[Commlist] New book: Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games

*Playing Nature***

Ecology in Video Games

*Alenda Y. Chang***

*_https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781517906320/playing-nature/_*

Video games may be fun and immersive diversions from daily life, but can 
they go beyond the realm of entertainment to do something serious—like 
help us save the planet? As one of the signature issues of the 
twenty-first century, ecological deterioration is seemingly everywhere, 
but it is rarely considered via the realm of interactive digital play. 
In /Playing Nature/, Alenda Y. Chang offers groundbreaking methods for 
exploring this vital overlap.*__*

Arguing that games need to be understood as part of a cultural response 
to the growing ecological crisis, /Playing Nature/ seeds conversations 
around key environmental science concepts and terms. Chang suggests 
several ways to rethink existing game taxonomies and theories of agency 
while revealing surprising fundamental similarities between game play 
and scientific work.*__*

Gracefully reconciling new media theory with environmental criticism, 
/Playing Nature/ examines an exciting range of games and related art 
forms, including historical and contemporary analog and digital games, 
alternate- and augmented-reality games, museum exhibitions, film, and 
science fiction. Chang puts her surprising ideas into conversation with 
leading media studies and environmental humanities scholars like 
Alexander Galloway, Donna Haraway, and Ursula Heise, ultimately 
exploring manifold ecological futures—not all of them dystopian.

*Alenda Y. Chang *is assistant professor of film and media studies at 
the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is cofounder of 
Wireframe, a digital media studio fostering creative pedagogy, research, 
and design aligned with issues of social and environmental justice.


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