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Electronic Mediations
Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games (Volume 58)
A potent new book examines the overlap between our ecological crisis and video games
Video games may be fun and immersive diversions from daily life, but can they go beyond the realm of entertainment to do something serious—like help us save the planet? As one of the signature issues of the twenty-first century, ecological deterioration is seemingly everywhere, but it is rarely considered via the realm of interactive digital play. In Playing Nature , Alenda Y. Chang offers groundbreaking methods for exploring this vital overlap. Arguing that games need to be understood as part of a cultural response to the growing ecological crisis, Playing Nature seeds conversations around key environmental science concepts and terms. Chang suggests several ways to rethink existing game taxonomies and theories of agency while revealing surprising fundamental similarities between game play and scientific work. Gracefully reconciling new media theory with environmental criticism, Playing Nature examines an exciting range of games and related art forms, including historical and contemporary analog and digital games, alternate- and augmented-reality games, museum exhibitions, film, and science fiction. Chang puts her surprising ideas into conversation with leading media studies and environmental humanities scholars like Alexander Galloway, Donna Haraway, and Ursula Heise, ultimately exploring manifold ecological futures—not all of them dystopian.
Video games may be fun and immersive diversions from daily life, but can they go beyond the realm of entertainment to do something serious—like help us save the planet? As one of the signature issues of the twenty-first century, ecological deterioration is seemingly everywhere, but it is rarely considered via the realm of interactive digital play. In Playing Nature , Alenda Y. Chang offers groundbreaking methods for exploring this vital overlap. Arguing that games need to be understood as part of a cultural response to the growing ecological crisis, Playing Nature seeds conversations around key environmental science concepts and terms. Chang suggests several ways to rethink existing game taxonomies and theories of agency while revealing surprising fundamental similarities between game play and scientific work. Gracefully reconciling new media theory with environmental criticism, Playing Nature examines an exciting range of games and related art forms, including historical and contemporary analog and digital games, alternate- and augmented-reality games, museum exhibitions, film, and science fiction. Chang puts her surprising ideas into conversation with leading media studies and environmental humanities scholars like Alexander Galloway, Donna Haraway, and Ursula Heise, ultimately exploring manifold ecological futures—not all of them dystopian.
320 pages, Paperback
Published December 31, 2019
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193 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 8, 2022
What a journey! This book is about everything I want to discuss about videogames through a biologist, ecologist or just a person who cares about our enviroment and see videogames as an oportunity to create care for our planet and ecology. I like the most the first chapter "Mesocosm" because that view of see videogames as potential places of experiment and the forth one "Entropy" and how it talks about social-casual-farm games. Even though is a little bit dense in terminology and concepts I would recomend it to anyone that wants to discuss about how videogames present nature in most cases as a tool and not about a something we have to take care of.
February 4, 2023
A necessary book about how ecology and environment studies (and by extension, cultural studies) can be worked on game studies. Chang uses some helpful terminology (to think about scale instead of space, Mesocosm and Entropy) and takes into consideration the current state of the planet and the role of "serious" or persuasive games. The reading is neither incomprehensible nor a light read (which is good).
July 12, 2024
A must read for eco-critics and game environment theorists alike.
March 15, 2023
A challenging but excellent book
Playing Nature reads like a PhD dissertation (in fact, I suspect that may have been its genesis), but it is a very thorough and thought-provoking look at the potential for games to engender deep thought about environmental issues. I ended up playing a lot of the games examined in the text and found myself with a new appreciation of gaming as a medium for communicating about climate change. In fact, I started working on some environmental-themed games as a result of reading Playing Nature.
It is not a light read - and it is a little dated - but it is well worth it!
Playing Nature reads like a PhD dissertation (in fact, I suspect that may have been its genesis), but it is a very thorough and thought-provoking look at the potential for games to engender deep thought about environmental issues. I ended up playing a lot of the games examined in the text and found myself with a new appreciation of gaming as a medium for communicating about climate change. In fact, I started working on some environmental-themed games as a result of reading Playing Nature.
It is not a light read - and it is a little dated - but it is well worth it!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews