Virtual Nature
Environmentalism in Two Multi-player Online Games
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v4i3.135Keywords:
online gaming, nature religionAbstract
The newest genre of popular culture, computer supported online gameworlds like World of Warcraft (WoW) and Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), offers fictional environments where people may explore real-world ethical issues. WoW assumes that people are inevitably locked in competition over scarce resources, and therefore cannot come to a consensus to preserve nature. LOTRO, in contrast, suggests that a religious consensus is possible, but it may never be able to triumph completely over evils like pollution. Both of these gameworlds offer environments where people may enjoy social life and achieve social status at lower resource use than in the so-called ‘real world’.
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Bohannon, John. 2008. ‘Scientists Invade Azeroth’, Science 320: 1592. doi:10.1126/science.1161351.
Bransford, John D., Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking (eds.). 1999. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington, DC: National Academy Press).
Catullus. 2008. ‘Letter to a Supernatural Being’, in Andy Miah (ed.), Human Futures: Art in an Age of Uncertainty (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press): 247-55.
Corneliussen, Hilde G., and Jill Walker Rettberg (eds.). 2008. Digital Culture, Play and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader (Cambridge: MIT Press).
Ducheneaut, Nicolas, Nick Yee, Eric Nickell, and Robert J. Moore. 2006. ‘Building an MMO with Mass Appeal: A Look at Gameplay in World of Warcraft’, Games and Culture 1: 281 317. doi:10.1177/1555412006292613.
Frank, Robert Worth, Jr. 1953. ‘The Art of Reading Medieval Personification-Allegory’, ELH 20.4: 237-50.
Gottsdanker, Josephine S., and E. Anne Pidgeon. 1969. ‘Current Reading Tastes of Young Adults’, Journal of Higher Education 40.5: 381-85. doi:10.2307/1979740.
Greeley, Andrew. 1989. ‘Protestant and Catholic: Is the Analogical Imagination Extinct?’, American Sociological Review 54: 485-502. doi:10.2307/2095873.
Jaramillo, Fernando, Hubert Kempf, and Fabien Moizeau. 2001. ‘Conspicuous Consumption, Social Status and Clubs’, Annales d’Économie et de Statistique 63/64, Interactions Sociales et Comportements ?conomiques: 321-44.
Nardi, Bonnie A. 2010. My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press).
Rumilisoun. 2010 (in press). ‘Rebirth of Worlds’, ACM networker.
Samuelson, Larry. 2004. ‘Information-Based Relative Consumption Effects’, Econometrica 72.1: 93-118. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0262.2004.00479.x.
Stark, Rodney. 1996. The Rise of Christianity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Stark, Rodney, and William Sims Bainbridge. 1985. The Future of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press).
________. 1987. A Theory of Religion (New York: Toronto/Lang).
Tolkien, J.R.R. 1954 [1973]. The Fellowship of the Ring (New York: Ballantine).
Tomlinson, Bill. 2010. Greening through IT: Information Technology for Environmental Sustainability (Cambridge: MIT Press).
Veblen, Thorstein. 1899. The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Macmillan).
Wagner, Richard. 1849 [1895]. The Art-Work of the Future, in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner): 69-213.
Additional Files
Published
2010-10-04
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Bainbridge, W. S. (2010). Virtual Nature: Environmentalism in Two Multi-player Online Games. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 4(3), 135-152. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v4i3.135
