Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Popular Culture
Episode: Cameron Kunzelman, "The World is Born from Zero: Understanding Speculation and Video Games" (de Gruyter, 2022)
Description: The World is Born From Zero is an investigation into the relationship between video games and science fiction through the philosophy of speculation. Cameron Kunzelman (Mercer University, Macon, Georgia, USA) argues that the video game medium is centered on the evaluation and production of possible futures by following video game studies, media philosophy, and science fiction studies to their furthest reaches. Claiming that the best way to understand games is through rigorous formal analysis of their aesthetic strategies and the cultural context those strategies emerge from, Kunzelman investigates a diverse array of games like The Last of Us, VA-11 Hall...