The Biophilic (Eco-)Poetics of Video Games

• Applicant: Dr. Nataliya Gorbina
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 522053894

From the encouragement of environmentally sustainable behavior through gameplay to the rootedness of the game design itself in tree structures, video games offer a unique format that makes them an inherently ecocritical medium. This postdoctoral project will look at the (eco-)poetics of video games as a poetics concerned with (re-)constructing a specific type of human-nature relationship based on what the biologist Edward O. Wilson described as the “tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes” (Wilson, Biophilia 1): the relationship of biophilia. The project suggests that biophilia constitutes one of the major grand narratives of the contemporary condition of metamodernity and finds particular expression in video games as cultural artefacts. With the aim of establishing the value of video games as a site of ecocritical inquiry, the study will answer the following question: In what ways is the inherently biophilic design of video games reflective and constitutive of the contemporary trend of reinventing nature and people’s relationship with it? In doing so, the project will expand upon the previous research within the field of environmental humanities by 1) challenging the current scholarly stance that sees only a particular category of video games as deserving of ecocritical attention; 2) broadening the methodological framework of the field and recontextualizing the term ‘biophilia’, testing the applicability of the eco-structuralist approach to the study of video games, and incorporating an analysis of players’ responses to the immersion into virtual nature; and 3) providing a comprehensive survey of the (eco-)poetics of video games as a metamodern poetics of biophilia.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position