| This dissertation seeks to explore and address two critical inquires: (1) If and how game landscapes--particularly those of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) genre--can convey environmental values, and (2) how those in the humanistic discipline of ecocriticism can better study these increasingly popular landscapes for their cultural significance. In order to tackle these questions, I perform an ecocritical analysis of three virtual landscapes, identifying the unique aesthetic and environmental rhetoric employed by game designers. I conclude with a careful consideration of how these games reflect and can potentially influence cultural ethical behavior, and how and why game designers may strive to incorporate additional ethical subtext in future landscapes.;Borrowing key concepts from the fields of game studies, art and film history, landscape design, and ethical phenomenology, this analysis seeks to engage the visual and procedural rhetoric of these landscapes holistically. Subjects for examination include game paratext, interface, movement through the virtual game world, the artistic traditions underlying game landscapes and architecture, and how interaction with the game world may or may not promote specific ethical inquiry. |
