Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games

Front cover of Alenda Y. Chang’s book, Playing Nature

Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games

Alenda Y. Chang

University of Minnesota Press, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5179-0632-0

In Playing Nature, Chang sets out to investigate how video games might be used to address our relationships with (and responsibilities to) the natural environment, arguing that as video games straddle both multiple real and imagined worlds, they are thus best understood by adopting both scientific and literary approaches to making sense of nature and how humans are situated within (and against) it. It is a remarkably impressive work that is truly interdisciplinary in nature, and which uses ecology as a lens through which to cut through the tired ludology vs. narrative debate that perniciously permeates many game studies treatises. Academic and thoroughly researched, it is made fully accessible by Chang’s playful tone that contextualises an extraordinarily broad body of work, as well as introducing the reader to original insights that provoke and delight in equal measure.

There is much to be admired in this book. In particular, Chang makes a compelling case for how anthromes (or human biomes) are situated within video games, and how ecology and environmental studies might be combined with media and game studies to better consider playing nature, thereby breaking down myopic misconceptions that one can experience either nature or technology. Other stand out moments include the treatment of entropy (“Games, then, are not a waste of time – at least by some critical standards – but are they a waste of energy? (p. 152)), and the potential for catastrophe and environmental collapse in games (such as that witnessed in the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion, which saw the game world Azeroth permanently altered by a cataclysmic event) as a means through which to invite gamers to reconsider their relationships with in-game (and analogously ‘real’ world) environments.

My only minor grievance with this otherwise exceptional text is in its treatment of analogue games. In Chapter 1 (p. 9) Chang claims that the “… chapters ahead focus on not only traditional digital games … but also analog (sic) games, mobile games, alternate-reality games, augmented-reality games, “biotic” games, and outdoor play.” However, while the other game formats are covered in great depth, analogue games are somewhat overlooked, other than a card game developed by an art collective about the ecology of the LA River, and a slightly more in-depth comparison of legacy games with their video game permadeath counterparts. Given the subtitle of the book, I feel that the audience would have been better served with a tighter focus on video (and other digital) games, as the nuances that analogue games afford (such as their capacity to create unique mesocosoms of human behaviour at the tabletop) are lost in the catch-all way that they are treated in Playing Nature. For example, when talking about the permeance of legacy games (Seafall is used as the main exemplar), Chang might also have considered those games such as Betrayal: Legacy where after playing through the ‘campaign mode’ of the legacy game, the players are left with a permanent new gameboard (environment) for them to make use of in future games, thereby addressing what Chang identifies as one of the biggest problems in addressing environmental concerns both in and outside of games, i.e. that “the world’s life must be significant to the player” (p. 220).

My minor reservations of the treatment of analogue games aside, Playing Ecology is an essential text for any games scholar or ecologist who is interested in better considering the role that video games can play in understanding our relationship with the natural environment. It should also form a fundamental point of reference for any scholar who claims to be interdisciplinary in their approach to research. Yet, perhaps the greatest virtue of this book is its incredible generosity; Chang introduces and interrogates multiple ways in which game studies and ecology might collaborate to produce new and original perspectives. Aspiring and experienced game scholars alike will find much in this book to prompt their own future research directions, and I am particularly excited about future work into ‘dark ludologies’; extending Timothy Morton’s work on dark ecologies (those substances that lurk beneath the surface, out of sight and out of mind) into game worlds. I sincerely hope that Chang is my guide on such an Adventure.