New publication: Video Games and Environmental Humanities: Playing to Save The World
Manchester Game Centre members Dr Reuben Martens and Dr Jack Warren have published essays in Kelly I. Aliano’s and Adam Crowley’s edited collection Video Games and Environmental Humanities: Playing to Save the World. According to the editors, the collection demonstrates how ‘video games engage in a form of ecocriticism like any other humanities field might’ while offering ‘meaningful knowledge about environments, ecology, and/or environmental crisis’ (2024: vii). Reuben and Jack feature in the collection's ‘Video Games and Environments’ section. Reuben’s chapter, ‘Fuelling the City: On the Politics of Energy Resource Extraction in City-Building Simulators’, explores the perpetuation of petrocapitalism in the ideological underpinnings and infrastructural representations of city-building games. Jack’s chapter, ‘Queer Thinking with Digital Stones’, explores the ecological and affective dimensions of World of Warcraft, particularly concerning the importance of stones and their sensations in digital environments. Full abstracts can be found below.
The book is available from Palgrave Macmillan and is currently available as a hardback and e-book: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-67980-3.
Abstracts
‘Fuelling the City: On the Politics of Energy Resource Extraction in City-Building Simulators’ by Reuben Martens
In this chapter, I explore the ideological underpinnings and infrastructural representations of city-building games (CBGs) such as SimCity (2013) and SimCity Societies (2007). Focusing on the perpetuation of neoliberal petrocapitalism, this chapter delves into how these games mirror and reinforce societal norms and attitudes towards fossil fuel consumption. The examination begins by dissecting iterations of SimCity, including the 2013 reboot and the educational version SimCityEDU: Pollution Challenge!. The analysis reveals how these games, despite their potential to simulate environmental issues, often reduce sustainability efforts to mere aesthetic choices, devoid of real impact on gameplay mechanics. The discussion extends to SimCity Societies (2007), which, while incorporating eco-friendly elements, fails to address the underlying ideological biases by allowing fossil fuel usage without consequences. The chapter further critiques the limited scope of CBGs in depicting alternative transportation modes and addressing social challenges. The analyses highlight the flawed representation of natural resources in these games, perpetuating the myth of limitless fossil fuel reserves and disregarding their environmental impact. The chapter ends by contrasting these shortcomings with Frostpunk, a game that, despite its reliance on coal, introduces ethical dilemmas and consequences, challenging players to grapple with the moral implications of their choices. Ultimately, the chapter argues that CBGs serve as potent tools in perpetuating petrocultural ideologies, urging a critical re-examination of their narratives, mechanics, and underlying assumptions to foster a more nuanced understanding of their societal implications and potential for change.
‘Queer Thinking with Digital Stones’ by Jack Warren
By situating stones in play, this chapter explores the ecological and affective dimensions of the digital environments of World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004-). Much of the intervention of this chapter entails considering the entanglements between videogames and the environment to recognise how nonhuman matters determine the nature of, and participate in, play. Reprising works at the crossroads of game studies and (new) materialisms (Bienia 2016; Germaine 2020; Germaine and Wake 2022), thinking with nonhuman matters decentres the human body as the leading affective site in play. This chapter takes up a queer and materialist position to challenge notions that stones are inert and mundane, finding them instead the substance of narrative, temporality, and sensation. Stones and their inherent sensations are understood as a foundational matter of digital and actual worlds. In recognising the material, artistic, and philosophical links between digital stones and their lithic counterparts, this essay determines what real effects stones generate in play.
World of Warcraft is taken as the primary example here, though the affordances of digital stones are irradiated alongside other games, art, literature, and performances that likewise ‘play’ with matter. Through an interdisciplinary lens encompassing game studies, philosophy, and ecological thinking, this chapter highlights the pervasive presence of stones as a matter of reality and investigates the efficacies of stones generated in gameplay. This study goes beyond representation and emphasises the companionate properties between the two iterations of stones as they share a molecular composition and emit the very same sensations. It also examines the artistic methods employed in the creation of digital landscapes, demonstrating how narratives emerge from the geological formations of stones and influence the overall design of gameworlds. Such arguments find ‘nature’ in videogames as a complex interplay of interconnected agencies and reveal how stones catalyse stories, intimate encounters, and ecological entanglements that blur the boundaries between the virtual and the real.