In this article Stefan Werning explores how the climate crisis and our struggle with imagining alternatives exacerbate the entrenchment of environmental communication. He explores the ways in which modifying commercial video games (ecomodding) can facilitate effective communication infrastructures to address this issue. Werning explores how the semi-intangible nature of climate change and related phenomena are always only partially knowable and communicable, and how this partiality can be affected through ecomodding.

“Ecomodding: Understanding and Communicating the Climate Crisis by Co-Creating Commercial Video Games” was published in October, 2021 and can be found [HERE].

Through providing agency to players, it is believed that games can be specifically effective as a way to communicate about climate change, and climate uncertainty. However, this approach brings with it its own issues, such as the carbon footprint of contemporary gaming technology and the disproportionate influence of larger publishers and platform owners. To address this issue, the article develops a comparative perspective on critical eco-focused modifications of commercial games (ecomods) as an ongoing discursive process. Ecomods for two major game franchises – The Sims and Civilization – are analyzed by Werning as communicative acts over time, quoting, re-phrasing or outright challenging the procedural rhetoric of the original games. The definition of eco games as boundary objects is thereby adapted to the characteristic multiplicity and redundancy of ecomods. This perspective acknowledges how modding can affect the games as communication infrastructure, e.g. considering that both franchises recently ‘responded’ with official expansions including environmental themes, Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (2019) and The Sims 4: Eco Lifestyle (2020).