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PLAYING NATURE: ECOLOGY IN VIDEO GAMES

Alenda Y. Chang



 

Video games may be fun and immersive diversions from daily life, but can they go beyond the realm of entertainment to do something serious-like help us save the planet? As one of the signature issues of the twenty-first century, ecological deterioration is seemingly everywhere, but it is rarely considered via the realm of interactive digital play. In Playing Nature, Alenda Y. Chang offers groundbreaking methods for exploring this vital overlap.


Arguing that games need to be understood as part of a cultural response to the growing ecological crisis, Playing Nature seeds conversations around key environmental science concepts and terms. Chang suggests several ways to rethink existing game taxonomies and theories of agency while revealing surprising fundamental similarities between game play and scientific work.


Gracefully reconciling new media theory with environmental criticism, Playing Nature examines an exciting range of games and related art forms, including historical and contemporary analog and digital games, alternate- and augmented-reality games, museum exhibitions, film, and science fiction. Chang puts her surprising ideas into conversation with leading media studies and environmental humanities scholars like Alexander Galloway, Donna Haraway, and Ursula Heise, ultimately exploring manifold ecological futures-not all of them dystopian.

 

PUBLICATION DETAILS

LANGUAGE

BINDING

EDITION

ISBN

YEAR

PAGES

English

Hardcover

9781517906313

2019

320

English

Paperback

9781517906320

2019

320

 

TAGS


Authors/Narrators: #AlendaYChang

Publishers: #UniversityOfMinnesotaPress (University of Minnesota Press)

Languages: #English

Accessibility: N/A

Year: #Year2019

Genres: #GameStudies


Companies:

N/A


Public Figures:

N/A


Games:

N/A


Misc:

#EnvironmentalSustainability (Environmental Sustainability [Climate Change])

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