Case Study #2: Games, Ecocriticism, & Systems Thinking (English)
Video Games: Critical and Creative Writing is an elective module that combines game studies, game design, and writing for games. There are ways to explore sustainability in all three strands.
#1 Game studies. Some games we study already have prominent ecological themes. For example, No Man’s Sky (2018) uses procedural generation to create billions of unique ecosystems for players to explore. But what might it mean that all this biodiversity is encountered framed through the same set of game mechanics? What relationships between the human and the nonhuman are encouraged or presupposed by these mechanics? Octodad: The Dadliest Catch (2014) challenges the player to be a ‘good dad’ in a white, middle class, heteronormative family. We discuss Bo Ruberg’s excellent reading of Octodad as a game about queerness and passing … but also explore the fact that the main character is literally an octopus. In a week on so-called ‘serious’ games, we discuss games from Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre developed to foster climate resilience. At other points, students may be invited to develop ecocritical readings of games whose ecological themes are less prominent, e.g. Night in the Woods, Baba is You, The Passage, Hades, Queers in Love at the End of the World.
#2 Writing for games. “Do you like our owl?” Our week on writing dialogue involves comparative close readings of ‘the same’ scene from two versions of Blade Runner, the movie and the game (plus a similar scene from The Big Sleep (1964)). Both versions feature a luxury artificial owl. Now that I’ve taught these texts a few times, I have a sense for how meticulous moment-by-moment attention might open up themes such as critical conservation, posthumanism and critical humanism, ecofeminism, natureculture, interspecies entanglement, or technologically-mediated relations with animals. For me the challenge is now to resist steering the collaborative interpretation too much. I use leading questions, but when the answers are unexpected, I try to support students to develop fresh readings. If it goes well, we all feel like Private Investigators and/or Wise Owls. In a different week, on worldbuilding, I suggest students move between wild and silly brainstorming exercises, and more considered periods where they try to connect up their ideas cohesively. There are ecological angles to both. The brainstorming phase might estrange or dislodge unexamined assumptions about environment, economy, governance, property, the commons, etc. The phase where they revise is a good opportunity for some systems thinking. Where does waste go? What makes energy? What invisible infrastructures are implied? What processes might interact in non-obvious ways?
#3 Game design. Games are a great way to teach emergence. For instance, the improv game Assassin and Conway’s Game of Life are two systems whose rules are fairly simple, but whose emergent dynamics are not easy to predict. There are also opportunities to think about ‘balance’ and feedback loops in both ecosystems and games. A reinforcing feedback loop: a warming climate increases demand for air conditioning, which may lead to higher carbon emissions. A balancing feedback loop: more evaporation results in more clouds forming, reflecting more solar radiation. A predator-prey cycle (rabbits and foxes) is an example of both kinds of loop at once: growth in the rabbit population produces growth in the rabbit population; but growth in the rabbit population also produces growth in the fox population. Games are filled with subtle and not-so-subtle feedback loops. In a combat game, you might defeat an enemy but lose health and ammo, making the next victory less certain (a balancing feedback loop). When you position a Tetris piece incorrectly, it reduces your time and space in placing the next one, making more errors likely (a reinforcing feedback loop).
