Broadening Horizon

Increasingly, digital games center their narratives during or after the apocalypse. In 2017, the action role-playing game Horizon Zero Dawn offered a new take on society after the end of the world. Horizon has since become a multimedia franchise, with a second video game released in 2022, in addition to comic books, a board game, and other adaptations in development.
This collection analyzes the Horizon franchise and its presentation of the apocalypse, ecology, gender, history and more. Game story and game mechanics are fundamental to each essay and contributors offer a close reading—or close playing—of the games from perspectives as diverse as hauntology, postcolonialism, contemporary feminism, and historiography. This first collection on the Horizon franchise argues that we now live in an Apocalyptic period in the same way previous periods were known as Romantic, Modernist or Realist Periods, and makes the case that Horizon belongs at the crest of this new Apocalyptic Period and at the center of contemporary gaming and of game studies.

Matthew Wilhelm Kapell teaches American studies, anthropology, and writing at Pace University in New York.

Edited by Matthew Wilhelm Kapell
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 286
Bibliographic Info: 11 photos, notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2025
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9192-3
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5458-4
Imprint: McFarland
Series: Studies in Gaming

Acknowledgments ix
After the End of All Things: A Ludic Eschatology of Hope in Horizon
Matthew Wilhelm Kapell 1

Part One: On Environmental Concerns 13
Ghosts Are Part of the Future: Holographic Hauntings Through Premediated Environmental Concerns
Hannah A. Barton 15
Climate Catastrophe as Virtual Holiday: An Ecocritical Close Playing of Horizon: Zero Dawn
Carolin Becklas 28
Horizon’s Anthropocene: Conservation Psychology and Environmentalism
Todd O. Williams 42
The White Savior of Meridian: Environmentalism and Ethnocentrism
Jason C. Cash 59

Part Two: On Cultures and Societies 75
More Than Just a Side Quest: The Cultural Mechanics of Appreciation vs. Appropriation
Vanessa Hemovich 77
Of ­All-Mothers and ­Sun-Kings: Gendered Societies in the Horizon Franchise
Kenzie Gordon 94
Aloy as Feminist Icon? Exploring Feminism and Postcolonial Identity in the Horizon Series
Ashley P. Jones 108

Part Three: On the Identity of Aloy and Others 123
“Survive!” Gender, Loss, and ­Post-Apocalyptic Landscapes in Horizon and The Last of Us
Joanna Starzynski 125
Aloy, Artificial Life, and the Abstraction of Mothering
Marshall Needleman Armintor 139
Girl, Living in a ­Post-Apocalyptic World
Tanja Sihvonen 150
“In you, all things are possible”: Aloy’s Postmemory Identity Through Datapoints and Walking Simulator Design
Lis Moberly 165
“This is what I am now; what I overcame”: An Analysis of Disability and Ableism in the Horizon Videogame Series
Lauren Rouse 178

Part Four: On Myth, History, and Understanding 193
Mythology in Play: Reading the Apocalypse Myth in Horizon
Michał Kłosiński 195
Myths of Future Past: Horizon: Zero Dawn’s Representation of the Feminist Descent Narrative
Rebecca Käpernick 212
Girl with a Silver Focus: Ancient Archives and Preserving More Than Vermeer
Jamie Henthorn 226

Part Five: On the Board Game 243
“Between Disc and Board”: Analyzing the Game Mechanics in Horizon: Zero Dawn: The Board Game
Maren Kraemer 245
Our Apocalyptic Period: Ludic Hadiths and the Ink of the Scholars
Matthew Wil­­helm Kapell 258

About the Contributors 265
Index 269

• “[A] thorough examination of the HZD franchise both broad and deep. [The book] brings multiple perspectives to bear on questions around representation, historiography, gender, and eschatology. A deep dive into one of the most popular game franchises of the 21st century for scholars and students alike.”—Gerald Voorhees, associate professor of communication arts, University of Waterloo

• “[A]n exceptional collection of diverse and interesting scholarship! While there has been some scholarly writing around the Horizon games, the works in this volume are as unique as they are interesting and represent varied takes on the subject matter.”—Josh Call, professor of English, Grand View University

• “Horizon Zero Dawn is without doubt one of the most important video games of the last decade and its growing franchise has only solidified this reputation. Its position has been evidenced by a growing body of literature devoted to the title, but it has been long overdue for a dedicated volume, arguably a proof of cultural relevance that relatively few games have achieved so far. And now Broadening Horizon is here and no volume could do more justice to HZD. From its speculative ecology to gender politics to mythos, the 18 chapters cover practically all aspects of the game and will come more than handy for both research and teaching!”—Paweł Frelik, University of Warsaw