ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on an alternative framework for analyzing how games make arguments about nature, the environment, and ecologies. Locating digital games and play within broader discursive and rhetorical ecologies through ecoplay can further illuminate how digital games cultivate environmental awareness; continue to establish the importance of green game studies to ecocriticism and game studies; and change how we play, analyze, and design games about nature. Game studies scholars; however, have highlighted several rhetorical qualities of games, such as their interactivity and their ability to model alternative possibilities that require specialized frameworks for rhetorical ecocriticism. Play theory is useful for rhetorical ecocriticism because it considers the interactions between players’ beliefs and the values presented to players through game systems. The meditation statues in ABZU introduce players to environmental rhetorics that negotiate between different ideas of nature. Ecoplay, through its connections to ecospeak and ecosee, can situate the rhetorics of computer games within broader media ecologies.
