Environmentality in Video Games

Cover Image from Super Mario Clouds by Cory Arcangel.

The slides of my presentation, about 70 min, during the World Earth Day 2023, about Environment Design in Video Games. The presentation was mainly based on the work of Alenda Y. Chang, especially her book, Playing Nature - Ecology in Video Games.

Since most of video games treated environment as a static background (Super Mario Bros.) or a pile of resources (Minecraft), which paralleled people's attitudes towards environments in real world, quoting the words of Alenda Chang, it is intriguing and instructive to consider how could video games present their environments in a more "tangible" (Colossal Cave adventure) and "responsive" way (Rain World).

Despite massive games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild provided great environmental interactions by abundant mechanics and details, it does not mean that good environment design require more. Games can present in game environment greatly by simply limiting players' ablility (Walking Simulators, like Proteus), or changing the form of player's avatar form, like Flower by thatgamecompany.

In Alenda's book, games about ecological catastrophy and farming games are further discussed, which were supposed to be discussed in my presentation but finally removed because of the time limit. There will be a second presentation about those games. 

Instead I chose to present "monsters" in video games and to discuss their ecological connotations, which Alenda might ignored during her discussion about non-human characters. What I found interesting in this part was the game Endling where human became monster character. 

At the end of the presentation, several games with environmental themes were listed, which were selected from a game collection by me after I noticed this intriguing topic. 

A total of 39 games (or related arts) were discussed or introduced in this presentation:

Introduction, Enviornment in Video Games

Batty Cave, 2021

Ecco: The Tides of Time, 1994 

Dark Echo, 2015

Flappy Bird, 2014

Super Mario Bros., 1983

Ski Safari, 2012

The Elder Scroll: Skyrim, 2011

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, 2017

Battlefield 1, 2016

Minecraft, 2011

Part I --- More or Less: examples from Walking Simulators

Walkthrough Videos of the Open World games (Skyrim, Wild Hunt and Breath of the Wild)

The San Andreas Deer Cam, 2016 (a stream)

Proteus, 2013

Firewatch, 2011

Walden, a game, 2017

Super Mario Clouds, 2002 (an experienmental art by Cory Arcangel)

The Game of Video Game Objects: A Minimal Theory of when we see Pixels as Objects rather than Pictures, 2021 (a playable essay by Jesper Juul)

Part II --- Player Agents, as non-human

Colossal Cave Adventure, 1975-76

Gibbon: Beyond the Trees, 2022

Flower, 2009

Part III --- Monsters, as a part of enviornment

Another World, 1991

Spore, 2008

The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine, 2016

Rain World, 2017

Endling - Extinction is forever, 2022

Part IV --- Games with enviornmental themes.

The Endless Forest, 2005

From Dust, 2011

Shelter, 2013; Shelter 2, 2015; Shelter 3, 2021;

Meadow, 2016

Everything, 2017

A short hike, 2019

Alba, a Wildlife Adventure, 2020

Crazy Grove, 2021

Sephonie, 2021

Floodland, 2022

Eco, 2018

Spilled! (in development)

Two Times Pi (in development)

I'm working on the English subtitles for the recording of this presentation on YouTube, and I'm considering remake this presentation by English.  This is not a complete presentation of this topic. Please wait for my updates if you are interested.