Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games

Description

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 s

Alenda Y. Chang is associate professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is cofounder of Wireframe, a digital media studio fostering creative pedagogy, research, and design aligned with issues of social and environmental justice.

"Alenda Y. Chang's gorgeously penned Playing Nature charts an ecocritical approach to video games and design thinking, exploring much more than simply how the ecological has been imaged in games. Essential for designers, players, and critics, Playing Nature eloquently unveils the stakes of ecologically informed agency within video game worlds to reshape thought about both games themselves and the natural systems in which we are all enmeshed."-Soraya Murray, author of On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space "Playing Nature is an ambitious project that makes a compelling case for ecocritical game studies. The book reverberates far beyond its main subject, speaking to the environmental humanities, comparative media studies, and the biophysical sciences. Alenda Y. Chang shows how a wide range of analog and digital games immerse players in ecological knowledge while also integrating gaming with other contemporary cultural forms, from speculative novels and documentary films to scientific experiments."-Allison Carruth, UCLA "Scholarly yet accessible, imaginative yet stuffed with ideas from across the humanities and the sciences, Playing Nature is a fascinating analysis of the transformative potential of gaming, showing how the medium could be used to address serious issues around climate change and environmental justice."-Foreword Reviews "But by daring to ask how video games might make the world lively and sound, Chang sparks a necessary conversation."-Science Magazine "Providing a deep understanding of what the games set out to do, this book reveals that these projects may well point the way to the future."-CHOICE "It is a timely and ground-breaking work that firmly places video games well within the scope of environmental studies."-ISLE "A useful analysis for non-nature video games."-Gamers With Glasses