15 | Life on Land – Green Media Mediography

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.

The Educational Value of Virtual Ecologies in Red Dead Redemption 2

This paper is of importance because, it shows that education doesn’t have to be limited to specifically designed ‘serious’ games only. The “big budget” games as the authors call them can also offer opportunities to teach players about subjects like ecology and conservation.

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.

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

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

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.

Outbound

Outbound is a crowdfunded game project by Dutch developer Square Glade Games about building one’s own home on wheels and living sustainably off-grid by crafting workstations, sourcing energy, upgrading, customizing, and automating processes. Image source: https://www.gematsu.com/2024/02/open-world-camper-van-exploration-game-outbound-announced-for-pc

The Deep Forest

The Deep Forest is a free collaborative mapping RPG game that addresses several themes related to but often not directly associated with the climate crisis, in particular monstrosity, inhabiting non-human perspectives and postcolonial perspectives on human-nature relationships. The game’s website summarizes the premise as follows: “For a long time, our monstrous home was occupied by

When Rivers Were Trails

When Rivers Were Trails is a 2D point-and-click adventure game in which Oregon Trail meets Where the Water Tastes Like Wine. An Anishinaabeg in the 1890’s is displaced from their traditional territory in Minnesota and heads west to California due to the impact of allotment acts on Indigenous communities, facing Indian Agents, meeting people from different nations, and hunting,

Dishonored 2

Dishonored 2 is the direct sequel of 2012 Arkane Studios’ awarded Dishonored. The story takes place a few years past the events of the first chapter, and lets the player take on the role of Empress Emily Kaldwin. Usurped of her throne by the Duke Luca Abele, she embarks on a journey through the southern

Dishonored

Dishonored is an immersive-sim game set in a fictional world that recalls the Victorian Era imaginary. The player takes on the role of Corvo, the Royal Protector and master of spies that is accused of killing the Empress. To redeem his name and save the princess, Emily, he makes a deal with a mysterious demigod

A Plague Tale: Innoncence

A Plague Tale: Innoncence is a narrative-driven adventure game in which the player follows the story of two brothers, Amicia de Rune and Hugo de Rune. Set in France during the Hundred Years War, the game depicts the horrors of war and epidemics, as the title suggests. One of the peculiar features of A Plague

Rain World

Rain World might look a bit different than more prominent ‘ecogame’ examples but exhibits a few design decisions that stand out among other digital games and raise pertinent issues: Destabilizing anthropomorphism. The game exclusively features non-human protagonists and antagonists; moreover, while the in-game creatures are inspired by real-world counterparts (e.g. spiders and birds), they are

Half-Earth Socialism

Based on the book of Troy Vetesse and Drew Pendergrass, Half-Earth Socialism is a free videogame in which you are tasked with governing the world, reducing humanity greenhouse gas emissions, protecting biodiversity, and reducing the temperature to 1 degree above industrial levels at the year 2100. To reach that objective you’ll have different policy proposals

The Endless Forest

The Endless Forest is a multiplayer online game PC by Tale of Tales, in which players represent deer in a peaceful forest without goals or the ability to chat. Pictograms above registered deer’s heads represent their names. Players communicate with one another through sounds and body language. From the wiki: “During ‘abiogenesis’, every deer runs

Meadow (computer game)

From the wiki: “Meadow is Might and Delight’s latest release; a massively multiplayer online sandbox that allows players to interact as animals would. Described as a ‘forum in games’ clothing’, this online fable experience lets fans – old and new – come together and experience a peculiar world.” With its focus on nonverbal communication, the

As Far As The Eye

As Far As The Eye is a resource-management roguelike in which the player guides a tribe of anthropomorphic animals of diverse shapes that need to travel to the center of the continent to avoid a flood The game is strongly impregnated on the cultural narratives and practices of the tribe. As the flood is a

Tree

Tree is a VR installation directed by Milica Zec and Winslow Porter that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2017 New Frontier Program, in which the theme was climate change. This virtual experience transforms participants into a rainforest tree. The experience begins with participants planting a real seed given to them by one of the Tree‘s

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a 1984 Japanese animated movie directed by Hayao Miyazaki, based on his 1982 manga. One thousand years have passed since the Seven Days of Fire, an apocalyptic war which destroyed human civilization and most of the Earth’s original ecosystem. Scattered human settlements and tribes survive, isolated from

Where the Crawdads Sing

Where the Crawdads Sing is a 2022 book adaptation directed by Olivia Newman. It dives into the story of Kya Clark who got abandoned by her family from a very young age. She survives in the marshes of North Carolina by herself—living off selling mussels to a local store—and acquires the name ‘marsh girl’ from

Our Planet

Our Planet is a 2019 British nature film series, directed by Alistair Fothergill, Keith Scholey, Colin Butfield and Sophie Lanfear, and narrated by sir David Attenborough. The eight-episode film series aims to inspire its viewers to understand the natural world and to raise awareness about the human footprint on it. This is done through showing the