“Warm and Stuffy” - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 170

But Game Studies has contributed nothing to the two readings of this
draft, to the related to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural
Resources or to cognate legislation. As forecasts predict that increases in
energy-intensive games and software alone will boost energy consumption
by 30 per cent between 2006 and 2020 (Dodd 2007), how long can Game
Studies remain isolated from the basics of citizenship?
CITIZENSHIP
The increasingly faster and more versatile computers, appealing
mobile phones, high-defi nition TVs, Internet, tiny music players,
ingenious photo cameras, entertaining games consoles and even elec-
tronic pets give us the idea of a developed, pioneering and modern
world. It is indeed a new era for many; but the dark side of this pros-
perous world reveals a very dif erent reality, that far from taking us
to the future, takes us back to a darker past. (Centro de Refl exión y
Acción Laboral 2006)
The Mexican labour alliance quoted in the preceding encapsulates the
approach we favour. If Game Studies is to meet the most basic citizen-
ship responsibilities, it must account for the impact of its beloved industry's
inputs from the Earth, extracted via mining and drilling, and outputs into
the earth, such as emissions into air, land and water. To discern this reality
through the fog of cybertarianism, we need “autonomy from . . . industry
and fan logics” (Beaty 2009, 24). One way of doing so is to look at philo-
sophical and political forms of engagement with the issue and cast them in
the context of citizenship.
As per the pre-capitalist philosophy so beloved of Game Studies, Hegel
argued that people can put their “will into everything.” An object or place
thereby “becomes mine ” because humanity “has the right of absolute pro-
prietorship.” Because we are unique in our desire and capacity to conserve
objects and represent them, a strange dialectical process af ords us a special
right to destroy as well. Willpower is independent of simple survival, which
sets humanity apart from other living things. Humans' semiotic power con-
fers the right to destructive power, so “sacred respect for . . . unused land
cannot be guaranteed.” The necessary relationship between humans and
nature asserts itself at the core of consciousness as a site of struggle for peo-
ple to achieve freedom from risk and want. Nature's “tedious chronicle,”
where “nothing [is] new under the sun,” is rightly disrespected and dis-
obeyed by progress. Human beings' capacity to transcend their “spontane-
ity and natural constitution” distinguishes them from animals (Hegel 1954,
242-43, 248-50; 1988, 50, 154, 61). This perspective is similar to the view
of e-waste stewardship that has been developed through the Qur'an and
I'mar (Hawari and Hassan 2008, 18).