Matthew Wilhelm Kapell: Broadening Horizon

Mark Perzel talks with Matthew Wilhelm Kapell about his book, "Broadening Horizon: Essays on Environment, Culture, Identity and Myth in the Game Franchise." What begins with robot dinosaurs and post-apocalyptic storytelling becomes a deeper conversation about ecology, theology, and the cultural power of the stories we play. From “ludic eschatology” to the hero’s journey, Kapell reflects on how games shape the way we imagine both catastrophe and hope.

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FEATURED TITLE: Broadening Horizon: Essays on Environment, Culture, Identity and Myth in the Game Franchise. McFarland, softcover (2025) ISBN: 9781476691923 mcfarlandbooks.com/product/broadening-horizon

BOOK DESCRIPTION: Increasingly, digital games center their narratives during or after the apocalypse. In 2017, the action role-playing game Horizon Zero Dawn offered a new take on society after the end of the world. Horizon has since become a multimedia franchise, with a second video game released in 2022, in addition to comic books, a board game, and other adaptations in development.

This collection analyzes the Horizon franchise and its presentation of the apocalypse, ecology, gender, history and more. Game story and game mechanics are fundamental to each essay and contributors offer a close reading—or close playing—of the games from perspectives as diverse as hauntology, postcolonialism, contemporary feminism, and historiography. This first collection on the Horizon franchise argues that we now live in an Apocalyptic period in the same way previous periods were known as Romantic, Modernist or Realist Periods, and makes the case that Horizon belongs at the crest of this new Apocalyptic Period and at the center of contemporary gaming and of game studies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kapell is an anthropologist and historian, with M.A. degrees in each discipline, and a Ph.D. in American Studies, who specializes in the study of cultural history, media, film, and popular culture. He is a native of Detroit, who lived and taught in Swansea, Wales, California, New York and New Jersey. Kapell is currently residing in New Jersey and teaching at Pace University in Manhattan. He's taught everything from Classics to Genetics but mostly teaches American Studies and Game Studies now. Kapell is also a series editor for the McFarland "Studies in Gaming" series.

matthewkapell.com

studiesingaming.com

OTHER BOOKS BY KAPELL

Exploring the Next Frontier: Vietnam, NASA, Star Trek and Utopia in 1960s and 70s American Myth and History (Routledge Advances in American History). Routledge, hardcover, softcover (2016) ISBN: 9781138188570 www.routledge.com/Exploring-the-Next-Frontier-Vietnam-NASA-Star-Trek-and-Utopia-in-1960s-and-70s-American-Myth-and-History/Kapell/p/book/9780367263966

mcfarlandbooks.com/series/studies-in-gaming

ABOUT MCFARLAND: McFarland, a leading independent publisher of academic and general-interest nonfiction books, is perhaps best known for the serious treatment of popular culture. Founded in 1979, McFarland is recognized among authors and readers as adventurous in range and a reliable source of worthy books that other publishers overlook. They have around 8,000 unique works for sale and publish about 350 new titles a year. Meeting high library standards has been a major focus since the company began, and many McFarland books have received awards from the academic-oriented (Choice Outstanding Academic Title, ALA Outstanding Reference Work) to the mainstream (Hugo, Edgar, Stoker, and Eisner, among others). mcfarlandbooks.com

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