The Climate Change Calamity Cop-out

So earlier this year I wrote about Stardew Valley and how I read it not as an idyllic escapist fantasy but rather a power fantasy- the fantasy of community, and successful rebellion against the impact of big business on small towns. I’ll be referencing Stardew a little here, and it’s in this context. You shouldn’t need to read that to understand this, but you might find it interesting.

Minor spoilers for (the basic plot of) Tears of the Kingdom ahead.

Anyway.

Climate change is a popular topic of media, for obvious reasons. It’s happening, now, all around us. We’re feeling it in our summer heatwaves and our winter storms, we’re feeling it in flooding, in rising food prices, in so many different ways. So it’s no surprise that games like Coral Island, a Stardew Valley successor set in South Asia, centers around a tourist town that has been economically devastated by a nearby oil spill. Pollution and corporate colonialism are central to the game’s themes and narratives.

As I was playing, though, I noticed something that is common in these games with climate change messaging - There’s only one thing wrong, and it can be focused on, fought, and solved. But when I think of climate change, I think about how flooding from record storms wiped out roads because the waste from tree farms was washed downhill, and about how while we’re solving the damaged infrastructure caused by that crisis, another inevitably occurs. Another flood, or storm, or just the crisis level impact of all this weather on food prices. There’s no moment of “okay and now that’s over, and we can focus on the real problem.”

In Tears of the Kingdom, the latest Legend of Zelda game, each region is facing its own crisis. Blizzard, sandstorm, pollution, and… I don’t actually rightly know what’s going on in the fourth region, I haven’t gotten that far. But the premise of each is clear. When each individual crisis is resolved, the factions can contribute their effort to solving climate change The Calamity.

But in our world, Climate Change doesn’t end when we clean up one oil spill, or a single blizzard ends. There’s another thing around the corner, ready to send us back into crisis mode sometimes before we’ve even caught our breath.

We have another problem, too. One that I think Mass Effect 3, of all games, lays out really nicely. The people with power, the people with the resources to help, are so distanced from the effects of the problem that they hardly believe it’s happening. In Mass Effect Mondays this year I’ve spent a bit of time wandering the citadel and feeling this eerie sense of familiarity as bystander NPCs have conversations about what daycare they should send their kid to while war rages elsewhere, and characters who have been to the front lines, seen the crisis first hand, bemoan that nobody around them seems to get it.

I do wonder as well how this sort of individual crisis focused thinking around climate change is represented in our activism, but I don’t have the knowledge to speak more on that.

Having the resources, time, and energy to actually help, while being on the ground in the midst of the problem is an interesting kind of power fantasy, I think. It’s one that I know gives me a lot of satisfaction sometimes (cleaning the coral reefs in Coral Island is extremely pleasing), and I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but I’d like to see in my games a little more acknowledgement of the continuing crisis of climate change.

If anything, climate change is a survival game to me, and some more strategy-focused games simulate that well (I’m thinking specifically of Frostpunk, and to some extent the Rising Storm expansion for Civilisation VI), but come on, let me survive constant ongoing crisis while wearing a cute little outfit and maybe dating someone. I’d love to see community focused, character focused, and small-scale games take on the eternal struggle.

As I’m writing this, I’m also thinking, of course, about how it relates to my disability, and the added difficulty we face in my home when a second member of my family is sick, or all three of us (humans) aren’t well. Sometimes everything is wrong all at once. Where’s the power fantasy where I can deal with that?

I don’t have a strong conclusion, or a “lesson” here, I’m just making an observation, but I’d love to hear what people think, or if there’s any games you can think of that address climate change as a setting more than an antagonist.

of course - to plug myself for a second, this is something that is implicit to my ttrpg Sea Legs, a PbtA game about the people that get left behind when humanity flees its sinking planet, and the life they must make between the tumultuous ocean and the corporations still stripping the earth of every resource they can find. In early access at the moment.

Some housekeeping, to end with:

I’ve been taking care of my health as best I can recently, and while I can finally touch my creative mind again, I’m still struggling a lot with exhaustion and brain fog. For that reason, I’m not “back” I just needed to get this out of my head and on this page.

That said, earlier this week I teased an upcoming game on my Patreon, and you’ll hear more about that as I work on it. No time-frame for release just yet, but I’ll pop it in a newsletter when it drops.

Otherwise, I’m still on creative hiatus and feeding my brain instead of creating with it. I’ve been reading a lot and catching up on movies, shows, podcasts, etc that I’ve missed over the last few years of being both sick and busy.

That’s all from me, have a lovely week and I’ll see you when I see you!