gamingtheenvironment

eco-anxiety in games

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FACEMINER

Store Page on Steam

You are tasked with harvesting data as quickly as possible. Much like re-captchas where you have to select a certain image from a small grid, in FACEMINER you purchase data and collect the faces in the images. You initially start off with very slow progress, but as you earn money, you can upgrade your PC to be able to withstand quicker data harvesting. You can make it harvest faces itself, on auto mode, instead of having to manually click each one. Eventually, you can even use security cameras globally to collect footage for you to harvest data from so that you don’t have to pay to receive data from other companies. Before long, your profits soar, but so does your power and water usage. Emission levels get sky high, and you watch the planet’s temperature increasing more and more.

As you collect data, you receive emails from the company you work for (FACEMINER), as well as your colleagues, and your PC reads them out loud to you. This is where the main story develops. As the AI you build to mine faces gets stronger, you start to receive emails from colleagues that comment on the strange weather or being unable to keep up with bills to run the AI. There are even organizations that send emails about wanting to band together and stop this before it’s all too late. Pop-ups also appear, called “emergency transmissions,” showcasing floods and fires. At the end of the game, your screen is flooded with these pop-ups amidst a countdown before your PC shuts down.

On the game’s Steam store page, the developers wrote “The ‘AI training’ in this game is fictional and has been simulated for entertainment purposes. The game can be interpreted as a critique of AI specifically relating to the ecological impact of mass data hoarding, surveillance concerns, and way it is used to compound corporate power.”

Truthfully, I did not know that this game was about the ethical concerns of AI until I was in the middle of playing it. It had been sitting in my Steam library for quite a while, and I decided to play it on a whim. It turned out to pertain perfectly to the discussions had in this course. A lucky find! I loved the approach that it took and think that AI’s impact on the environment is still a fairly new topic, so this game would be a fantastic resource in engaging with eco-anxiety through fiction. In fact, there is even an “Earth Appreciation Festival” event happening on Steam at the time of writing this, and the game is 50% off. It was classified as an “eco-dystopian” game.

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No, I’m Not a Human

Store Page on Steam

In No, I’m Not a Human, you find yourself in the middle of a bizarre event — the sun has become so overbearing that it is impossible to go outdoors in the daytime without getting severely burned. Human-like creatures called “visitors” have arrived, digging their way out of the ground and attempting to be a guest in humans’ homes. You live alone and must decide who you will allow to cross the door’s threshold, asking questions to the people knocking on your door to determine if it’s safe to let them inside. If you refuse them all entry and choose to remain alone, a lanky, pale figure will ask you, “are you alone?” and you may meet your demise. As you let people in, you continue to ask them questions and investigate them for signs that they are visitor — perfect teeth, bloodshot eyes, dirty nails… if they fit the criteria, you have to take matters into your own hands.

The game is divided into two waking states: the daytime and the middle of the night. During the day, you may watch news broadcasts, listen to the radio, ask the other inhabitants questions, or use the phone to call people outside or order delivery. At night, you can peer out the windows and look out the peephole to see who you may live with next. Through conversations and information coming from the outside world, you start to piece together what is really going on. The sun has become so powerful that it is impossible to go outdoors during the day without getting burned. The so-called “visitors” are humans who have dug themselves out of the ground and try to enter homes, disguising themselves as normal humans. All of the events seem to be caused by the changing environment, and anxiety builds as both the player and the people they meet attempt to untangle what is happening. Some characters are flippant and try to take advantage of the situations, while others are in distress. FEMA is supposed to be helping everyone, but trust quickly fades and tensions rise. Before long, they are also the enemy.

There is a subtle presence of eco-anxiety in this game. Though the focus of the gameplay is determining who is safe to have in your home, the whole situation arises because of ecological changes. The result of these changes are monsters, the “visitors,” and the problem of the probability of survival takes place in the forefront of the player’s mind. It’s possible to play the game without as much of the ecological commentary, but if the player decides to explore the lore by having conversations with characters instead of solely investigating their physical traits, in addition to watching all of the TV broadcasts instead of the ones that automatically play at the start of each day, more and more commentary unfolds. It is a quiet form of discussion, but it is effective because it is the source of the anxiety in the game. It’s quite similar to the apocalyptic fiction style of literature and film, but through an interactive and environmental approach.

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Beecarbonize

Store Page on Steam

Unlike many games, the developers of Beecarbonize made their game free to download on Steam. This game is card-based, and in it you have to manage four sectors: industry, ecosystems, people, and science. The industry sector adds to your emissions, eventually leading to several “tipping points” that trigger events that you must use resources to deal with. If you do not mitigate the events in time, you will face penalties in the form of even more events piling up, or even game over. As the game progresses, you can upgrade cards — these represent various measures of reducing emissions, changing laws or societal movements, researching, or using more renewable forms of energy in the industry sector.

The challenge comes with trying to keep emissions down as you develop each sector. Events inevitably occur as well, and if you don’t mitigate them quickly enough, they pile up or you see total environmental collapse, aka game over. As you can see from my playthrough, I have yet to develop a successful strategy, but this gives the game replay value and makes it even more educational. If one strategy and certain upgrades didn’t work this time around, I can try a new one next time. As a side note, if you see an upgrade with a star on it, it means that that string of upgrades will lead you closer to a successful run. The tipping points also vary from run to run, and you can unlock new cards as you continue to play. There is an encyclopedia section where you can look at the cards outside of gameplay too.

This game is certainly more upfront with it’s eco-anxiety and ecological themes, but by being free and accessible, I think that more people will be willing to try it out. There are 235 different cards in the game too, so there’s no shortage of strategies to try out. It’s even won six awards! Check out the store page on Steam to see them all.

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stay tuned – update with more games coming

The above are just three games that I have explored so far, but there are many more! The following are some more games that I will be playing and recording soon, so stay tuned for an update on them.

• FAR: Lone Sails
• NORCO
• The Oily Depths
• Frostpunk
• Project Shoreline
• This, Too, Shall Pass
• Half-Earth Socialism
• In Other Waters