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:
Bibliographic Info: ca. 10 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2024
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9192-3
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5458-4
Imprint: McFarland
Series: Studies in Gaming

• “[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