A New Digital Ecology: Death Stranding and Thing-Power Materialism

This essay analyzes Death Stranding, the 2019 release from contemporary game auteur Hideo Kojima. Here, I discuss the unique potentialities of this game world, detailing the ways in which Death Stranding expresses a new ecological perspective—an object-oriented ontology. My exploration considers the robotic appendage used by the main character, Sam, to safely traverse a ruined North America. This tool is known in the game as the Odradek Terrain Scanner. Full functionality of the device necessitates the use of a Bridge Baby, a child removed from the womb of a brain-dead mother during gestation. The device serves as a synthetic extension of the player-character, a tool responsible for mediating the relationship between Sam and the world of Death Stranding. In referencing Franz Kafka’s Cares of a Family Man, Kojima freely inserts his latest title into a contemporary discussion of object-oriented ontology. Using this short story, I connect this game to Jane Bennett’s essay “The Force of Things: Steps toward an Ecology of Matter.” Bennett’s writing becomes a pivotal resource for understanding the relationships of this game: both those within the narrative, and those seemingly disparate online connections among players. It is no coincidence that the world can only be understood through the eyes of an infant, through a Bridge Baby: Death Stranding helps us relearn materialism and “indulge in a moment of naivete” where we may encounter objects as such. My writing correlates the world of Death Stranding with our own, articulating the pedagogical possibilities of video games.