Algorithmic Uncertainties in Video Game Forests

Throughout literary history, the space of the forest has been associated with uncertainty and mystery. This association endures in the digital forests of modern video games, but it also acquires new meanings as the unpredictability of algorithmic systems converges with questions about environmental crisis. Inspired by discussions on ecogaming as well as philosophical arguments on forests as multispecies communities, this article examines various ways in which growing or exploring digital forests can speak to a fundamental uncertainty in human-nonhuman relations. In mobile games that adopt a “play-to-plant” model (e.g., EverForest , Longleaf Valley , Forest ), digital forestry holds out a promise of direct real-world intervention that tends to elide the ethical uncertainties underlying gameplay. By contrast, in the survival game The Forest the AI shaping the behavior of nonplayer characters adapts to the ecological impact of the player's in-game actions, explicitly bringing together algorithmic unpredictability and the possibility of more-than-human community.