STRATEGIES WP2 Lead, Sonia Fizek, will deliver a keynote lecture at the BeyondPlay 2024 conference, Bremen, Germany. Sonia's talk is an invitation to rethink video games and gaming within the context of climate crisis and environmental sustainability. It will map out the diverse intersections between the environment and video games: from representations of nature in games to eco-critical design and the materiality of digital technology.
The International conference ‘Beyond Play: The Transformative Power of Digital Gaming in a Deeply Mediatized Society’ will take place from September 30th to October 2nd 2024 at the University of Bremen, Germany. The conference is hosted by the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (Zentrum für Medien-, Kommunikations- und Informationsforschung; ZeMKI).
Video Games in Times of Climate Crisis. From Aesthetics to Ethics
It was high summer 2022. In many regions of Europe and worldwide, temperatures reached record heights. France suffered under unprecedented wildfires, with over 62,000 hectares of flora burned by the end of August 2022. Meanwhile, players of the Riders Republic (Ubisoft 2021), a major multiplayer sports video game, engaged in digital reforestation. They planted virtual trees, bringing to life an entirely new forested area that stayed in the game for others to experience long after the event had come to an end. The Riders Republic Rebirth event culminated in the first ever in-game climate march. The project was conceptualized in 2021 during a Green Game Jam, organized by the Playing for the Planet Alliance, the Environmental Program of the United Nations. Boris Maniora, Riders Republic gameplay director, believes that green activations such as Rebirth show the empowering impact games can have on their players.
However, video games are not only drivers of climate positivity or simulations of stunning natural settings. They are as much objects of culture as they are of nature. As virtual, immaterial and clean as they are portrayed within the framework of postindustrial capitalism (Maxwell and Miller 2012, 5), they are literally made out of natural resources and material labour. Video games rely on technologies and production dynamics that make those media possible in the first place. They are “finite resources in the closed system of planet Earth” (Cubitt 2017, 7).
This talk is an invitation to rethink video games and gaming within the context of climate crisis and environmental sustainability. It will map out the diverse intersections between the environment and video games: from representations of nature in games to eco-critical design and the materiality of digital technology.