Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter 1
2. Table of Contents 5
3. Ecogames: An Introduction 9
4. Part I Today’s Challenges: Games for Change
5. 1. Change for Games: On Sustainable Design Patterns for the (Digital) Future 73
6. 2. Do You Want to Set the World on Fire? Amplifying Player Agency to Demonstrate Alternatives to the Climate Crisis 89
7. 3. Between the Lines : Using Differential Game Analysis to Develop Environmental Thinking 109
8. 4. A Dynamic Engagement Model to Provide Ecological Awareness of the Climate Crisis through Video Games 129
9. 5. Postcoloniality, Ecocriticism and Lessons from the Playable Landscape 145
10. 6. No Cyclones in Age of Empires: Empire, Ecology, and Video Games 163
11. 7. Games for Better Futures : The Art and Joy of Making and Unmaking Societies 181
12. Part II Future Worlds: New Imaginaries
13. 8. Climate–Game–Worlds : A Media-Aesthetic Look at the Depiction and Function of Climate in Computer Games 201
14. 9. Healing a Life out of Balance: Slowness and Ecosophy in Death Stranding 223
15. 10. Ecology in the Postapocalypse : Regenerative Play in the Metro Series and the Critical Dystopia 241
16. 11. There Is No Planet B : A Milieu-Specific Analysis of Outer Wilds’ Unstable Spaces 259
17. 12. Green New Worlds? Ecology and Energy in Planetary Colonization Games 275
18. 13. Dark Play and the Flow Time of Petroculture in Oil-Themed Games 295
19. 14. The Underrealized Ecocritical Potential of ABZÛ 311
20. Part III The Nonhuman Turn
21. 15. “Have You Ever Heard a Worm Sing?” : The Spectral Ecology of Kentucky Route Zero, Act V 335
22. 16. Hiding (in) the Tall Grass : Rethinking Background Assets in Video Game Plantscapes 353
23. 17. Symbiosis, or How to Make Kin in the Chthulucene 373
24. 18. Mutate or Die: Neo-Lamarckian Ecogames and Responsible Evolution 395
25. 19. No Man’s Game : The Infinite Boredom of Procedurally Generated Environments 415
26. 20. Trans Ecologies in Digital Games and Contemporary Art 433
27. 21. The Earth’s Prognosis: Doom and Transformation in Game Design 447
28. Part IV Critical Metagaming Practices
29. 22. What Do We (NDNs) Do with Games? 465
30. 23. Imagining the Future: Game Hacking and Youth Climate Action 483
31. 24. Reframing the Backlog: Radical Slowness and Patient Gaming 505
32. 25. Material Infrastructures of Play : How the Games Industry Reimagines Itself in the Face of Climate Crisis 525
33. 26. Sustainable Fandom : Responsible Consumption and Play in Game Communities 543
34. 27. A Field Guide to Monsters: Practices of Wildlife Watching in Video Games 559
35. 28. Remediating Green Practices : Landscape Photography and Nature Documentary Filmmaking in Video Games 577
36. Index of Games 599
37. Index of Names 602
38. Index of Subjects 605