The Coeval Magazine posts the Interview with game designer of Sanatorium "Anthropocene Retreat" Mikhail Maksimov.
How would you silhouette or summarise this project and the concept behind it?
- Consolation, care, inevitability.
Can you outline the game plot for us?
- Yes, sure. The SAR game examines the development of anti-anthropocentric philosophical concepts from the perspective of the classical «vergilian» road movie. The key utopian concepts of antihumanism, posthumanism, transhumanism, and technological singularity as well as the doctrines of Haraway, Latour, and Land are introduced in a magical fantasy performance where the protagonist undergoes a sequence of transformations resulting from his interactions with the other main characters. The gameplay is based on the fluid identity of the protagonist. His settings are not defined and are subject to change in function of the interactions with non-player characters. Incidentally, the game, through the temporality of the storyline, determines an answer to a vital question of the last decade: what is the exact date of the beginning of Anthropocene? That is, the epoch of significant human impact on Earth. The dating is highly speculative.
Read full interview here:
https://www.coeval-magazine.com/coeval/mikhail-maximov