Thinking Ecologically with Battlefield 2042
The centrality of the climate crisis in Battlefield 2042 (DICE, 2021), a mainstream blockbuster videogame, offers insight into how players in the popular first-person shooter genre engage with the possibility of thinking ecologically. We argue that user-generated paratexts shared in online player communities capture and demonstrate users’ engagement with modes of ecological thought, reflecting the revelation of the co-existence and interdependence that make up life and death in the Anthropocene. We analyse a dataset of player-generated paratexts that were systematically gathered from three popular online communities associated with Battlefield 2042. Our analysis demonstrates the effect the game’s entanglement with contemporary climate anxieties has on its online communities and reveals the multiplicity of player encounters with different forms of ecological thought.
Keywords: climate crisis, ecological thought, Timothy Morton, paratexts, player communities, Battlefield 2042
May, Lawrence, and Ben Hall. "Thinking Ecologically with Battlefield 2042." Game Studies 24, no. 1 (2024).