Zones of Parafictional Post-Apocalypse in Video Games: Chornobyl as a Digital Landscape

• In Event: Representation of Nuclear Threats and Disasters in Literature, Film, Music, and Video Games

Abstract

This paper contextualizes video games as entangled in ongoing legacies of Cold War nuclear culture, focusing on the prevalence of games set within Chornobyl as a visual epicenter, archetype, and para-fictional post-apocalyptic setting of Cold War fallout. I am particularly interested in what I term “Zone Games” as a subgenre within the larger Chornobyl gaming context. Drawing on heritage studies, theories of dark tourism, and virtual tourism, I argue that these games make use of the existing visual culture of Chornobyl and Pripyat as a semiotic landscape of apocalypse.

Author

• Marisa Karyl Franz, New York U