Nature in Games: Breaking Biases and Incorporating Green Nudges into Games
Game: «Flora and Fungi»
How is nature represented and used in video games, and how might this representation contribute to existing environmental biases?
This thesis will be exploring how Western ideologies are evident in the representation of nature in games and how these have contributed to the development of environmental biases. This work will examine how games fit into the following three nature-culture themes: Arcadian, wilderness, and resource. It will identify the harmful postcolonial western ideologies and materialistic goals that games and game genres reinforce, and analyse related games, mechanics and mods. Finally, this thesis will propose workshop guidelines for creatives to question and assess their own biases in game development to design sustainably focused games, and a game was developed to explore some of the methods derived from the research.
