"I owe some people some apologies"
The Culture of Debt and Digital Media in Kentucky Route Zero
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59616/cehd.v1i5.1396Keywords:
Kentucky Route Zero, Videogames, Debt, Digital Media, Cultural StudiesAbstract
Videogames are a large and growing cultural-economic medium, a fact alone that makes them worthy of critical attention. Focalising one text, Kentucky Route Zero (CARDBOARD COMPUTER 2013-2020, hereafter referred to as KRZ) this essay argues that videogame media functions as a unique and powerful tool for navigating the phenomenological experiences of neoliberal capitalism and its principal mode of expression -- debt. We argue that KRZ functions as an exemplar of the ways in which games respond to and mediate social and economic structures in terms of content, design, narrative and production. We delve into the game in full, parsing through it, its approaches of economic insecurity, hauntology, debt and how a single text can portray and be part of a wide cultural and economic moment.
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