Laura op de Beke examines her own relationship to the seasons, engaging with how these transitions affect her life. In the text she discusses the role changing seasons, as well as the shortening of days headed from spring and summer into the fall and winter, as well as how Laura op de Beke tries to match the conditions of the world around her to the games she chooses to play. Eventually, after a brief interlude explaining her own relation to games, and the seasons, Laura op de Beke poses the question “at a time when familiar seasonal associations and practices have fallen out of sync with the Earth’s increasingly disrupted weather patterns, what are the games that resonate with this new climate-changed reality?”

“Dark seasonality in videogames” is a chapter in the larger book Changing Seasonality: How Communities are Revising their Seasons, which explores the role of calendars, seasons, and the cultural reaffirmations (or choice not to) thereof. The text explores the contested nature of calendars, as well as how seasons and other calendar related touchstones (such as the changing seasons) function within society as a way of providing structure, and their positioning within a rapidly adjusting world in the face of a looming climate crisis.

The chapter [HERE] was published for Open Access January 29, 2024 by De Gruyter, as part of the book Changing Seasonality: How Communities are Revising their Seasons [HERE].