In considering their spatial vastness and expansive narrative universes, online multiplayer games could be an interesting site for examining connections to real world issues, or whether games act as cultural texts. One such game is The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), developed by ZeniMax Online Studios and launched in 2014 (ZOS 2014). It is set in a vast fantasy world where players encounter and interact with a variety of creatures and populations. This vastness draws on previous single-player games published by Bethesda Studios as part of The Elder Scrolls series. With each title, the universe of Tamriel, and of various pocket dimensions where stories unfold, has expanded to include thousands of quests. In ESO, new chapters are added each year and explore various cultural contexts and political plots. The peoples who inhabit the game world are organized in races, a role-playing mechanic that is rooted in J. R. R. Tolkien’s approach to categorization. At this time of writing, there are ten playable races in ESO, each with their own histories, politics, cultural practices, and systems of beliefs (UESPWiki 2024a). These histories, practices, and beliefs often overlap and interconnect in ways that may, at times, bear uncanny resemblance to those in the real world. The ever-expanding world of ESO, in terms of both spatiality and temporality, enables the configuration of seemingly unending dynamics between the peoples who inhabit it and opens up potential opportunities for reflection on how such dynamics mirror real-world past and present.

Another example from ESO alludes to a different type of reckoning and speaks more of how the game encodes artifacts that echo contemporary discursive practices. In 2022, ESO’s developers introduced the druids as a new culture in the game’s extensive narrative universe. Players learn about druidic society through quests, by reading books, by speaking with various non-player characters, by collecting various objects, or through world events called “random encounters.” By engaging with these game elements, players find out that druids observe customs and practices based on different interpretations of a creed called “The True Way.” Different interpretations of the True Way have led to a schism in this society, dividing druids into three circles. Two of the druidic circles, Eldertide and Stonelore, reflect dynamics that correspond to current competing discourses in the real world regarding our responses to the climate emergency. While exploring, players can encounter a scene where a brother and a sister debate the interpretation of the True Way. The sister is part of the Eldertide circle where druids dismiss and become aggressive towards any intrusion into the natural world. While her discourse is not new, it is young and radical, whereby there are no compromises when it comes to safeguarding the natural world: “Do you expect me to dance and sing while those blasted nobles use our forests for sport? When peasants tear down all the animals’ homes to make useless fences for their farms? Something has to be done, or we’ll lose everything of worth that’s here” (ZOS 2014, “Legacy of the Bretons”). The brother’s perspective is as moderate as it can get. His Stonelore circle is like an open society, where druids strive to teach by example about living in harmony with nature: “it’s a simple matter. Nature is home to all. But many merchants and city dwellers don’t see that as truth. My sister feels slighted by the nobles of Gonfalon Bay. But I know the value of patience. All things change with time” (ZOS 2014, “Legacy of the Bretons”). While the brother believes that change comes with time, the sister and her circle demand immediate change. The perspectives outlined by these two characters resemble the competing views between environmental activists and other structures of power in the real world. Jens Marquardt (Marquardt 2020) identifies tensions between youth activism, such as the student-led Fridays for Future movement and the hegemonic responses to the climate emergency. Marquardt (Marquardt 2020, 4) argues that these tensions manifest as a space from where new political imaginaries emerge and whereby contested visions of the future influence each other’s discourses. The dynamics between the druids may invite reflexivity or enable relatability among various players. At the same time, this random encounter situates ESO, or rather the game’s 2022 chapter, “The Legacy of the Bretons,” in more obvious ways within our present negotiations with climate futures.

ESO overall is not explicitly engaging the player in an ecocritical discourse. The goal of the game is to immerse players in a world where one may come to believe that anything is possible and, in doing so, to maintain a constant player base. However, examples such as the narratives surrounding the druids may add to approaches in commercially successful games in addressing environmental concerns through an ecocritical lens. Navarro Remesal and Víctor Manuel (Remesal and Manuel 2019) are among the scholars who propose possible concepts that could help to situate games within an ecocritical frame. This framework may help to identify games that “invite us to think about nature, to better explore our relationship with it, and to be critical of the problems of our time” (Remesal and Manuel 2019, 25). Drawing on Ian Bogost (Bogost 2007), Remesal and Manuel (Remesal and Manuel 2019) point to the game’s procedural rhetoric, that is, how the world of the game is represented and the possibilities it affords or prohibits discursively through its rules. Then, Remesal and Manuel propose that the ethics and moral consideration embedded in the representation of animals, such as whether they are treated with care or as obstacles, can serve as another lens through which players could be engaged ecocritically. Finally, the authors ask whether a rhetoric of degrowth could be possible, whereby the game would “require systems and discourses that did not reward infinite accumulation, that pointed out the damage of excessive consumption in the whole virtual world, reward moderation, showed imbalances between regions, and/or recognized the waste produced by the action of the player” (Remesal and Manuel 2019, 17).

Noting that the corpus of explicitly ecocritical games is limited, Hans-Joachim Backe (Backe 2017) also proposes six criteria that may help to investigate the extent to which existing popular games may engage the player to think critically about their relationship with the environment and inspire ethical ecological thinking. Backe (Backe 2017) draws on Miguel Sicart (Sicart 2011), who proposes that proceduralism is deterministic and may afford too much authorial intent to the game, which in turn limits the possibilities of play. Instead, players may be engaged in ecological thinking in ludic spaces defined by rules that are ethical values in themselves (Sicart 2011). Backe’s criteria include whether the player engages with the environment both semiotically and ludically; whether the modes of engagement produce coherence or friction (or, differently put, whether they produce dissonances); the centrality or peripheral positioning of ecological topics; whether nature is treated in specific or informed ways; whether the mechanics are anthropocentric or other perspectives are available; and finally the tone employed in approaching ecological topics, whether it be “affirmative, critical, or ironical” (Backe 2017, 48).

Through these lenses, ESO offers some limited possibilities to engage with the game world in an ecocritical sense. The simulation of the natural environment is mostly geared towards exploration and adventuring. The distribution of natural resources that can be used for crafting speaks more to the engagement with the game’s world and its economy rather than actively inviting reflection on the consequences of the player’s interaction with the natural world. At times, hostile animals appear to be positioned in ways that discourage confrontation or, at the very least, allow players to avoid it if they wanted to. For example, treasure chests are sometimes placed in the proximity of a bear’s den. The player can choose to defeat the bear to get to the treasure faster or wait a few seconds until the bear moves away to a safe distance. Thus, if for whichever reason, the player does not want to enter combat with hostile animals, the option to wait for them to move away is often available. It is also not uncommon for a bear cub to be placed close by, which may suggest some design intention to engage the player in a more observant relationship with the natural environment. Similarly, there are at least two instances where caches of crafting resources are placed in safe distance from wildlife scenes. Players can collect all the resources scattered across the cache areas without entering the triggering range of nearby hostile animals. In these scenes, creatures from the local fauna engage in various interactions, from playful to confrontational. Although they are rather scarce, such scenes seem to be placed with authorial intent. It could be possible that in these contexts level designers may have intended for players to engage with the game’s fauna in ways other than mostly combat.

While they are not the focus of the chapter, the quests involving the druids and their practices seep into the main story of the “High Isle” chapter, with a nature spirit occupying a prominent role. Similarly, daily repeatable quests in the High Isle game zone include missions where the player is hired to care for the natural world. Albeit, it may be unlikely that players engage with daily quests with the same attention each time they repeat them. Nevertheless, if the player pursues them consistently, such missions may gradually instill quest-specific messages that point to ideas about protecting the natural world. While for the most part, the game mechanics are anthropomorphic, some quests transform the player into other creatures for a short while, such as a monkey or a mouse. Players can also acquire the Lycanthropy skill line, which affords transformation into a werewolf for a brief period. These mechanics alter some of the ways in which transformed player characters interact with the world, such as player movement or the way objects are grabbed or carried. However, the brevity of these transformations may offer little if any effect in an ecocritical sense. Finally, particularly in the “High Isle” chapter, the overall tone in relation to ecological topics is often affirmative and points towards a more responsible relationship with the environment. The tone used by characters such as the druid sister from the random encounter, and the position of her Eldertide Circle, are critical. This critical tone is maintained performatively though the presence of the Eldertides as hostile agents in the High Isle zone. This hostility is justified diegetically primarily as an expression of Eldertides’ discontent with the urban encroachment of the natural world. Overall, it could be argued that there are some elements of ecocriticism present in the game that may draw attention to environmental issues. However, rather than actively encouraging ecological thinking, these examples may more likely point to the game’s quality as cultural text, as it records and indexes prominent discursive practices in contemporary society.

While in “Harsh Lesson” the player is positioned in a role that emphasizes the act of listening, in “A Thief to Catch a Thief” they are to decide the fate of a culturally significant object. Moreover, in the latter, regardless of the player’s decision, the quest reward is fashioned as a sword of justice, affording a sense of making things right at the conclusion of the story. It could be argued that in this quest, the player acts as what Christopher Patterson (Patterson 2014) calls an “umpire.” Patterson argues that games such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age (BioWare) position the player as a sort of cultural manager in relation to their team, whereby the negotiation of cultural difference is fashioned in terms of labour roles (Patterson 2014, 9). However, the ESO player resolves ages-old grievances rather than managing cultural differences, as Patterson observes in the Mass Effect series. Like most digital games that enjoy commercial success, particularly within the RPG genre, ESO casts the player into a world that is vastly rich in multicultural dynamics. In quests that navigate cultural or political tensions, the player is often referred to by quest givers as an outsider who is best suited to cast a decisive vote based on their untainted experience with the communities or political tension at hand. In such cases, just like Shepard in Mass Effect, the player character “exists outside of history” (Patterson 2014, 15). Such positioning renders violent historical and economic processes as things that need to be transcended instead of addressed. Much critical work in the 2010s draws attention to discursive practices in RPGs that may reflect, reproduce, and reify neoliberal values, practices, and regimes of knowledge. As Gerald Voorhees puts it, the multiculturalism represented in Mass Effect is a neoliberal one, whereby it “embraces the other to the extent that the other has a calculated worth that ‘brings something to the table’” (Voorhees 2012, 263). Voorhees (Voorhees 2009) also proposes that procedural changes in Final Fantasy across three identified moments in the series’ history may reflect shifts in neoliberal discourse in the real world. While initially the game promoted heterogeneity in the configuration of team members for achieving class complementarity in combat situations, in later iterations, such as Final Fantasy XII, the series “abandons the principle of classes altogether” (Voorhees 2009). Moreover, while the worldmaking dynamic still relies on race, ethnicities, and nationality, these are constructed “only as obstacles to be overcome” (Voorhees 2009). Finally, one of the foremost concerns expressed by game scholars in this body of critique is the tendency in RPGs to conflate culture with race, which for example in Mass Effect speaks to “both biological and ideological difference” (Voorhees 2012, 266); in Final Fantasy XII produces a “transcendental subject, positioned beyond and above identity” (Voorhees, 2009); and in World of Warcraft is reminiscent of “the archaic and destructive paradigm of biological race” (Douglas, 2012, 285). Such a critique casts a cautionary light on the games’ potential as persuasive media to perpetuate discursive practices fashioned as neoliberal utopian visions of worlds that erase race, class, and nationalities as identity markers, while they carry imperial undertones (Patterson, 2014).

Similar to most fantasy online RPGs, ESO employs a race and class system inspired by the Tolkien tradition. As the discussions above suggest, this system deploys essentializing elements to the construction of player characters. These elements range from distinct physical traits to specific affinities or innate traits that are framed as passive abilities and are rooted in the dynamics of the game world. Passive bonuses reflect some elements of culture or environments associated with each race. For example, with their “woodland affinity,” the Wood Elves, or Bosmer, benefit from increased speed, reduced fall damage, and enhanced resistance to disease and poison (UESPWiki 2024a). Khajiit, on the other hand, are afforded increased chances to successfully pickpocket, and their bonuses reflect their “natural versatility and guile” (UESPWiki 2024a). Comparably, the Nords are described as naturally “strong and hardy” and benefit from increased duration of drink buffs and resistance to cold (UESPWiki 2024a). Some of the traits for each race have more of a flavour value, as they are not specifically beneficial in combat, such as decreased fall damage for the Bosmer and the Khajiit advantage in pickpocketing. As such, they may be indicative of the nature-culture conflation seen in other RPGs.

If character progression and combat affordances in ESO could be read through the lens of procedural rhetoric, it could be argued that the game’s creative direction has been employing diversity as one of its main headlines. At this time, there are 10 races and seven classes that players can mix and match, with the potential to create up to 20 characters on a server. Like in most online multiplayer RPGs, the combat system in ESO is exceedingly complex. However, so far, the game has placed a strong emphasis on class identity. Performatively, each class can be interpreted as manifestations of specific kinds of magic. For example, sorcerers command lightning and magic from a different dimension, nightblades employ shadow magic, and templars use solar magic. Players are afforded three sets of class skills. Each set of class skills caters to one of the three roles needed to complete group activities: damage dealer, healer, and tank. All class skills that enable an immediate action can be eventually morphed into one of two options for obtaining a differently nuanced variation of the skill’s original version. Morphs can be changed at any time by making in-game currency donations to specific divine figures. Players are encouraged to experiment to the furthest extent with personalizing their gameplay, and each class could theoretically successfully perform in any of the three dungeon roles. In addition to class skills, there are currently numerous additional metrics that can be added to personalize gameplay. Players can purchase active and passive perks from a Champion Menu by using experience points converted into Champion Points as currency. They can also activate one of 13 available boons, with each boon offering a specific advantage. Hundreds of armour and weapons sets can be collected, and, at this time of writing, 80 sets can be crafted. Players mix and match sets and set pieces to combine traits and bonuses in different ways. Furthermore, players can craft various consumable items, such as foods, drinks, potions, and poisons to temporarily increase, restore, or impair the resources needed for casting desired spells. With the exception of consumables, the developers modify the combat system at least every three months. These changes may involve increasing or decreasing the metrics on particular class skills and race bonuses, or modifying the advantages or limitations embedded in armour sets. This approach in game development produces several outcomes. On the one hand, it maintains the player base engaged. By modifying preferred or previously advantageous affordances, developers introduce new challenges and experiences. On the other hand, no race or class remains indefinitely more advantageous in relation to the others. Finally, some players chase METAs, or “most efficient tactics available,” whereby they experiment with, or theorycraft, various configurations to identify or even lay claim to the best “builds” in the game.

The examples above give only a brief glimpse into ESO’s combat system and into the dynamics that emerge from the constant changing of the system’s procedures. Arguably, although the combat system is an integral part of the play experience, not all players are interested in theorycrafting, or chasing METAs. Since its launch, ESO has grown to include new game modes, such as the housing system or the collectible card game “Tales of Tribute.” These systems do not involve or explicitly require the use of combat abilities. Similarly, ESO may attract players for its approach to the player-run economy or for the storytelling it adds to the existing Elder Scrolls narrative universe. However, the examples pertaining to the combat system illustrate some of the ways through which approaches to game design may reflect shifts in discursive practices, including those concerning the neoliberal project. The constant iterative process of finding solutions to problems, such as new boss mechanics or periodic changes to the combat system, may reify a type of calculative and strategic rationality concerned with optimization and efficiency. If the combat system in ESO could be read as a cultural text, it could be argued that it reflects a world in which fast social, political, and economic changes demand adaptability, creativity, innovation, and openness to change, not very different from current spaces increasingly occupied by generative systems and environmental emergencies.

While the examples I have proposed tackle different subject matters, they all explore past legacies and their traces in the present, and invite reflection on issues that are still relevant in the real world. The possibility of interpretation draws on the inherently intertextual character of digital games. Sanford and colleagues (Sanford et al. 2017, 111) propose a complex learning system built around games that would foster a literacy of intertextuality. They point out that players already develop a sophisticated intertextual literacy by repeatedly drawing connections between different games, genres, popular media, and other texts (Sanford Hopper, and Burren 2016, 120), including their own experiences (Sanford, Hopper, and Burren 2016, 123–124). These connections extend into other spaces, such as blogs, social networks, or game forums. Indeed, James Paul Gee (Gee 2012) notes that the in-game experience is only half of the story. More often than not, players theorycraft, debate game mechanics and meanings, and document narratives, items, references, and strategies outside the game space.

In addition to other media, digital games may contribute new forms of reflexivity, which are enabled by a host of affordances unique to the medium. First, as Janet Murray pointed out more than 25 years ago, digital games can be set apart from other media by the increased sense of agency experienced by players (Murray 1997, 123). However, as Murray notes, agency is not afforded by interactivity alone. Rather, agency emerges through the availability of choices players can make when engaging with the game world (Murray 1997, 125). Indeed, game designers prescribe a series of outcomes to the possible choices players can make. However, observing the changes in the world that derive from choosing one course of action over another may invite reflection upon the decisions one has made. Another attribute that may contribute a new kind of reflexivity is situated understanding, which speaks to the experiential character of the medium. In digital games, like in the real world, players learn by doing, and “experience,” as Shaffer and colleagues (Shaffer et al. 2005) put it, “the concrete realities that words and symbols describe” (Shaffer et al. 2005, 106). A player understands and navigates the world of a game on its own terms and in its own language and solves problems and challenges with the tools available within the game world. While the understanding of a game world and its dynamics is contextual, sometimes this understanding may connect to issues from the real world. As the examples discussed in this paper show, ESO’s game rules, narratives, or the creative direction of some quests can engender reflexivity on questions surrounding discrimination, justice, responses to climate emergencies, or protecting the vulnerable.

With the audience for digital games increasing considerably each year, this medium may eventually bring important contributions to the classroom, as it already does, whether it be in grade school (McCall 2022), high school (Sanford, Hopper, and Burren 2016), or in higher education. Commercial titles could be explored as potential additions to the curriculum, as they may enhance comprehension by introducing a degree of experientiality when dealing with theory or abstract subjects. Indeed, one does not simply play a game. Rather, one may also often engage with narratives that are reminiscent of lived experiences that can hold immediate or historic implications. This paper proposed several ways through which one can identify traces of the past, as well as the present, encoded in the narratives and rules of a game by drawing on the online multiplayer RPG The Elder Scrolls Online (ZOS 2014). One of the remaining tasks is to find suitable and accessible examples that could be used in the classroom or could serve as potential models from which games can be created for learning.