Manchester Game Centre members Dr Reuben Martens and Dr Jack Warren have published essays in Kelly I. Aliano’s and Adam Crowley’s edited collection Video Games and Environmental Humanities: Playing to Save the World. According to the editors, the collection demonstrates how ‘video games engage in a form of ecocriticism like any other humanities field might’ while offering ‘meaningful knowledge about environments, ecology, and/or environmental crisis’ (2024: vii). Reuben and Jack feature in the collection's ‘Video Games and Environments’ section. Reuben’s chapter, ‘Fuelling the City: On the Politics of Energy Resource Extraction in City-Building Simulators’, explores the perpetuation of petrocapitalism in the ideological underpinnings and infrastructural representations of city-building games. Jack’s chapter, ‘Queer Thinking with Digital Stones’, explores the ecological and affective dimensions of World of Warcraft, particularly concerning the importance of stones and their sensations in digital environments.

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