Ecological In/congruence: Becoming Sensitised to Nature in Video Games through Humanistic First-Person Research

The ongoing ecological crisis is the current biggest threat for our species. As we attempt to address the situation through policy, interventions, and education, we urgently need to understand how people encounter and relate to nature: As it is, in the world, and portrayed through different media. As an exemplary medium facilitating digital nature, this paper focuses on video games. Using first-person research methods, we report on the first author sensitising themselves to nature as a ubiquitous feature, theme, and actor in video games. They played eight nature-focused games for three months. Through auto-ethnography, close reading and “noticing” (after Tsing), we make sense of their experiences using the humanistic concept of ecological (in)congruence: We draw out the relational gap and potential meanings between real nature and its virtual equivalent. Based on these insights, we outline two design impulses for how the HCI community might approach nature-within games and beyond.