ABSTRACT
With the climate crisis and its repercussions becoming more and more tangible, games are increasingly participating in the production, circulation, and interrogation of environmental assumptions, using both explicit and implicit ways of framing the crisis. Whether they are providing new spaces to imagine and practice alternative forms of living, or reproducing ecomodernist fantasies, games as well as player cultures are increasingly tuned in to the most pressing environmental concerns. This book brings together chapters by a diverse group of established and emerging authors to develop a growing body of scholarship that explores the shape, impact, and cultural context of ecogames. The book comprises four thematic sections, Today's Challenges: Games for Change, Future Worlds: New Imaginaries, The Nonhuman Turn, and Critical Metagaming Practices. Each section explores different aspects of ecocritical engagement in and through games. As a result, the book's comprehensive scope covers a variety of angles, methodologies, and case studies, significantly expanding the field of green media studies.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|128 pages
Today's Challenges: Games for Change
chapter 2|20 pages
Do You Want to Set the World on Fire? Amplifying Player Agency to Demonstrate Alternatives to the Climate Crisis
chapter 3|20 pages
Between the Lines : Using Differential Game Analysis to Develop Environmental Thinking
chapter 4|16 pages
A Dynamic Engagement Model to Provide Ecological Awareness of the Climate Crisis through Video Games
part II|134 pages
Future Worlds: New Imaginaries
chapter 8|22 pages
Climate–Game–Worlds : A Media-Aesthetic Look at the Depiction and Function of Climate in Computer Games
chapter 10|18 pages
Ecology in the Postapocalypse : Regenerative Play in the Metro Series and the Critical Dystopia
chapter 11|16 pages
There Is No Planet B : A Milieu-Specific Analysis of Outer Wilds' Unstable Spaces
part III|130 pages
The Nonhuman Turn
chapter 15|18 pages
“Have You Ever Heard a Worm Sing?” : The Spectral Ecology of Kentucky Route Zero, Act V
chapter 16|20 pages
Hiding (in) the Tall Grass : Rethinking Background Assets in Video Game Plantscapes
chapter 19|18 pages
No Man's Game : The Infinite Boredom of Procedurally Generated Environments
part IV|136 pages
Critical Metagaming Practices
