Friday May 30th, 2025: 16-17:30 Webinar: “Environmental Game Studies: What Is an Ecological Game?”
Participants:
Bojana Aćamović (Institute for Literature and Arts, Belgrade, Serbia)
Camille Lavoix (University of Würzburg, Germany)
Candice Allmark-Kent (Independent Scholar)
Erik Frank (University of Würzburg, Germany)Fritz Bommas (University of Munich, Germany)
Jacob Lee Tom (University of Stavanger, Norway)
Julia Schlosser (California State University, USA)
Marie Beckmann (University of Würzburg, Germany)
Uroš Đurković (Institute for Serbian Culture Priština, Serbia)
Linda Heß (University of Augsburg, Germany
Lena Pfeifer (University of Würzburg, Germany)
The webinar on eco-games, moderated by Laura Op de Beke, brought together a group of scholars from a variety of countries and disciplinary backgrounds, such as game studies, literary studies, ecocriticism, and animal studies, to explore how video games engage with ecological issues. After a brief overview by Laura Op de Beke over recent publications in the field, referencing Alenda Y. Chang’s Playing Nature (2019), Benjamin J. Abraham’s Digital Games After Climate Change (2022) and Nathalie Aghoro’s Video Game Ecologies and Culture (2025), and providing a brief introduction to her own work in the field, including her edited collection Ecogames – Playful Perspectives on the Climate Crisis (op de Beke et al. 2024) and the forthcoming monograph on Anthropocene Temporalities in Videogames (2026), the group began discussing questions around the defining characteristic of eco-games, as well as their own experiences with playing the different games that were included in the preparation for the webinar. The games discussed were Nightflyer (free, 5-minute browser game), Half-Earth Socialism (free, simulation game, one playthrough is 20–30 mins), Where the Goats Are (pay what you want, 1-hour immersive experience), Known Mysteries (pay what you want, 3 volume interactive narrative, solar-powered hosting, sustainable lofi design), and Lichenia (free, simulation game, 15 minutes or more).
The discussion took two claims by Benjamin Abraham as its starting points. On the one hand, the group discussed his observation that while the “survival & crafting” genre of videogames often includes environmental aspects, ultimately the goal of these games is the accumulation of resources in a way that tends to recreated industrialization processes and follows capitalist logics. On the other hand, the discussion focused on Abraham’s claim that anything can be an ecogame, that ecogames do not have to rely on a specific genre or theme per se, and that eco-games might also be defined by the criterium of sustainable materiality.
Points that came to the forefront in the subsequent discussion were the question of the energy-requirements of video games, whether games are judged more harshly on their energy consumption than for example novels or movies that are categorized as “eco”, the recurrence of no-win situations in eco-games, the role of didacticism, and the question whether there are games out there that put the focus on collaboration with nature, rather than putting the focus on human (the player’s agency) and ultimately often subduing natural environments.
Another significant cluster of aspects that was discussed in terms of invidiual experiences with playing the specific set of games listed above was the role of atmosphere and developing a sense of place, the effect of slowing down – often fueled by the minimalist design of those games – and the ways in which some of the games, such as Lichenia, purposely disrupt the world-building logics of a number of commercial games, so that these games in part seem more like art-installations which focus on creating an experience rather than achievements. At the same time, those game aesthetics can also tap into the problematic trope of the beautiful world that is devoid of human life.
The webinar concluded with a reflection on the methodology of approaching games as close-readers and the variety of games that can be approached via an ecocritical analysis – whether their themes seem to obviously suggest such an approach or not.
