Stefan Werning

“Creative (Eco-)Metagaming As Digital Documentary Practice”

In this online lecture, Werning analyzes in-game nature photography/videography and the modification (modding) of commercial videogames as creative metagaming practices (Boluk & LeMieux 2018), considers their potential for practicing a ‘documentary’ gaze on human-nature relations, and explores how they may foster environmental literacy (McBride et al. 2013) as well as contribute to sustainable future imaginaries (Bendor 2018).

First, metagaming practices are contextualized 1) as a potential solution to the limitations of contemporary ‘ecogames’ (Abraham 2022), i.e. games as a medium for ecocritical discourse, and 2) as a form of “interactive documentary practice” (Nash 2021). Second, the lecture outlines and exemplifies the rhetoric of “ecomodding” (Werning 2021), positioning it as a possible remedy against the limitations of “eco-narratives” (Donly 2017) currently available in popular media. Third, the potential of in-game nature photography to remediate nature photography and its characteristic epistemologies (Drake 2014) in virtual spaces will be analyzed using examples from games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Destiny 2. To conclude, several important limitations and material dependencies of (eco-)metagaming will be addressed, along with corresponding suggestions on how to maximize its potential for climate communication and education.

Works Cited

Abraham, B. (2022). Digital Games After Climate Change. Palgrave Macmillan.

Bendor, R. (2018). Interactive Media for Sustainability. Palgrave Macmillan.

Donly, C. (2017). Toward the Eco-Narrative: Rethinking the Role of Conflict in Storytelling. Humanities, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/h6020017

Drake, D. (2014). Nature Photography and the Ecological Self: A Mixed-Methods Study. In SAGE Research Methods Cases Part 1. SAGE Publications, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/978144627305013518282

Boluk, S., & LeMieux, P. (2018). Metagaming. Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames. University of Minnesota Press / Manifold.

McBride, B. B., Brewer, C. A., Berkowitz, A. R., & Borrie, W. T. (2013). Environmental literacy, ecological literacy, ecoliteracy: What do we mean and how did we get here? Ecosphere, 4(5), 1–20.

Nash, K. (2021). Interactive Documentary: Theory and Debate. Routledge.

Werning, S. (2021). Ecomodding. Understanding and Communicating the Climate Crisis by Co-Creating Commercial Video Games. Communication +1, 8(1). https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cpo/vol8/iss1/7/

Stefan Werning is an associate professor for New Media and Game Studies at Utrecht University, where he founded the Utrecht Game Lab and organizes the annual Ecogames summer school. He previously worked as an assistant professor at the universities of Bayreuth and Bonn and as a research assistant at the Fraunhofer Institute Media Communications in St. Augustin. While completing his PhD dissertation, Werning has worked in the digital games industry, most notably at Nintendo of Europe and Codemasters (2006-2009). He has been a visiting scholar and fellow at the Center for Comparative Media Studies at MIT, and his latest book, Making Games, was published in the Playful Thinking series at MIT Press in 2021.

https://www.uu.nl/staff/swerning