Digital games about the materiality of digital games ; Juegos digitales sobre la materialidad de los juegos digitales

Abstract

This article investigates the potential for digital games to advance environmentally responsible attitudes by attending to their own material conditions, since the production, consumption, and disposal of games and the platforms on which they run enact ecological harm. I examine how Tomorrow Corporation's puzzle game "Little Inferno" (2012) and Molleindustria's political mobile game "Phone Story" (2011) address their own participation in ecological harm through rendering visible the very games themselves being played as material commodities. In doing so, they acknowledge their own complicity as well as that of their players in existing processes of environmental degradation. Moreover, both games challenge conventional expectations of fun as harmless or inconsequential, since this environmental destruction results from digital entertainment. I argue that digital games advancing environmentally responsible attitudes must address the ecological devastation tied to their materiality as well as support players in accepting responsibility for and remedying the harm players enact. Consequently, digital games of environmental responsibility must also question the dominant mode of fun that drives ecological devastation by reminding us that we dwell in a world where we need to be responsible for the fun we choose to have. ; Este artículo investiga el potencial de los juegos digitales para fomentar actitudes responsables hacia el medioambiente atendiendo a sus propias condiciones materiales, ya que la producción, el consumo, y el desecho de los juegos y de las plataformas en las que funcionan representan daño ecológico. Examino cómo el puzle "Little Inferno" (2012) de Tomorrow Corporation y el juego político para móvil "Phone Story" (2011) de Molleindustria abordan su propia participación en el daño ecológico haciendo visible el que los juegos en sí mismos sean productos materiales. Al hacerlo, reconocen su propia complicidad, así como la de los jugadores en los procesos de degradación medioambiental. Además, ambos juegos ...