Virtual Roads, Real Ecologies: Driving Games, Coziness, and Petroculture

This paper examines how driving video games, typically associated with petroculture and masculine fantasies of speed and consumption, can be reframed through the aesthetic category of coziness. Its central argument is that nonhegemonic forms of play, particularly slow play and coziness, offer a way for games to distance themselves from oil dependency and begin imagining a world beyond it. The author situates the discussion within debates on "petromelancholia," "petromasculinity," and the nostalgia for an era of "Easy Oil," framing mainstream driving franchises such as Gran Turismo and Forza Horizon as reinforcing the link between fossil fuel consumption and masculine identity.

The analysis centers on two case studies. Lake (Gamious, 2021) places the player in the role of a returning postal worker in a 1980s Oregon lakeside town, rewarding unhurried driving, side quests, and social immersion over competition. Season: A Letter to the Future (Scavengers Studio, 2023) features cycling and analogue recording devices in an anachronistic alternate world that prioritises contemplation and documentation of nature. Both games deliberately decelerate the rhythms of progress and performance that dominate the genre, which the paper describes as a distinct form of "petroduration," a way of experiencing time not organised around fuel extraction and acceleration.

The paper's conclusions are qualified rather than triumphant. While these cozy driving games challenge genre conventions both mechanically and representationally, Lake's nostalgic evocation of an oil-abundant past means it simultaneously upholds aspects of petroculture. The author therefore concludes that such nonhegemonic play cannot fully detach from oil dependency but can nonetheless open meaningful space for reimagining games' relationship to fossil fuels. The work is positioned within DiGRA 2025's theme of games in a time of crisis and draws on a range of game studies and environmental humanities literature.