People live together because of politics, despite their disagreements over the political. Politics, then, is something like the ground-level manifestation of higher-order, political antagonism. On the contrary, Mouffe defines "the political" as "the antagonistic dimension which is inherent to all human societies" (p.2). The word "politics," according to political theorist Chantal Mouffe (2013), "refers to the ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions that seeks to establish a certain order and to organize human coexistence" (p.3). There is a difference between having politics and being political. Keywords: Night in the Woods, Mark Fisher, Lovecraft, weird fiction, horror, close reading, capitalism, politics, queerness, hauntology Introduction: Night in the Woods as a Political Game I have always longed to be a part of the outward life, to be out there at the edge of things, to let the human taint wash away in emptiness and silence as the fox sloughs his smell into the cold unworldliness of water to return to the town as a stranger. Finally, it examines the game's eldritch-capital antagonist in order to characterize the outlook of the game's protagonists as resolutely hopeful and reparatively queer in the face of an outwardly meaningless cosmos. Next, it examines how eeriness pervades the playable and political environment of the gameworld. This article first examines how a pathological sense of weirdness is internalized by main character Mae. To make its case, this article draws from the critical vocabulary of theorist Mark Fisher, whose notions of "capitalist realism," (2009) "the weird" and "the eerie" (2016) serve to identify explicitly and categorically much of what the game in question represents implicitly and aesthetically. Following literary critic Irving Howe's (2002) notion of the "political novel," this article demonstrates that Night in the Woods exists as a rare and audacious interrogation of Capital and its deleterious fallout in the rural United States. This article presents a close reading of the videogame Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall, 2017). Night in the Woods is a 2017 single-player adventure video game.Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Gods: Reading Night in the Woods through Mark Fisher by Patrick Fiorilli Abstract It was developed by Infinite Fall, a studio founded by game designer Alec Holowka and animator/ artist Scott Benson, and published by Finji. It is a story-focused exploration game in which players control a young woman named Mae Borowski, who recently dropped out of college and has returned to her hometown to find unexpected changes. The game was funded via the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, where it eventually earned over 400% of its US$50,000 funding goal. Ī companion game titled Longest Night was released in December 2013 by Holowka and Benson, along with co- writer Bethany Hockenberry. In December 2014, a second supplemental game was released, titled Lost Constellation. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, and PlayStation 4 on February 21, 2017. The Xbox One version was released on December 13, 2017, while a version for the Nintendo Switch was released on February 1, 2018. A version for iOS was released on September 9, 2021.Īn extended version of the game, titled the Weird Autumn edition, was released for PC, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on Decemand for Nintendo Switch on February 1, 2018. It features new content not seen in the original game, as well as the supplemental games. Night in the Woods received notable critical praise, mostly for its soundtrack, story, dialogue and characters. Mae, an only child, has returned home to Possum Springs-a town populated by zoomorphic humans. Now living in her parents' attic, she discovers how much times have changed since the closing of the town's coal mines, uncovering a dark mystery that leads her into the nearby woods. She is forced to confront a horrible secret the town has hidden for decades involving not only the town's mine, but also the recent disappearance of her longtime friend Casey. Mae's friends also include Bea, a cigarette-smoking crocodile and Mae's childhood friend Gregg, a hyperactive fox and his boyfriend, a bear named Angus. Paste describes the themes covered as "mental illness, depression, the stagnancy of the middle and lower classes, and the slow death of small town America." Īs Mae, players run, jump, and learn other mechanics that allow them to explore Possum Springs. Benson described the key actions for the player as "explore, converse, see and touch", while Holowka described their approach as "narrative-focused" rather than " gameplay-first".
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