Rhetoric and recapture: theorising digital game ecologies through EA’s The Sims series

Abstract

This essay offers an ecocritical approach to studying games that accounts for the relationships between nature, technology and culture as they are configured by game design. By performing a reading of rhetoric and technological recapture in Electronic Arts’s (EA’s) The Sims series, the essay untangles how game design and game technology reflect ideologies – sometimes even conflicting ones – about how humans should relate to and interact with nature. This essay also argues that advancements in digital game technology afford designers and players the option to explore and perpetuate more complex and diverse ideologies about humans and nature that move away from anthropocentric and speciesist perspectives.

Keywords:

• animals
• culture
• ecocriticism
• wilderness
• post-humanism
• environment

Acknowledgements

I thank Sidney Dobrin, Terry Harpold and Susan Hegeman for their comments, suggestions and editorial advice throughout the research and writing process. Thank you as well to Kyle Bohunicky for support and encouragement. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Melissa Bianchi

Melissa Bianchi is a PhD student and teaching assistant in the University of Florida’s English Department. Her recent publications and research interests focus on digital media studies, human–animal studies and ecocriticsim, as well as rhetoric and writing.