Mechanics of Entanglement

Mechanics of Entanglement argues that video games do not simply represent posthumanist ideas but enact them through the formal language of their interactive mechanics. Defining posthumanism as a philosophy of (often uncomfortable) human-nonhuman entanglement, the book shows how a broad range of games and game genres carefully engineer experiences that open up human subjectivity to the nonhuman world. In the process, these games undermine humanist ideologies and anthropocentric hierarchies and, instead, foreground nonhuman materiality (including, in many instances, the algorithmic materiality of the game system itself). Through thematically organized chapters, the book explores how digital animals, plants, robots, and even an old station wagon can participate in the medium’s critical interrogation of the ontology of Western modernity—a project made more urgent by looming ecological and climate crisis.