Green Media Mediography – Utrecht University

Ōkami

Ōkami is one of those games that stays with you long after you have played it. You take on the role of Amaterasu, the Japanese sun goddess in the form of a white wolf, and alongside your tiny, loudmouthed companion Issun (who, by the way, gets far too excited whenever he sees a woman), you

Ark: Survival Ascended

ARK: Survival Ascended is an open-world survival game developed by Studio Wildcard. It takes place on mysterious, artificially created worlds known as ARKs, massive, space-borne habitats designed to preserve life after a catastrophic event on Earth. These ARKs are home to a vast array of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, many of which have been

Spilled!

Spilled! takes players to a captivating but polluted world that they need to clean up to watch it come back to life. It taps into the pleasure of frictionless ‘cleaning’ that a small but growing number of game are catering to, both with and without an explicit environmental subtext (like e.g. Powerwash Simulator). Spilled! is

Balance of the Planet

Balance of the Planet sees player balance global economic and ecological forces through taxation and expenditure, with each policy change having a runoff effect to other areas. For instance, clearing forests changes the level of CO2 in the air, which affects global warming.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a 2023 action-adventure game developed by Massive Entertainment and published by Ubisoft. The game is part of the Avatar franchise, and was released for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on December 7, 2023.

Diving into an Acidifying Ocean

"Diving into an Acidifying Ocean" brings along the users on an interactive journey that will educate them more about the dangers of ocean acidification while going back in time or travelling into the future.

Earth 2053: Tipping Point

In the board game Earth 2053: Tipping Point, 1-4 players represent countries that work together to prevent a global climate catastrophe. The main scoring is based on a physical seesaw board where "prevention" tokens are placed on one side and "pollution" tokens on the other.

Dune (2021)

Dune (2021) is the second movie adaption of Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel from 1965. The movie follows young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) as his family takes stewardship of the desert planet Arrakis and is dragged into a war for the valuable resource known as “spice”, which makes intergalactic travel possible.

Terra Nil

Terra Nil is a reverse city builder about ecosystem reconstruction. Turn a barren wasteland into an ecological paradise complete with different flora and fauna.

Never Alone

Never Alone, or Kisima Inŋitchuŋa, is a game developed in collaboration with native people of Alaska, called the Iñupiat. The game is about a young Iñupiat girl and a fox trying to find the source of a devastating blizzard that is threatening their world.

Energy Czar

Energy Czar is an early educational simulation game where the president of the United States gives the player full power to guide the country through a 1980s energy crisis. The player has full control over eight energy resources: coal, oil, natural gas, uranium, hydroelectric power, solar power, wind power and biomass. It is possible to promote

Out and About

In Out and About, the player character visits their grandmother and learns about the real world plants that surround a mountainside town. A natural disaster strikes while they are visiting the grandmother. In the aftermath, players find a lot of fallen trees and hard-to-follow paths and are encouraged to explore and talk to the people

The Sims 4: Eco Lifestyle

The Sims 4 is the fourth entry in a series of games known as The Sims. In these games, the player is able to simulate daily life by creating individuals, known as sims, and making decisions for these sims. This way, each player can completely customize their sims and the lives they live. The Eco

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a role-playing video game developed by Northway Games and published by Finji. The player starts the game as a ten year old, going through events that affect their colony on an alien planet until the game ends when they turn twenty. The game lets players spend their teenage years

Daybreak

Daybreak is a cooperative board game that models technological, political and social responses to climate change. It was designed by Pandemic creator Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace. Throughout the game, the Earth’s temperature begins to rise. Simultaneously, players must contend with crisis events, such as droughts, wildfires, rising sea levels, each exacerbated by Earth’s rising

ARMA 3

Arma 3 is an open world tactical shooter developed and published by Bohemia Interactive exclusively through Steam. It is the third main entry in the Arma series, and the eighth installment in the series overall. Over a decade since its release, Arma 3 maintains a substantial player base and an active modding community. Arma 3

Beecarbonize

The free-to-play strategy game Beecarbonize challenges players do plan and choreograph climate policies and sustainable sociotechnical developments. Players can prioritize between industrial reforms, nature conservation or people initiatives. From the Steam page: “There are many ways to solve climate change and reduce pollution. But saving the planet is not an easy task. The more carbon

Wijk & Water Battle

The objective of Wijk & Water Battle is to provide participants with insights into their water and energy consumption, ultimately encouraging them to change their habits. The pilot launched in the autumn of 2015, involving children from two primary schools in different neighborhoods of Leeuwarden. Over three months, the children teamed up with local residents in a

Snowpiercer (Movie)

Snowpiercer is a 2013 post-apocalyptic movie by Bong Joon-ho based on the French graphic novel “Le Transperceneige” by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette. The movie takes place in a fictional near future, in which Earth has completely frozen due to climate change and ecocide. All humankind left survives aboard a single train, the

Snowpiercer (TV series)

Snowpiercer is an American dystopian and post-apocalyptic show based on a non-stop moving train circling the world carrying the remains on the human species onboard. Seven years ago, the entire world became a frozen land of ice and the only thing keeping humanity alive is the “Eternal Engine” of the train. The series tackles the

Frostpunk 2

Frostpunk 2 is the sequel of the 2018 RTS (Real Time Strategy) game by 11 bit studios in which the player takes the role of a Overseer entitled to administrate a small community in a frozen post-apocalyptic Earth.

Seeing CO2

From an online summary: “Seeing CO2 is an open world game prototype by design studio Extraordinary Facility that explores how intangible data on carbon emissions might be presented in a more relatable and interactive way. In the online game, players can drive around in a little blue van and explore a landscape populated with increasingly

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead (S01E09)

The Zom 100 anime is set in a zombie apocalypse scenario, with a group of protagonists roaming around Japan and trying to fulfill their ‘bucket list’ of life aspirations, which they were unable to act on under the conditions of modern-day Japanese society. In episode 9, the group makes its way to the protagonist’s parents

Dungeon Meshi

The Netflix anime series Dungeon Meshi (Delicious in Dungeon) is unusual in that it constructs the dungeon, a common worldbuilding trope from role-playing games, as an ecosystem and as a metaphor for ecosystemic interactions.