How Games Turn Us into Nature Photographers

Pharloom is not unlike our own world, on the brink of collapse if not having already crumbled due to the hubris of those who greedily attempt to rule it. This world is an apocalyptic one, and we witness firsthand what greed looks like all throughout this place. In an area called the “Underworks,” a large bug named Loam is found endlessly running on a machine, keeping the place functioning while tragically believing his hard work will allow him to reach The Citadel up above. In reality this area has been largely abandoned, and will only deteriorate further as the game goes on. 

There is something macabre that floats through my mind as I take my pretty pictures and document my video game safari. I cannot forget that the biological organisms responsible for these artistic recreations are not long for this world as it descends into ecological collapse. Recently I went on a walk and saw a clearly sick and injured pigeon; it stumbled along slowly with its head low and wounds along its body. I did not know what happened or how much time it had left, but I could tell that it would be dying soon. I’ve always been enchanted by birds, and seeing this sickly creature stumbling along the ground filled me with an immense grief. All these months later, I still remember my brief encounter with that small innocent thing at the end of its life. 

In games, these creatures will never grow old or die or change unless programmed to do so intentionally. They can be, if we want them to be (and often do), as pristine now as the first time we boot up the program. I often worry that I am selfishly archiving these digital encounters as a substitute for a real world that is going extinct. 

Everything in nature is of course ephemeral and meant to be so, but these days the natural world is becoming temporary in ways that feel increasingly undeserved. Back in the day, nature documentaries were largely inquisitive and scientific documents, but now they always carry a sense of dread and despair. You can’t press play on a new documentary without hearing David Attenborough’s famous voice tell you that the adorable animal you just saw is likely to go extinct soon due to the man-made devastations of climate change, pollution, and deforestation. The vibrant life of the earth that we love so much is decaying at unprecedented rates. 

Games themselves, and art broadly, sometimes feel as ephemeral and endangered as the creatures of the natural world. An industry is its own kind of environment, and its glaciers are melting too with every new layoff or studio closure. The seas are polluted, and it becomes harder and harder for the people who try to create and exist in this environment to keep their heads above water.

And so I take my photographs, not just of these dazzling creatures depicted in digital, but of the game itself, a fellow unique and endangered thing—a blue whale or a dodo in its own right. My camera roll fills up like that of an excited tourist in this alien world, and my hard drive feels just a little bit heavier than before. I hope they don’t all solely become pictures. 

Farouk Kannout is a Chicago-based writer and cultural critic who loves writing about games, film/tv, and how we make meaning from culture broadly. You can find him at @faroukk.bsky.social.