How Game Ecology Drives Player Choices in Strategy Video Games: An Environmental Determinism Perspective

Abstract

Background

Recent years have witnessed increasing attention on the study of game ecology, the virtual environments, and underlying mechanics within games. Yet, these studies often focus on the active role that players have in changing game ecology, while overlooking the reciprocal influence between game ecology and players.

Methods

This study investigates the potential impact of game ecology on player choices from an environmental determinism perspective—the development of humanity is shaped by the physical environment. This new perspective is substantiated by a case study of two strategy games, Sid Meier's Civilization VI and Humankind, using an immersive-participatory method to analyze their game mechanics.

Results

This study identifies four major forms of game mechanics that use game ecology to influence player choices: spatial constraints, movement modifiers, uncommon events, and dynamic indexes.

Discussion

This study discusses how the identified game mechanics reflect environmental determinism and contrast with the conventional ideology of cultural determinism. Additionally, environmental determinism in video games, derived from a broader social background, is constantly evolving into new forms.

Conclusion

This study introduces a new perspective of environmental determinism for analyzing the interaction between game ecology and players. This approach has the potential to offer valuable insights into guiding future game design and research endeavors.

Keywords

strategy game environmental determinism game ecology worldbuilding game mechanics virtual environment player choice

Background

In an atypical tale, a group of people find themselves transported to an unexplored island at the dawn of the Neolithic Era. Without any discernible explanation for their presence, and with no conceivable means of escape, the challenge of survival becomes paramount. And you, as the leader of these people, need to make wise choices for group survival. What will you do? The island does not have many edible plants, so to get enough food for everyone, you will probably assign people to fishing tasks. The land is limited, so you will lead people to build boats to reach other parts of the world. After hundreds of years, under your thoughtful leadership, your people will prosper as a powerful maritime civilization with diverse arts and sciences based on the ocean. Seeing fancy boats and delicious cuisine, you are proud of your strategy that gives your people such a good life. But what if you begin the tale in a dense jungle? How about a barren desert?

The scenario above is common in strategy video games like the Civilization series. In each run, games randomly generate the virtual environment for emergent and unpredictable gameplay. Players need to concentrate on the environment and carefully adjust their strategies to win. During this process, players feel satisfied when their strategies result in good outcomes. However, if players are familiar with the game mechanics and tend to make wise choices, their strategies can be well predicted by the generated game ecology. When the game ends, the whole gameplay can be understood as a composed narrative of the successful development of a society. In this sense, new questions arise: what is it that determines the outcomes of this narrative? Player choices, or game ecology? What meaning does this composed narrative convey?

There has been a lasting discussion on the relationship between game ecology and player choices, but there is no definite answer. In fact, the term “game ecology” may sound confusing, as it can refer to physical and virtual environments in different contexts. To avoid misunderstanding, this paper defines game ecology following Tregonning’s (2021) discussion of ecological games: game ecology is a game’s virtual environment and underlying mechanics “that model or simulate relevant environmental principles in the real world” (p. 124).

Scholars, including Tregonning, have researched game ecology for years. Tregonning (2021) argues that to let the game continue, players often need to develop a sustainable strategy and critical thinking about environmental concerns. Unlike Tregonning, whose arguments stress the positive influence of game ecology on players, more scholars believe that the ecological thinking behind video game design is problematic. Newman (2004) claims that playing video games is essentially connected to ideas of dominance and exploitation. As he points out, the virtual environments in games “have been acted upon, explored, colonized” (p.113). Dyerwitheford and de Peuter (2009) also have a similar argument, stating that video games are built upon “planetary, militarized hypercapitalism” (p. xxix). Additionally, Rufat & Ter Minassian, (2012) suggest that game ecology simulation can be effective but superficial, as a common theme in video games is to describe how humans use technology to change the environment at will. These views express concerns about the idea that players dominate game ecology. Similarly, in game design practices, environmental discussion often revolves around how to achieve “tangible real-world impacts” (Whittle et al., 2022, p.3). Recent commercial games, exemplified by Abzû (2016) and Horizon Zero Dawn (2017), have started to raise players’ environmental concerns by encouraging them to explore and contribute to game ecology (Condis, 2020). Meanwhile, serious games emphasize integrating environmental education into gameplay, using game ecology to present knowledge of energy consumption, mobility, etc (Boncu et al., 2022).

The game ecology research and design above predominantly concentrate on player agency, namely, how players can take actions and influence the game world (Murray, 2017). In such discourse, players are often the agents of choices and actions, with game ecology positioned as a receptive object. However, as Tekinbas and Zimmerman (2003) observe, player choices are shaped by predesigned game rules, and players only own limited control of the outcomes of gameplay. Clarifying further, to win a game, players often need to adjust themselves to fit within game ecology, rather than always manipulating it. In this sense, previous game ecology research overlooks the reciprocal influence game ecology and players have on each other. A new research perspective is needed, and this is where environmental determinism comes in.

Environmental determinism at its inception refers to the claim that human activities and developments are determined by the physical environment (Livingstone, 2011). In the late 20th century, the ideology evolved as neo-environmental determinism, which perceives human culture as being shaped inexorably by the dynamics of geographical changes (Radcliffe et al., 2010). Since then, social scientists have had a significant impact in raising public awareness of environmental determinism. For example, Jared Diamond (1997) wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel to give an environmental explanation for the differences in societal development in various global areas. Overall, this ideology discusses humans as an organic part of nature to argue against human exceptionalism and racism (Radcliffe et al., 2010), resonating with the contemporary global consciousness. However, in virtual spaces such as video games, environmental determinism has not been given enough attention.

It is important to note that the discussion in this study falls within the scope of strategy video games. Strategy video games, by their name, emphasize thinking, planning, and management in gameplay (Rollings & Adams, 2003). While these games provide the fun of making strategies, they also require players to frequently interact with the environment. Compared to other game genres that prioritize sensory stimulation, including visuals and audio, strategy games often pursue engaging abstract mechanics, as Chapman (2016) classifies as conceptual simulation, enabling them to address serious topics like environmental issues. Another feature of strategy games is that they often take a macro perspective in terms of space and time. It is common for players to manage large territories, such as kingdoms (Europa Universalis VI, 2013) or even planets (Stellaris, 2016), in various scenarios. In addition, the simulated time scales in strategy games are often long, sometimes even covering human history (Sid Meier's Civilization VI, 2010). This macro perspective thus allows strategy games to simulate real-life slow, ecological evolution. Hence, strategy games become the most suitable genre to examine the relationship between player choices and game ecology.

To this end, this paper explores environmental determinism in strategy video games by analyzing game mechanics. The next section introduces the methodology, applying an immersive-participatory method to a case study of two strategy games. Then, this paper identifies four common forms of game mechanics reflecting environmental determinism. The discussion section focuses on how environmental determinism continuously evolves in video games and how it contrasts with cultural determinism. Lastly, the conclusion section suggests the implication of the new environmental determinism perspective for future game development and studies.

Methods

As the analysis of game mechanics should stay in the context of gameplay, this study implements an immersive-participatory method introduced by Cuttel (2015), which requires the researcher to expose himself to gameplay instead of only observing other players. Specifically, the author collected data from both his own playing experiences and digital archives of selected games between 2016 and 2022. As for data analysis, the author spent six months in 2022 recording the game mechanics with specific scenarios and coding them from an environmental perspective. Table 1 documents the detailed process of data collection and analysis. Overall, the immersive-participatory method helps researchers make “visible the ways in which their own biases, past experiences, and position came to shape their hypotheses and analyses” (McArthur, 2019, p.28).

Table 1.

Details of data collection and analysis.

Source	Data type	Collection Process	Coding Scheme
Self-observation	Gameplay	400 hours playing selected games with note-taking	Scenarios featuring game ecology were recorded, and later coded according to the “context, overview, and formal elements” framework (Fernández-Vara, 2019)
Game website	Game update news	Six news articles regarding DLCs and updates were collected	Updates on game ecology were extracted to show design trends
Game wiki	Game mechanics’ descriptions	Over 50 pages explaining game mechanics were examined	Used to supplement scenarios in self-observation
Game forum	Players’ posts	Over 200 posts from two game forums were examined	Comments on game ecology were coded with emotional tones, and used to match game reviews
Game media	Game review articles	16 articles were collected from five game media websites	Reviews on game ecology were categorized into positive/negative types

This study applies the immersive-participatory method to a case study of two games: Sid Meier’s Civilization VI (2016) (thereafter, Civilization VI) and Humankind (2021). Both games are generally considered 4X games, which is a subgenre of strategy video games that focuses on the gameplay of four actions: “explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate” (Emrich, 1993, p. 92). This study focuses on 4X games as research materials due to two reasons. Firstly, all the 4X actions happen within game ecology. Therefore, 4X games often integrate a multitude of game mechanics based on game ecology, which associates player choices closely with game ecology by encouraging players to take over the game world. Secondly, 4X games have a continuously growing market share (Heinonen & Neuman, 2021), which demonstrates their influence on the player community.

Civilization VI is the latest game from the popular turn-based strategy game series Civilization. In the game, players take on the role of a preselected civilization’s leader, guiding its progress over thousands of years in pursuit of victory. The game, published in 2016, reached 5.5 million sales worldwide in three years (Jones, 2019), establishing itself as an exemplary case for examining 4X games.

Humankind is a more recent historical 4X game published in 2021, which inherits many game mechanics from the Civilization series (Hafer, 2022). However, Humankind gives players more freedom in making cultural strategies, notably letting players switch between various cultures in different historical eras. This innovative design attracts contemporary players and positions Humankind as one of the best-selling PC games in 2021(Robinson, 2021), which also makes the game a suitable case to investigate current design trends in 4X games.

Both Civilization VI and Humankind draw inspiration from history, which also serves as a key selling feature. Both games seem to tell the same historical story: civilizations develop from early settlements to modern world powers. While players enjoy making optimal choices in each turn, they not only experience the story of human development but also compose it. Considering the process of composing narratives through gameplay, a series of extended questions arise: how does game ecology influence players during this process? What has changed in game mechanics over time? Do contemporary players welcome this type of design and why? The answers can only be explored if game mechanics are closely examined to reveal the underlying design philosophy. To this end, this study analyzes both games’ mechanics from a new environmental determinism perspective and explores how these mechanics connect game ecology and player choices. The next section describes the results in detail.

Results

Diamond (1997) describes a general human development model in Guns, Steel, and Germs: an environment provides essential resources, which determines population growth and labor distribution. In this model, culture can only develop when there is extra labor. Both Civilization VI and Humankind resonate with Diamond’s model: players start in a random base area in each run, which determines if there is enough food and living space for population growth. Only when population growth is guaranteed, players can then assign extra labor to politics, science, and arts. Under these circumstances, if players try to maximize the outcome of their choices and make their people flourish (which most people are likely to do), they have to carefully consider game ecology to either make strategies according to it or artificially switch to another environment by restarting the game (Hood, 2017). Therefore, players’ choices are inevitably influenced by game ecology, and this influence is substantiated by game mechanics. To study these game mechanics, the author referred to an existing strategy game mechanics list (BGG, 2023), traditional strategy games, and relevant environmental/geographical literature to term the categorized gameplay data. As a result, four major forms of game mechanics that use game ecology to influence player choices were identified: spatial constraints, movement modifiers, uncommon events, and dynamic indexes.

Spatial Constraints

Competition is a pervasive theme of video games and significantly impacts the enjoyment of gameplay (Vorderer et al., 2003). This theme also aligns with human history which frequently features stories of people competing against each other for limited resources. Therefore, strategy video games often use limited space and resources as a core mechanism to stimulate interactions among players. In this study, the author borrows the term “spatial constraints” from the geography field to refer to this mechanism (Barrat et al., 2005). In Civilization VI and Humankind, players are placed on a world map composed of equal-sized tiles as the smallest unit for decision-making. From an environmental determinism perspective, the game mechanics are built upon these tiles in three progressive layers: quantity, terrain, and resources.

First of all, the quantity of tiles in the game world is limited. Both Civilization VI and Humankind allow players to review their territories by counting the number of tiles they have occupied. One tile cannot be simultaneously owned by two players, so when all the livable lands are under a power’s control, the only way to gain more space is to either start a war or annex it from other players. However, quantity does not equate to victory alone. Having too much space may actually hinder players’ management of territories. In Civilization VI, owning more tiles comes along with a greater need for amenities, while in Humankind, a larger territory also makes it harder to maintain the stability of citizens. In this sense, both games push players to not only expand for more tiles but also for the best tiles, leading to the two other layers of game mechanics: terrain, and resources.

The second layer restricts the number of tiles’ terrain types. In Civilization VI, different types of terrain can improve the yields of different districts or architectures. For example, a campus built near mountains can create more science, and a commercial hub by a river can produce more gold. Another example is building wonders like the Pyramids and the Eiffel Tower. While players can build this special type of architecture offering substantial benefits, these wonders can only be built on specific terrains. As a consequence, players are guided to construct buildings and manage their territories according to game ecology to exploit the tiles.

The last layer of game mechanics enhances this guidance by attaching functions to the resources on tiles. In both Civilization VI and Humankind, one tile can load up to one resource which values up and diversifies the tile. The resource types include bonus resources that increase yields (e.g., crops and plants), luxury resources that provide amenities (e.g., artifacts and jewelry), and strategic resources that benefit technology and the military (e.g., minerals and animals). These resources are scattered on different parts of the map and revealed over time to reflect human history. Similar to terrains, players need to exploit those resources to maximize benefits. For instance, if rice grows on a tile in a player’s base area, is reasonable to make the tile farmland to feed more people.

These three progressive layers of game mechanics can work together to create countless tile permutations, making game ecology an unpredictable and fun object to interact with, and also a possession that can only belong to one player. These game mechanics further indicate that owning and making use of the limited space leads to success. Under this circumstance, players have to fight for game ecology. The spatial constraints thus become an important unbalanced design in strategy video games that drive players to compete against each other.

Movement Modifiers

While spatial constraints refer to the inherent features of game ecology, the second form of game mechanics, movement modifiers, speaks to how game ecology influences the units in it. By units, this paper means both the playable and non-playable mobile agents that can influence strategic gameplay, including soldiers, traders, and missionaries (Civilization Wiki, 2023-a). As Murray (2017) argues navigation through spaces is a naturally pleasant experience in games, this experience is generally reflected in the movement of units in strategy games. In Civilization VI and Humankind, every unit can move one time per turn, making up an important part of gameplay. To make gameplay more complex and fun, game ecology then offers mechanics to either assist or hinder the movement of units (Elbæk et al., 2022). To this end, the author combines “movement” with the commonly used game term “modifier” to refer to these mechanics. Table 2 shows some common movement modifiers in Civilization VI:

Table 2.

The modifiers that game ecology offers to influence movement in games.

Type	Description	Game Mechanics Examples
Facilitators
Accelerate	Lift move speed	Road building
Teleport	Transport to another place immediately or shortly	Rapid deployment
Passage	Create ways through impassable areas	Mountain tunnel
Inhibitors
Decelerate	Lower move speed	Hill and forest terrains
Barrier	Impassable areas	Mountain and ocean terrains
Occupy	Be capable of only holding a limited number of units	Limitation of one unit per tile

The obvious influence of these modifiers on player choice is that players have to follow the rules of game ecology to move playable units. Below the surface, these modifiers also significantly influence site selection. When players look for a site to build a new city or district, they are likely to choose a spot with travel convenience (e.g., by a river, and on a plain).

Furthermore, the function of a movement modifier is changeable. A hindering modifier may indicate a possible gameplay solution to turn it into an assistant one, and an assistant modifier may be temporary and disappear once the situation changes. For instance, the ocean terrains in Civilization VI are barriers when players cannot build ships, but they will soon help accelerate units’ travel on water after players unlock the sailing technology. In this regard, what players deal with are multiple movement challenges provided by game ecology. Clarifying further, the movement modifiers also reflect the human history from being trapped by nature to making use of nature, which indicates the conquerable feature of game ecology.

Uncommon Events

The two forms of game mechanics above introduce the features of game ecology that are predefined at the beginning of each game, creating choice-making patterns for players to follow. However, satisfying player agency does not only come from choice-making, but also the commitment to meaning (Tanenbaum & Tanenbaum, 2009). The meaning in both Civilization VI and Humankind relates to the development of human beings, which cannot live without some unexpected challenges and turning points. Therefore, both games feature various uncommon events to give a sudden change to the game situation to cultivate new meanings. Events have long been a crucial mechanism in strategy games. In this study, the word “uncommon” is added to denote the random and unpredictable elements within these events. Among uncommon events, environmental issues become prevalent because they can often create urgent and meaningful scenarios that efficiently raise players’ interest and motivation.

Civilization VI, for instance, randomly generates natural disasters from time to time. On the one hand, those disasters destroy players’ constructions, creating obstacles to players’ plans. On the other hand, those disasters may also bring bonuses to the yields of the influenced area. A perfect example is the flood. In the game, the plains by the river are most likely to be affected by floods. When a flood comes, it will destroy all architecture in the area. However, after the disaster, the area can potentially produce more food as the flood has made the land more fertile. As a result, players need to reconsider their previous strategy and think about setting up more farmlands in the area as growing food here becomes more rewarding.

The previous example points out the relationship between uncommon environmental events and player choices. These events do not simply damage players’ constructions and ask players to repeat their previous choices. Instead, these events bring changes to the game ecology and suggest other possible strategies. To some extent, uncommon events are unpredictable both in terms of occurrence and results, which also uncovers the unpredictability of game ecology.

Dynamic Indexes

The three forms of game mechanics above, while depicting game ecology either as stable conditions or conditions that change inconsistently, cannot present the ever-changing environmental issues like climate change. Furthermore, just like the global climate changes according to human behaviors, game ecology also needs to give feedback to players’ actions.

Hence, strategy games often employ monitoring systems to constantly measure the dynamic aspects of game ecology including pollution degree and temperature. In this study, the author develops the term “dynamic indexes”, drawing on conventional board games, to describe such monitoring systems (BGG, 2021).

In Civilization VI, the index of global warming monitors the total carbon emissions of all civilizations. Modern architectures like factories release greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere each turn, which causes the sea level to rise and ultimately flood a large amount of land. The damage of global warming in the game is preventable, but if precautions have not been taken, the results are almost irreversible as the flooded lands can no longer function. In Humankind, a similar index monitors the degree of pollution in the world. The modern installations (e.g., factories, and train stations) built by players produce pollution and reduce all the statistical yields of the area. In addition, if the global pollution index reaches a certain threshold, the world will become unhabitable. The game ends immediately and no one wins.

From those designs, it is evident that players overlooking a dynamic index can result in fatal consequences. Once the index reaches an abnormal range, making quick decisions and preventing damage becomes players’ priority. In strategy video games, dynamic indexes constantly change to reflect the changes in game ecology, which often keeps players in long-term tension and requires them to actively respond to those changes. In other words, game ecology is designed to be ever-changing to imply that environmental problems are not formed in a day and encourage players to care about them.

Discussion

When Environmental Determinism Meets Cultural Determinism

By identifying four forms of game mechanics that reflect environmental determinism in Civilization VI and Humankind, this study reveals a common design pattern: game ecology can be unbalanced, conquerable, unpredictable, and everchanging by its design. These features of game ecology are substantiated by game mechanics, which significantly impact how players can explore the game world, expand their territories, exploit resources, and exterminate enemies (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The correspondence between game mechanics and the influenced 4X actions.

However, this argument differs from the conventional perspective that strategy games generally reflect cultural determinism. Andrés Bijsterveld Muñoz (2022), for example, states that 4X games are more about cultural determinism rather than environmental determinism. He examines Sid Meier's Civilization V ((2010)) (thereafter, Civilization V) and points out that the pre-set cultural abilities of civilizations can largely determine players’ strategies. Muñoz also provides specific examples by contrasting the English civilization with the Moroccan civilization in the game. When playing as England, players can enjoy the fast travel speed of naval units, which allows the civilization to take the lead in exploration. In contrast, Morocco’s abilities are mostly associated with the desert terrains, making them the only civilization that can produce yields on the barren lands. The distinction between those two civilizations indicates different strategies and game experiences, so Muñoz argues that the game can be understood as cultural factors determining player choices. This argument seems plausible, yet it overlooks the interconnection between cultural factors and environmental factors in the game.

Firstly, 4X games like the Civilization series incorporate starting biases: if players start a game as Morocco, they are bound to be set in a base area surrounded by deserts when the game starts (Civilization Wiki, 2023-b). Regarding this, while players make use of the desert, their choices are influenced by both the civilization’s abilities and game ecology, with the latter being more influential. To clarify, suppose that the Morocco civilization starts on a small island with no desert, then to continue the game, players have to build ports and turn their citizens into fishermen even if they are not talented. In this sense, the cultural factors are only important in cases where the game ecology supports those factors. When the game ecology is extreme, cultural factors become secondary and players need to follow the environmental rules to survive.

Secondly, the Civilization series has progressively evolved to reduce the influence of cultural factors on gameplay. Compared to Civilization V, Civilization VI introduces various new mechanics that are not influenced by civilizations’ abilities, such as districts, a type of construction whose yields are dependent on geography (Civilization Wiki, 2024). In addition, the series now provides multiple leaders with different skills to add to civilizations’ abilities, indicating that these pre-set abilities are versatile. For instance, England prospers in industrialization and naval construction under Queen Victoria, whereas under Eleanor of Aquitaine, it gains from advancements in arts and population growth. As of November 2022, Civilization VI even announced a new leader pass adding various leaders to existing civilizations (Civilization VI, 2022). These updates suggest that the game developers intend to make cultural factors more controllable for players instead of being predetermined.

Lastly, game developers may have designed the civilizations’ abilities in the Civilization series out of a concern for historical authenticity. However, more recent 4X games have broken through this authenticity concern. In Humankind, players are allowed to reselect their cultures in different historical periods. As a consequence, one civilization may be England during medieval times, and later become China in the modern eras. This design sounds unreasonable, but it adds more depth to the strategic gameplay and gives players more freedom to focus on game ecology instead of civilizations’ abilities for choice-making. Therefore, game ecology plays an even more important role in Humankind than in Civilization VI. To sum up, game ecology becomes increasingly influential in shaping player choices as games evolve. In comparison, cultural factors in strategy games are often influenced by game ecology itself.

The Evolvement of Environmental Determinism in Video Games

In terms of release time, the changes in game mechanics from Civilization V to Civilization VI, and then to Humankind, indicate the evolvement of environmental determinism in strategy video games. As this ideology gains prevalence, it prompts us to inquire into the social context behind its evolvement. What is the significance of environmental determinism in society? How does this real-life significance support the growth of environmental determinism in game design?

Previous research suggests that neo-environmental determinism was promoted to argue against racial and cultural determinism claims in the 20th century (Radcliffe et al., 2010). Those claims, attributing the differences in the level of development across human racial groups to their instinctive differences in intelligence and morality, were problematic but welcomed at that time. That is why social scientists put hard work into finding the relationship between nature and human development to dispute the claims. To some extent, environmental determinism points out the injustice in environmental situations of different racial groups, which gets increasingly noticed as the global consciousness of racial issues has continued to grow.

This social significance of environmental determinism can also help explain the evolvement of environmental determinism in game design. On the one hand, as contemporary players are more familiar with the powerful impacts of environments, they can better accept the asymmetrical game challenges brought by game ecology. Although facing different game ecological situations, the goal of adjusting strategies to adapt to the environment is the same for all players, which still maintains a certain level of fairness in the player competition. On the other hand, environmental determinism gives narratives and meaning to abstract game mechanics and amplifies the experience of interacting with nature in real life. The complex game ecology can provide diverse scenarios that are new and exciting for players, which makes the gameplay captivating.

It is also worth noting that environmental determinism in games emphasizes different aspects compared to the original literature. When Diamond (1997) highlights how the environment influences agriculture, technology, and diseases to shape different societies, he focuses on the outcomes of human development. However, in games, players do not always make the most rational choices based on game ecology to survive. Instead, they can experiment with strategies that lead to various “what if” scenarios (Schulzke 2014), even losing the game. In this sense, environmental determinism in games prioritizes the simulation of the process rather than the explanation of outcomes. In fact, the process of a player mastering the gameplay often coincides with their growing awareness of the decisive impact of game ecology. In summary, environmental determinism in strategy games has derived from the social context but also evolved into new forms.

Therefore, this study proposes a new understanding of environmental determinism in video games: game ecology guides players to make certain choices to adjust to its features and changes, thus determining the meaning of the composed game narrative. In Civilization VI and Humankind, this narrative is about human history. In other video games, this narrative can be about love, friendship, conflicts, and all aspects of humanity. In other words, environmental determinism in video games expresses a core narrative that encourages players to focus on broader environmental issues instead of regional conflicts. Furthermore, this ideology also aligns with people’s growing desire for harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. In this sense, how to design game ecology becomes crucial and needs critical consideration.

Conclusion

This study proposes a new perspective on environmental determinism in strategy video games. In particular, this study analyzes game mechanics in two games, Civilization VI and Humankind, and discusses how game ecology influences player choices. For game developers, this new perspective can help them consciously reflect on and improve the design of game ecology. For scientific researchers, this perspective serves as a starting point to support future research on topics including game ecology, gameplay, and players.

Among these topics, a meaningful one is to study players’ reception of environmental determinism. Although players are constantly facing environmental issues in games, they tend to evade the confrontation of the issues by restarting a run instead of revolving or reflecting on them (Wolfe, 2023). Environmental determinism frequently appears as challenges that hinder or punish players, which may evoke feelings of frustration and powerlessness. Under this circumstance, how does game ecology affect players’ attitudes toward real-life environmental issues? More importantly, how can we design game ecology to positively impact players’ environmental behaviors?

It may be too soon to answer such questions. However, since environmental problems are possibly the most urgent and serious crisis in the contemporary era, raising awareness and calling for action is important (Wuebbles, Fahey, & Hibbard, 2017). With a substantial audience, video games can be very influential in this process. As Pratten (2015) states: “If future projects are to create greater impact, they need to connect to people where the people are – they’re mobile, they’re in the real world and of course they’re across platforms.” Our modern world operates on a mixture of virtual and real systems, so the more people know about the impact of digital media including video games, the more they can better critique and design the future. To this end, game ecology is not just about entertainment, but meaningful environmental issues that are relevant to all human beings.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Zihan Feng

Author Biography

Zihan Feng is a Ph.D. student in the Critical Game Design program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His work examines the design process and outcomes of video games, with a primary focus on promoting cross-cultural and inclusive game design.

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