Ecogames

Abstract

This series is a critical starting point for readers interested in the growing field of green media studies as a subdiscipline within the environmental humanities and social sciences. It examines the ways in which 'Green Media' can influence the public's awareness and understanding of environmental issues and the ecological impact of media technologies.Contemporary media are increasingly used to support and frame environmental action by companies, NGOs, activists and related groups, as well as to persuade people to adopt more sustainable lifestyles. Because environmental justice and social justice are intrinsically interconnected, the 'Green Media' series seeks to research how people might become global ecological citizens. It introduces the readers to key environmental issues as these are represented in-and connected to the production, distribution and consumption of-videogames, VR, social media, data visualizations, transmedia, film, documentaries, television series, theatre and more.The underlying questions are: How do green media construct forms of civic engagement on a micro, meso and macro level? How do we conceptualize the impact of green media from a media-comparative perspective? How can green media help transform existing industries as well as corresponding cultural and business practices? What is the ecological footprint of media production, distribution and consumption, and how could sustainable alternatives look like?In the 1970s, a select audience of computer nerds, economists, and museumgoers had the opportunity to engage with the original "Ecogame." Designed by the Computer Arts Society, Ecogame (1970) was a video game as well as an art installation and a multimedia information architecture (Stott 2021). The game simulated a national economy, allowing players to make decisions regarding resource allocation, showing them the consequences of their actions via slides projected onto the walls, indicating the mood of the nation. Depending on your performance, they might show "dole queues, civic unrest, and environmental degradation" (Stott 2021, 47). Two decades later the audience for these sorts of playful experiments would be vastly expanded. Writing from Australia in 1994, McKenzie Wark recounts turning to the early internet in her struggle to keep the biosphere safe from both global warming and nuclear winter in playthroughs of SimEarth (Maxis 1990), a game that allows players to tinker with the parameters that determine life on Earth. Ecogames were no longer confined to museums and conferences, they had come home, and were living inside people's desktops. In the twenty-first century, ecogames are even more prevalent, not just because you can choose to play a quick game of Beecarbonize (Charles Games 2023, see Figure 0.1) on your mobile phone on your way home from work, but because themes of climate collapse and environmental engagement have begun to dominate mainstream media, showing up in games more generally, both digital and analog. This book collects scholarship on this subject, exploring the ...