Forthcoming talk at DAS|LAB
Kübra Aksay: "Swallowing the City—Donut County and Stories of Gentrification in Video Games"
Wed 8th May, 14:00h-15:30h
Anyone interested in attending is welcome to email (opens your email program) Sebastian Richter (external link, opens in a new window) to be sent the Zoom link: sebastian.richter(at)ur.de (opens your email program)
“From the pixelated landscapes of early arcade games to the detailed metropolises of modern city builders, video games have long been intertwined with urban settings. Players' engagements with these settings encompass diverse interactions, including the development and transformation of virtual cities, immersive exploration of their intricacies, or deliberate acts of their destruction.
In this talk, I examine Donut County (Esposito, 2018), a video game in which players control an ever-growing hole in the ground, intending to swallow everything and everyone within a fictional rendition of Los Angeles. The game’s narrative, however, is not about destruction but displacement, as the player-controlled hole does not simply remove residents and their homes but traps them all underground, while the surface of the city is taken over by outsiders. Like the player who needs to expand the hole in the ground to complete each level, the protagonist of Donut County manipulates the holes for instant benefits, provided through a gamified reward system on a mobile app simulated in the game.
Thus, the game presents a narrative that parallels the power dynamics between the player and the gamespace, and those between the protagonist and their employer, who influences their actions through the mobile app and its rewards. I aim to support this argument by analyzing the gameplay as well as racial implications and the role of technology in the game’s story.”
Bio:
Kübra Aksay is a lecturer and Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Her doctoral thesis focuses on the objects of recordings within video games, such as in-game diaries. She is an associated member of DiGRA (external link, opens in a new window) and DAS|LAB (Regensburg) (external link, opens in a new window), and has been convening the monthly meetings of the colloquium Reading Games in Freiburg since 2019.
