist narratives of terra nullius and Western notions of ownership. For several hours, this is my main focus, these are my goals, and I am enthusiastic in my desire to complete them. I even find myself wanting to get every last bit of rock, even the tiny pieces that hang suspended in the sky, purely for the satisfaction of completing my task. This initial way of both playing and perceiving the labor of playing a game such as No Man’s Sky, clearly replicates capitalist understandings of work. Initially, the visuality of No Man’s Sky reproduces existing Western societal structures, their organization of labor, and land as commodity.

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Theorists, such as Jodi Byrd, have critiqued No Man’s Sky for its reproduction of colonial myths of terra nullius. However, this feeling does not last, which is unusual for these types of resource gathering games. In fact, gaming journalist Narelle Ho Sang documented her experience of playing No Man’s Sky for gaming website Kotaku, detailing how she finds the expanse of No Man’s Sky overwhelming. She reports finding herself focusing on mining resources in order to replicate a linear familiarity that she finds comforting, particularly due to the unnerving size of the game that emphasizes the insignificance of the player. The fact that No Man’s Sky is an ephemeral uncontrolled narrative is unnerving to begin with, therefore, both Ho Sang and I, as well as many others (Hamilton; Metacritic), begin by

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focusing our sights on collection, classification, and the quest to learn new languages through visiting ‘monoliths’.

As Ho Sang explains: “The sheer size is proving to be way too much freedom for me because it lacks a clear assurance that I can control and think of as being tangible. And so, I find myself meeting small objectives but feeling as though I’m not engaging in free will”. The vastly different temporal scale in which No Man’s Sky is operating places the player in a position that dwarfs the game’s objectives, revealing their significance in stark contrast to the in-game universe’s temporal scale. No Man’s Sky operates as a hyperobject, or an object that exists on a vastly different temporal scale to humans that challenges our assumption of history as solely human (Morton 11-13). Ho Sang also speaks of the fear of ‘missing out’, and not feeling like she is leaving her mark on the game. This is compounded by the fact that the in-game inventory has very limited space, which seems to discourage excessive accumulation of resources. The structure and pacing of No Man’s Sky, including elements such as the player’s limited inventory capacity, creates a break between how labor and playthrough experience is typically reproduced. This leads the player to shift their perspective regarding the possibilities of experience generated by playing No Man’s Sky, how it questions common gaming features that reproduce Anthropocenic addictions and, by extension, the questions it raises in the player through the breakdown of these Anthropocenic addictions.

As I begin my playthrough, the plants and rocks around me are distilled into their chemical elements (carbon, iron, planteum etcetera) by my mining laser. This leads me to see the infinitely variable and complex environments present in No Man’s Sky as a set of finite resources waiting to be discovered, utilized, and traded. The mining beam acts as mediator between the aesthetics of the world, and the use-value of the environmental objects waiting to be mined and exchanged for units, in order to make player progress to the center of the

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universe more comfortable. This initial focus on comfort, again, parallels to Western understandings of labor, progress, and trade, demonstrating how No Man’s Sky clearly reproduces the habits and visuality of the Anthropocene during the first few hours of the game’s playthrough.

However, as I move deeper into the in-game universe, I find out that I do not need many resources to survive, and there is no real need for accumulating units, other than to buy a bigger ship with more inventory slots that I can use to accumulate more units. However, this circular form of progress does not hold my interest. This is in stark contrast to video games such as Don’t Starve, where the player must continue to collect more and more resources in order to survive, and not die of hunger, cold, or animal attacks. Don’t Starve centralizes the accumulation and refinement of resources, as the player needs to constantly collect more resources in order to survive in the in-game world. In contrast, the danger of running out of resources in No Man’s Sky is negligible. The player needs few resources to fuel their ship, their spacesuit, and their mining tool. Beyond that, there is little need for the resources gathered in the game. This becomes strikingly apparent the more time I play. This is the beginning of the deconstruction of forms of visuality produced by the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene causes individuals to see themselves as independent from the environment, and to visualize the environment as potential resources to be used. The initial mode of playthrough makes me imagine my relationship to the environment in a similar way to Anthropocenic forms of visualization, due to the recreation of capitalist modes of accumulation, labor, and progress. However, this form of visualization loses both appeal and importance as the gaming experience progresses, which opens up the potential for other forms of imagining the environment. In fact, those that do not experience this shift in their playthrough of No Man’s Sky tend to have much more negative views of the game (Hamilton;

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Metacritic), which demonstrates that this shift is of vital importance to the gaming experience.

After visiting several solar systems, I no longer see any real need to gather resources beyond the small amount that is required to fuel my spaceship and spacesuit. This particular element of the game fades away and I gradually begin to relate to No Man’s Sky differently. This shift in how I play creates a rupture in my experience regarding how I visualize the in-game universe. As my goals shift, I move from a gaming experience that largely replicates real-world capitalist structures, to a very different experience of the in-game universe, where I feel a responsibility to bear witness to the small differences of each planet, where I am less focused on what I will do next. The fact that it takes several minutes to travel from one planet to the next is another way that No Man’s Sky’s structure leads the player into a gaming experience centered on speculation, foregrounding feelings of uncertainty and insignificance in order to produce a questioning of what the real goals are in the game and how these are reproduced outside of the game universe. The structure of No Man’s Sky forces the player to stop and have several minutes where they are inactive in the game, which begins to transform the habit formation produced, causing the player to speculate on their experience of No

Man’s Sky, and the emptiness induced by approaching the in-game universe in terms of

resource gathering and unending progression.

This loss of interest in No Man’s Sky’s progress narrative is not unique to my gaming experience. Gaming journalist Kirk Hamilton details his experience of playing No Man’s Sky in a similar manner. He dislikes his first playthrough of No Man’s Sky in which he rushes to the center of the galaxy, annoyed at the ephemeral and largely pointless narrative of the game. He also finds the procedurally generated planets, animals, and plants to be indistinguishable and not enough to capture his imagination. Many players agreed with his

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experience, as evidenced by the criticisms following No Man’s Sky’s release (Metacritic). It is clear that some players did not experience the breakdown of the progress narrative and the speculative state that arises from this shift. The potential rupture in No Man’s Sky that allows room for a speculative countervisuality to emerge is thwarted by the current Anthropocenic addictions of what a gaming experience should be. However, Hamilton decides to start a second playthrough, where he explicitly played without any objectives, and found his gaming experience to be much more fulfilling. Hamilton stays in one solar system on his second playthrough, where he begins to notice the small differences that he missed at first, slowing down and appreciating the planets that he visits. He discovers that each planet has something that sets itself apart. This explicit rejection of many of the facets that are required for triple-A video games allows for a moment of rupture in the plasticity of the brain that brings forth a speculative countervisuality that I will unpack in the following chapters.

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Chapter Two: Environmental aesthetics

This chapter focuses on the importance of the body in plasticity. Malabou’s discussion of plasticity seems to suggest that the brain is a near limitless blank slate, when in fact neuronal structure constrains the plasticity of the brain (Pitts-Taylor 28-30). Here, I will detail the affective currents of No Man’s Sky in order to demonstrate the role the embodied affective experience in the formation of speculative countervisualities. I will then link the bodily experience produced by No Man’s Sky to an environmental aesthetics that is exposed by the game’s characterization of subjectivity in order to uncover a form of visualization in

No Man’s Sky that allows for us to begin to speculate about what it might feel like to

experience ourselves as indistinct from the environment.

Throughout this thesis I take Clare Hemmings’ understanding of affect in my discussion of the affective currents developed by No Man’s Sky. Hemmings posits that affect is constrained by social structures, and not free-flowing. I take this in order to explain how the affective relations that unfold while playing No Man’s Sky are regulated through its programming. Hemmings also uses Frantz Fanon’s writings to demonstrate how affect is linked to the embodied social world. Affects are imposed upon Fanon through reactions to his presence, such as a young child shivering in fear at Fanon’s presence (Fanon 60). This emphasizes the fact that affect not only disrupts stereotypes (which is too often the focus in affect theory), but also re-embeds and strengthens them (Hemmings 550). Brenna Bhandar also uses Fanon’s discussion of the lived experience of blackness in the colonial context to further develop how the body has “the capacity to explode and shatter existing forms of reason and sense” (230), in addition to the brain. Plasticity is not only determined by the brain, but also by the body. Both disruptive and re-embedding affects will be discussed in this

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chapter in relation to No Man’s Sky. This understanding of affect allows me to detail how the gaming experience of No Man’s Sky provokes a certain set of affective responses in the player.

I? We? Them? The avatar-player experience

Broadly, affect signifies states of being, as opposed to their emotive expression and interpretation (Hemmings 551). Affect can also be described as the innate forces that exist before our conscious thought (Gregg and Seigworth; Tomkins). Affect is ‘simmering’, constantly moving in and out of focus (Wetherell 12). Much reporting around No Man’s Sky has focused on gamer reaction. However, affect is situated outside the order of social signification, and it is in this sense that it can be a point of speculation about the nature of subjectivity. The analogy of the two-way street of affect, constantly emanating from us and being directed towards us, also demonstrates how affective forces are constrained (Ahmed). The affective experiences produced by No Man’s Sky are not free flowing. Firstly, the affective experience I detail in this thesis is constrained by the limits of gaming technology. Moreover, the experience I have of the environment in No Man’s Sky is, as Bogost suggests, linked to my perceptions of the non-virtual world (Unit Operations 106). As Margaret Wetherell posits “flows of affect can tangle, mesh with the media – there are a wide range of potential connections” (13). There are also structural influences on my experience of affect in

No Man’s Sky. Firstly, I live in the Western world, which allows me to have the ability to

play video games in the first place. Secondly, and more importantly, my experience of the universe of No Man’s Sky is directed by Western understandings of nature and the self, which is linked to capitalist, Enlightenment, progress narratives. These play a central role in how I first enter into the world of No Man’s Sky.

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Many theorists have discussed the affective potential of video games.2_{This is} evidenced by the endless discussion of the relationship between in-game violence and violence in the non-virtual world. This demonstrates how seriously player immersion and the influence of video games on identity is taken, especially when compared with other mediums, such as print and film (Cover 177). The immersion of the medium is partially due to the fact that video games must be played, rather than read or listened to (Galloway). In video game theory, affect is used to demonstrate how the player feels responsible for, and identifies with, their on-screen avatar (Lyons and Jaloza 5-7). These studies clearly demonstrate the connection between video games and embodied experience. The experiential affective flow of No Man’s Sky is one that is closely tied to how a player travels through the game-world. Therefore, I will detail the unfolding experience I have had with No Man’s Sky in relation to the affective currents it produces.

Undoubtedly, I develop a connection with my avatar while playing No Man’s Sky. However, these experiences that flow through the screen to be marked on my body affectively are not unique to No Man’s Sky, as gameplay has long been understood as an immersive experience (Cairns et al.). Many theorists have explored this relationship between gameplay and subjective formation (see Ferreday; Filiciak; Shinkle). In her ethnography on

World of Warcraft, Jenny Sundén expresses confusion in relation to how to demarcate a

difference between player and avatar in writing, often collapsing this distinction altogether when detailing her gaming experience. She draws the reader’s attention to the ways in which she frames the avatar’s actions: at times Sundén uses her/she to describe the on-screen action, but at other times she uses I/me (Wilde and Evans 12). This blurs the boundaries between who is playing and who is being played (Boulter 65), as well as the role of play in gaming (Massumi). This is particularly interesting for my project, as it demonstrates that the affective 2 See Cairns et al. for review.

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experiences produced, when playing a video game such as No Man’s Sky, move beyond the boundaries of our own bodies. Moreover, Sundén’s confusion over what pronouns to use when describing her experience of playing World of Warcraft is one that I experienced myself while playing No Man’s Sky and is scattered throughout my own experiences detailed in this thesis.

The brain as environment also connects to the blurring between boundaries of the body through an affective connection to the avatar. This is particularly apparent in Smail’s discussion of teletropic psychotropy, which encompasses societal devices that are used to alter peoples’ mood (170). Although this can include ingested drugs, the most common teletropic devices use behavior to influence the brain-body chemistry of others (172-173). Therefore, No Man’s Sky acts as a form of sensory input that alters our brain-body state through an embodied affective experience producing a speculative countervisuality that explores how subjectivity is experienced in the Anthropocene. When discussing subjectivity in relation to video games bodily boundaries become murky. This is how No Man’s Sky can evoke forms of knowing that move beyond the human body, providing a countervisuality to the Anthropocene is something that is much easier once it becomes apparent that subjectivity is not bounded by the human body, or even a human-centered subjectivity.

The decentering of the subject is something that unfolds throughout my playthrough experience of No Man’s Sky. Initially, as I begin to play, my avatar becomes the body through which I navigate the game-world. I can hear my own footsteps and breathing. I also run out of breath when I run. I press X and find out that I have a jetpack. Quickly after, my controller vibrates as my avatar falls to the ground and I inhale sharply in preparation for the impact. This is how I learn that my jetpack has limited capacity. I have a laser beam that I can use to mine the things around me for resources. I repair my analysis visor. I can now scan the

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planet’s plant and animal life. I can gather information on the world, neatly divided into categories. There are some things I cannot mine, as I do not have the required technology.

As I explore this world further I find out more about my avatar. I can swim underwater. However, I quickly find out that I have a limited lung capacity, as I try to reach an underwater base deep in a planet’s ocean. As my avatar is swimming down, down, it keeps getting darker, and I notice my heart beating faster, and I am breathing more deeply in an effort to get more oxygen, as if my lungs are somehow connected to those of my avatar. I am initially surprised at how No Man’s Sky produces bodily affects, as this generally only happens with games that are more action-based, where both the threat and consequences of death are much greater. However, the affective relationship between player and avatar is such that I experience an empathetic connection between me and my avatar (Wilde and Evans 6) produced by the response of mirror neurons to the in-game world. This emulates the conditions of the virtual world in my non-virtual body, activating my motor systems (Martin Figure 4: Avatar view

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317-318). This mirrored affective connection is a form of ‘posthuman ethics’ (Braidotti 49-50), focused on a sense of interconnection, displacing the central position of the human in favor of a more empathetic player-avatar relationship. The relationship I develop with my avatar is non-hierarchical, we both need each other in order to move through the game world (Wilde and Evans 5-7, 8). The first stage in the decentering of the human is the sensuous, empathetic connection that I experience with my avatar where the distinction between our bodies and experience collapses.

However, the physical reactions I have in response to what my avatar is experiencing do not stop at the boundaries of their body. When I am travelling through space I encounter asteroid belts that I travel through in my spaceship. I can hit these asteroids. There is a crunching sound of metal hitting rock, my controller vibrates once again, and I flinch, closing my eyes for a second at the moment of impact. The damage that my ship takes reverberates from the screen, and I wince in response. The next time I come close to hitting a rock formation on a planet in my ship I swerve just in time, moving my body and the controller to avoid the impact that endangered my spaceship. Moments like these draw my attention to the fact that my visceral reaction to what is happening in No Man’s Sky does not end at the boundaries of my avatar’s body. It extends to the spaceship as well, which even further complicates the empathetic connection I experience while playing No Man’s Sky. No longer is the sensuous affective connection built purely between player and avatar. The objects I require for survival, such as my spaceship and spacesuit, even further decenter the human subject in the embodied, speculative affective experience produced by No Man’s Sky.

Underperformative emotion

So far, I have detailed the affective experience in No Man’s Sky that link the player, avatar, and other in-game objects. The linking between avatar and body is initially

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understood in terms of clear connections between event and consequence, such as getting hurt and experiencing a response in my non-virtual body in predictable ways, such as wincing or gasping. However, it is important to note that the affective currents in No Man’s Sky do not only occur in moments of excitement or anxiety, where there is a straightforward response to the events on screen, they also happen in moments of underperformed affect. I characterize these sets of affects produced by No Man’s Sky, that are a result of the progress narrative falling away, as underperformative emotions. Underperformed affective experiences refer to emotions that represent “recessive action” (Berlant 193), or the idea that instead of events resulting in expressive suffering, the reactions to them seem uncertain and flat. This is particularly pertinent to the current response to Anthropocenic catastrophes, as these events would be expected to culminate in significant, animated affect, yet often induce underperformed emotions. This form of underperformativity “destabilize[s] the conventional relation between high intensity and importance” (195). The genre of space-themed video games evoke scenes of action-packed exploration, yet No Man’s Sky offers virtually none of the hallmarks of the space exploration video game genre. As Lauren Berlant suggests, “attention travels and takes naps, cruises and makes tracks, puts a foot in the water and holds back demonstrably, wanders, and trespasses” (199). The slowdown of language creates a space of undoing (255-256). Sianne Ngai argues that boredom stupefies, “and indicates the

inability of other mental activities, including reason, to overcome an affective state” (270).

The reality of boredom and loneliness that the exploration in No Man’s Sky evokes creates a flat affective experience.

Once the initial affective relationship of understanding and empathy is produced, the vital experience of boredom begins to unfold. Underperformed affect creates an ellipsis where an exclamation mark once would have been (Berlant 199). Berlant argues that flat or underperformed affect is not something that is evident narratively, and what initially seems

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like a non-event, the loss of interest in the ‘goals’ of No Man’s Sky, actually provides a moment of rupture between dominant Anthropocenic visualities, which allows for incidents to be sensed, yet remain open without being self-evident. In fact, Ngai suggests that boredom requires small, but continuous, levels of neural firing (261), which suggests that the boredom evoked by No Man’s Sky is giving form to the plastic brain of the player. The first impact of subject-avatar bonding does not constitute the affective event in No Man’s Sky. The apprehension that quickly sets in after the initial avatar-subject cognitive matching provides a “disturbance that sets off a process” (195) of alternative subject formation that foregrounds an experience of environmental aesthetics over any form of player-avatar relationship. It is through this affective formation that I am open to the production of an alternative environmental visuality produced by No Man’s Sky, through the changes in the brain that occur as a result of this shift in experientiality.

As discussed in chapter one, the player initially assumes that the form of visuality produced by No Man’s Sky closely mirrors the West’s current social imaginings of the environment. Yet this fades the more time the player spends with the game through the way

No Man’s Sky sits with boredom. After the initial burst of excitement in gathering resources, I

begin to realize the futility in this endless accumulation. I become bored with this pointless task. Here, playing No Man’s Sky begins to feel more like labor than play. Moreover, the speed of my avatar’s movements throughout the universe are limited. Walking around on a planet in the in-game universe is similar to walking around the Earth in the non-virtual world. The slow movements of my avatar are compounded by the sheer size of the in-game universe. The estimated eighteen quintillion planets in No Man’s Sky dwarf any sense of progress or activity that I felt when I first started playing. This sense of frustration at the capitalist play-style that I initially chose produces a sense of boredom with the in-game universe, allowing for a moment of disturbance in the Anthropocenic narrative. Indeed, the first encounter I have

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with No Man’s Sky produces an underperformed affect. Yet this encounter is more than mere boredom, it allows for a disturbance in the assumed visuality of No Man’s Sky that opens up the possibility instead for a speculative visuality to the Anthropocene. This boredom allows for new ways of understanding through the repetition of discovery and space travel that No

Man’s Sky provides.

No Man’s Sky retains a flat affect in its narrative structure. It is without a linear, or

even a particularly prominent, narrative, and has an obscure, ambiguous ending. The ending of No Man’s Sky leads the player to the realization that they are inside a simulation created by

the Atlas, a floating, pulsating red orb. They can choose to either reset the simulation to end

the game or continue to explore the game universe indefinitely. If they choose to end the simulation they are transported back to a scene that is very similar to the opening scene of the game, with the same spaceship to repair and the same dialogue that begins the game. Only the planet and surroundings have changed. The end of the narrative brings the player back to

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almost the exact same place that they started, No Man’s Sky provides no form of resolution or achievement. At the center of the universe, the player finds out that they are an avatar in a simulated universe doomed to explore endlessly without closure. Again, this is also emphasized by the game’s size. This lack of objectives and narrative progression, although not unique to No Man’s Sky, means that the player is not pushed to do anything in particular, which causes the player to linger in underperformed emotions, where the present is in flux and the event remains to be sensed. This, coupled with the decentered, empathetic connection produced in the initial stages of the game, sets the player up to be invested in the gaming environment rather than their avatar.

The disappearing subject

Another important distinguishing feature of No Man’s Sky that radically alters the affective experience of the game when compared with other video games, such as World of

Warcraft or Minecraft, is the lack of character customization tools. Usually there is some

form of customization, base-building, or game personalization built into gameplay. Many video games have tools that give the player extensive control over the look and feel of their character. Some of these changes, such as race, class, or character trait decisions open or close elements of the game; whereas other aesthetic changes are much more inconsequential to gaming pathways but can still take hours of time. Take, for example, Dark Souls 3’s wiki entry Fashion Souls, where players share their avatar’s aesthetically pleasing outfits and builds. A quick Google search reveals an almost infinite number of character customization tutorials for an immeasurable number of games. In many narrative-based video games, a player cannot choose or customize their avatar, such as in FIFA’s story mode, What Remains

of Edith Finch, and Firewatch; however, the character’s development is explicit, and central

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In contrast to this dominant feature of video games, No Man’s Sky does not have any form of character customization available to the player. There is no pre-game screen that allows you to choose your avatar’s features, and there is no element to the game where you level up your character, focusing on certain traits at the expense of others. Moreover, the player does not learn anything specific about their avatar, nor does their avatar’s dialogue reveal anything distinct about their journey, personality, or reason for their exploration. The character remains undeveloped and unexplored in No Man’s Sky. This is further reinforced by the lack of coherent narrative development throughout the game. This uniquely situates the affective relation between the body of the non-virtual player and that of the avatar. Although I have detailed the affective responses linking me, my avatar, and other in-game objects, there is no sense of subjectivity or individualization included in this experience. Not only does the subject as a bounded body disappear, but there is no recognizable subjective form present in No Man’s Sky. This means that the visuality produced by No Man’s Sky takes on a form that becomes less and less recognizable as human the more time I play, pushing the player into a form of subjectivity that is unrecognizable to Anthropocenic visualities. My sense of identity in No Man’s Sky is abstracted and not bound by any particular form. This speculation produces a different visuality, built on a posthuman ethics that emphasizes a subjectivity that is radically different to Anthropocenic forms of subjectivity.

This plastic formation of the subject is enhanced by the fact that the player never sees their avatar in No Man’s Sky, as they can only play in first person perspective. Throughout

No Man’s Sky, I never see my avatar’s body. Other video games often allow the player to

switch between first, second, and third person perspective, but this option is not given to players in No Man’s Sky. This shift, where normally the player’s first experience of the game is with some form of character creation tool, setting up how their avatar will look, behave,

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and their strengths and weaknesses, to a video game that drops the player into a world that they have no knowledge of, with no explanatory cut scene, giving the player no information on where they come from or who they are, leaves a void where the avatar is normally situated. This form of video game foregrounds the universe in which the player is dropped in, as opposed to the avatar and their journey through the game-world. However, this way of being dropped into a world with no background or information requires the player to blindly explore, which reproduces colonialist narratives of terra nullius. Despite this, the way in which the subject, or lack thereof, is constructed in No Man’s Sky means that the affective bond built between the player and the on-screen world becomes unstuck from the avatar, producing a new form of affective embodiment with the on-screen universe.

Environmental aesthetics

So far, I have discussed how the link between the avatar and the player transforms, decentering first the human subject, then the avatar-subject, while playing No Man’s Sky. However, this is complicated by the status of the avatar in the game as a disappearing. The avatar’s curious lack means that the affective connection that is built up is transformed and shifts to the environmental aesthetics rather than the avatar. This, again, changes the way the player imagines the world of No Man’s Sky from one that is human-centered to one that foregrounds the environment. This shift in affective connection is due to the environmental aesthetics produced by No Man’s Sky. As I explore more and more planets, what really strikes me is the aesthetics of each world. Color is foregrounded in No Man’s Sky’s universe, with purple grass, red skies, and blue trees. There is also an infinite array of unusual and colorful plants. There are plants that can harm me, plants that look like giant green mushrooms with spiky tendrils, plants that look like small, purple, alien succulents. These are the things that draw me into the world, engage me, and mean that I keep playing. The block

Emergent Subjectivities: No Man's Sky and Anthropocenic visualities