Exploring Uncharted Territory in an Adventure-Diving Game: A Framing Analysis of Subnautica’s Ecological Dead Zone, the Surrounding Online Player Discussions and User-generated Content

Abstract

The popular underwater-exploration game Subnautica has fostered an active online fan community. The game includes a border-area, called the ecological dead zone. This paper leverages a multimodal framing analysis of Subnautica to examine its potential for communicating the environmental issue of ecological dead zones through this environment. The analysis investigates three key aspects: the game’s design of the dead zone, online player responses and user-generated content focused on this area. While the in-game portrayal of the dead zone is inaccurate and players often neglect it due to the lack of resources, the analysis reveals the potential for Subnautica to spark interest on ecological dead zones within the fan-base. Platforms like Reddit, Wikis and YouTube can become spaces where conversations about environmental phenomena like dead zones emerge. Even though Subnautica circulates around economic ideologies, instead of ecological ones, this analysis highlights the potential of video games to act as foundations for raising environmental awareness, especially when guided by facilitators who encourage critical thinking about environmental themes in games.