▶ 2 Reading environment(s): digital humanities meets ecocriticism www-tandfonline-com.proxy.library.carleton.ca

NickMc 3/9/2020 8:33 PM in dhcu

To broaden the humanities, work in this area pushes beyond the human, integrating the non-human world in such a way that the boundaries between the human/animal and nature/culture no longer hold

I think this is very important commonality both between the digital humanities and ecocriticism. Both fields explore the boundaries of what it means to be an experiential agent, whether that be through AI studies or animal studies. Cooperation, here, give way to good progress for the intersectional ethics were going to need to establish in the century.

OJ6

NickMc 3/9/2020 3:22 PM in dhcu

Reading on a Kindle or any other electronic device outdoors obviously troubles the idea of getting back to nature or even of the “natural” environment. For an ecocritic, the tablet might at first represent the problems of sustainability related to electronic waste, a consumer society driven by new gadgets, the time spent in front of a computer screen rather than hiking or camping outdoors, etc.

This is interesting to me, since it seemed a few decades ago eco-criticism was heavily focused on paper waste and tree-saving. These days it seems encouraged to use digital devices rather than paper: e-mail rather than mail, uploaded documents rather than printouts, etc. Though I'm sure it's hard to say which medium is more harmful to the environment, it makes me wonder how eco-criticism will develop in the future. If paper was ecological public enemy #1 twenty years ago, and plastic is now (with oil coming in at a close second), will e-waste be our next target?

OJ6

▶ 2 Gaming Green: The Educational Potential of Eco – A Digital Simulated Ecosystem www.frontiersin.org

NickMc 3/9/2020 3:47 PM in dhcu

One of the central findings from our study is that Eco has been shown to reinforce and contextualize our respondents’ overall level of environmental literacy and systems thinking. These are highly important skill sets (Fiksel, 2006) that could result in a greater understanding of ecosystem complexity, i.e., how different biomes interrelate and interconnect with one another, or how certain species are interdependent in a cyclic system.

Great news. I've always been a firm believer that entertainment was critically important for productive learning (which I concede isn't a hugely controversial belief), but seeing results like this is encouraging. Is there an age gap in the effectiveness of games like Eco in reinforcing environmental literacy? If games have this potential to educate, I'd be curious to see a study on a larger subset of mainstream games to see what sorts of ecological criticism they teach.

OJ6

NickMc 3/9/2020 3:37 PM in dhcu

The game’s main objective is to stop a giant meteor from crashing into the surface of the earth, which is set to strike after a fixed time period of 30 real-life days (Meteor, 2018). While developing the requirements for stopping the meteor, players also cause pollution which needs to be minimized so that the ecosystem can continue to thrive – a measure of which can be found in an in-game statistical overview available to the players. In other words, the players need to destroy the meteor as well as maintain balance in the virtual ecosystem that the game provides them with.

This is clever. I've noticed a trend - at least within myself - to be hesitant about causing ecological pollution even within games. Actually 'encouraging' people to pollute to save the planet, while not exactly a proper allegory for the real world, has an interesting consequence: it forces us to think more realistically. We're not going to be able to return the whole world to sustainable, idyllic ecological balance in the near future, but we just might be able to balance out all the bad with the good. Eco encourages its players to navigate that delicate balance rather than just abstaining from ecological pollution entirely.

OJ6

▶ 1 A new wave of indies are using games to explore climate change www.theverge.com

NickMc 3/9/2020 3:28 PM in dhcu

“In our opinion, they are a medium that could be the best link between generations, and the best way to educate players in the most modern and effective way: via entertainment.”

While I've always agreed that entertainment is one of the best ways to ensure lessons stay learned, I'm not certain if video games can be considered the best link between generations. Games seem to be stereotyped as a new medium belonging to the new generations; it's rare to find anyone above the age of 60 who regularly plays them. Mobile games are rather popular at all ages, but games like those listed in this article: Bee Simulator, Temtem, Endling; they all seem to be focused on platforms regularly associated with the newer generations, like on consoles and PC. What do you guys think? Can we see games as a sort of intergenerational link?

OJ6