Post-optimism: Chants of Sennaar, Norco and the Problem of Optimism in Environmental and Ecogames Gamestudies

Ecogame scholarship has increasingly embraced an optimistic stance, one that treats games as tools for environmental change and frames climate futures in hopeful terms. This article challenges that turn, arguing that optimism in environmental game studies rests on unsupported assumptions about player behavior and risks functioning as greenwashing that benefits industry while leaving games companies unaccountable for their own energy use. Drawing on IPCC assessments and climate migration research, the author contends that the climate crisis is already underway rather than a future threat, and that scholarship and game design should respond to that present reality rather than to promises of a redeemed tomorrow.

The article's central case studies are Chants of Sennaar and Norco. Chants of Sennaar is praised for addressing cross-cultural communication and climate-driven migration, yet its seamless resolution of social integration is judged overly utopian and ethically questionable to promote. Norco, by contrast, leaves its endings ambiguous and retains an oil-refinery backdrop that persists regardless of player choice, which the author views as a more realistic model of what post-optimism might look like in practice.

From these comparisons the author develops a proposed orientation for ecogames: rather than promising solutions, they should build bridges between cultures and attend to the lived realities of ecological breakdown. The appropriate stance, on this account, is pursuit of "least-worst" outcomes from constrained options rather than hope for an ideal future, a position that treats societal and governmental inadequacy in responding to climate change as a starting premise.

The analysis is situated within environmental humanities, migration studies, and media theory, and it draws on a bibliography spanning climate migration and refugee research, climate-related health risks, misconceptions about climate change, and foundational texts in ecocriticism and critical theory, including Fisher's Capitalist Realism and Morton's Hyperobjects. The scope is primarily scholarly and conceptual, centering on contemporary digital games as sites where ecological crisis is represented and interpreted.