Green Reading, Green Gaming: The Future of Ecocriticsm, Storytelling, and Environmental Ethics in Virtual Worlds

Born out of a literary tradition, the field of ecocriticism has been slow to recognize the interpretative and ethical possibilities of virtual and game landscapes. Though odd in the sense that ecocriticism has long dealt with the imagined textual landscape, this resistance makes sense with regard to the protection of non-idealized nature: One can only handle so many lapsed cultural representations of the real thing, our interactions with it, until one must wonder if society itself is moving farther away from considerations of what it is to be “non-human.” Yet ecocritics have been quick to recognize that they cannot operate solely within a single sphere of purely academic influence. Rather, in order to promote and advance cultural notions of sustainability (problematic as the term may be), current ecocritics recognize that they must anticipate and draw upon a dialog with the technological, the scientific, and the public at large. Thus, a convergence of sorts with the aims and subjects of video game studies produces new rhetorical possibilities with regard to game designers and players: Today's video game communities are not isolated but instead are forced to encounter new cultures and ideologies and respond to them. In picking up on this ability to immerse oneself in a digital culture that responds to and affects the real world, game studies appears to identify games as importan