Brooke Walker
An Alternative Paradigm
This research explores the potential of utilising systemic design in the creation of a virtual game ecosystem to generate ecological consciousness, which is an alternative perception of the natural world that focuses on realising a mutual coexistence between humans, nature, and the non-human. Presently, systemic design within video games is not situated firmly within the academic realm, and this research proposes a definition for the term as designing game systems that are aware of each other, and therefore have the ability to interact. Through traversal of design research surrounding ecosystems and their position within video games, it was found that evolving game environments and their living components from background scenery to ecological models that have their agency foregrounded has the potential to drive philosophical ideology. Employing the cyclic methodology of iterative design, the creation of the game artefact through numerous prototypes presents a thriving digital ecosystem, that embodies principles of systemic design and used reflective practice to investigate how to coalesce it to provoke alternative environmental thinking. The eventual artefact presented is Apis, which is Latin for ‘honeybee’, the virtual reality game-world and its’ play endeavouring to foster ecological consciousness through observation, moments of enchantment, and limiting the player’s ability to dominate and destroy. Apis demonstrates that designers don’t have to shame, teach or punish the player to present moral precepts, and ecological consciousness was created through this enforcement of placing the player equivalent to bees or rain within its virtual ecosystem. This research has the potential to cast new shadows in the way designers can make, and players’ can think about games.
Video 19 - Through comparison of two videos of the predator/ prey system (one without the icons implemented, and one with them (Video 4:19) I noticed how much understanding it added to the prototypes and comprehending the behaviours being undertaken by the simulated animals. Through the use of these icons, the player is able to observe and understand the specific behaviours, activities and thoughts undertaken by the animals through a mutual form of communication. The prototype uses a sense of empathy, between the animals and player, by placing the “non-human” on a foundation of understanding to potentially elicit moments of ecological consciousness.
Video 8 - This video showcases that when the ‘decomposition’ reaches zero, the animal’s flesh fully disintegrates and a random amount of mushrooms, with random sizes and positions, spawn around the bones. This emergent idea was used to incorporate a link between fauna and flora in Apis (Video 4:8). By having the mushrooms grow on animal corpses, the mushrooms rely on the animals to die in order to grow and feed. The mushrooms are then edible by herbivores; This creates a mutual, cyclical reliance on each other, and exhibits integral connections between animals and plants within an ecosystem.
Video 14 - Apis's bees are active pollinators, however, they were developed to be wary of the weather. If there’s a storm, they return home and don’t come back out until it is safe to do so.
