Alenda Chang's Playing Nature in Foreword Reviews
Foreword Reviews, an indie book review journal, looks at alum Alenda Chang's Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games. Calling it "scholarly yet accessible" and "imaginative yet stuffed with ideas," this glowing critique praises Chang's proposal of video gamers as environmental activists.
From the review:
Instead of presenting games as a diversion from reality, Chang believes that their blend of natural and unnatural environments can be a powerful tool for engaging “in world design and management.”
Beyond games that glorify violence are those with enormous potential to become platforms for ecological ideas, in which the environment is itself the game’s hero. As an additional layer to the discussion, Chang also uncovers the less-than-green aspects of the tech industry, from mining, sweatshop labor, planned obsolescence of gaming equipment, and the energy demands of cloud storage data centers.
You can read the entirety of the review here.