Trigger Happy
Shoot first, ask questions later
Steven Poole on videogames’ responsibility to our planet
To simulate natural beauty without acknowledging global warming is, arguably, a political statement in itself
Historians of the future will note that while human beings were destroying their natural environment, their computer-generated entertainment offered ever more beautiful visions of a Nature that was receding from the reality beyond the screen. Gorgeous vistas of unspoiled meadows and blue skies were gradually being confined to the digital world, as though they were UNESCO VR recreations of heritage sites that were crumbling beyond repair.
Disney’s film Moana, for example, is a stunning example of the state of the art in digital naturalism, its treatment of the play of light on water especially miraculous. But the film is also a cultural lament for a closeness with nature that we have lost – a loss, indeed, that the film implies is our fault. For the trickster demigod Maui stole the heart of the Mother Island in order to give it to humans, instigating a time of rotting coconuts and ship-wrecking storms: Nature taking its revenge on those who dared meddle with it. Only by respecting the natural world and acknowledging our position as embedded in the global ecosystem rather than superior to it, the film argues, can we survive.
In videogames, however, the loving simulation of nature rarely comes with such messages. In the blissful Switch remake of Link’s Awakening, Koholint Island is, on the surface, a cartoonishly beautiful paradise whose overpowering sentimental mode is one of nostalgia, both for unspoiled islands and for a simpler way of life. And many of the most memorable natural environments in modern games are, of course, just lush backdrops for more of the old cordite-fumed ultraviolence, as in the Far Cry series.
To simulate such natural beauty without acknowledging the changes caused by global warming is, arguably, a political statement in itself, but one that defaults to complacent inaction. To say so, at least, would be in line with some environmentalists’ criticism of past wildlife documentaries presented by David Attenborough, which – the critics complained – celebrated the natural world without emphasising enough the havoc that was being wreaked upon it. Whether or not those criticisms were entirely fair, it is notable that Attenborough’s latest series, Our Planet, features regular reminders that the habitats it presents are now endangered. It would be silly to demand that every videogame contained similar warnings, but artistic representations are always political in the sense that they embody decisions about what to leave out and how to contextualise what is left in. There is no ideologically neutral portrayal of the natural world possible, just as there is no ideologically neutral portrayal of, say, modern warfare.
On the other hand, an argument could be essayed that, in the increasing realism of their presentation of the natural world, games are on a path to fulfil a kind of VR-led conservationism, by means of which we may happily travel to exotic environments in games without doing so in reality, and thereby avoid the destruction that results from over-tourism in beautiful hotspots such as turtle beaches, as well as the carbon emissions resulting from aviation. There also exists the gruesome genre of the hunting simulator, in which the player can exult in shooting “trophy” animals on safari, which at least is preferable to doing so in real life.
A more sinister implication, doubtless not intended by the developers, is nonetheless discernible in those videogames that create a gorgeous alien version of the natural world. Rare’s recent announcement of Everwild, for example, showed a teaser trailer that is quite stunning in its bucolic idealism: the unfamiliar yet comforting wildlife gambolling happily over mountainous pastures. As with the lovable alien flora and fauna of something like No Man’s Sky, such a vision of unspoilt otherworldliness could be taken to imply that it doesn’t matter what we do to Earth, since there are countless other planets which are still in a state of naively cute Nature, untroubled by the smokestacks of heavy industry. This is the panglossian, rightwing ideal of space travel as a way to expiate all the sins committed against our home planet.
In a more favourable interpretation, it is a vision of Jeff Bezos’ plan to move humanity into orbiting habitats so as to turn Earth into a nature reserve. But either way it represents an escape from our environment rather than a commitment to living in it as good citizens. The Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year for 2019 was “climate emergency”, and in an emergency, fantasy can look irresponsible.