Space Games: Ecologies of Scale and Technologies of Hope in Taiwan's OPUS Game Trilogy

Abstract

Extending ecocritical game studies to the Sinophone (or Chinese-speaking) world, this article offers a close playing of three OPUS-themed science fiction videogames produced between 2016 and 2021 by Taiwanese indie developer SIGONO, exploring the games’ function as environmental texts and their relationship to Taiwanese literary and cultural studies. By asking the player to engage in shifts in scale and perspective from human to nonhuman, life to death, past to present, and enclosed to boundless space, the OPUS games serve as an effective way of understanding ecological intervention that promotes multiscalar awareness and asks what still can be done and what hope can be found when all has already been lost. In doing so, they demonstrate the ecocritical potential of science fiction videogames that feature an in-game environment many millions of light-years away from our current earth-bound realities.