For the Trees: Envisioning Sustainable Futures Through Ecomodded Minecraft

This extended abstract, presented at DiGRA 2026, examines the authors' use of "ecomodding" to transform Minecraft into a site of ecological reflection and critique. The central argument is that games can make environmental concerns visible not merely as backdrop but as interactive systems, and the authors pursue this by hosting a multiplayer Minecraft server powered entirely by solar energy. The work reflects on a ten-week public server run in summer 2025 and outlines plans for a second phase in 2026, positioning the project within ongoing debates about carbon-neutral game design and the energy footprint of online play.

The authors describe how their 2025 modpack, Gaia's Riddle, introduced pollution, extreme weather, temperature extremes, and resource scarcity into the game world. Among their observations, players tended to adopt an ecomodernist, anthropocentric stance, treating the natural environment as hostile and sheltering in a technologically sustained enclave while the surrounding biomes deteriorated. Players nonetheless developed strong communal bonds, forming cooperative groups and negotiating shared resources, and these social dynamics extended into conversations during moments when the solar battery depleted and the server went offline. Fluctuations in solar power were incorporated into the game as non-human agencies shaping gameplay, creating a diegetic link between the physical infrastructure and the virtual world.

A recurring concern in the paper is that ecogames often cast players as saviors or stewards, reinforcing human centrality even when the framing is ostensibly environmental. The authors question whether a critical posthumanist ecological encounter is achievable through a game at all, and they propose exploring ways to deconstruct the singular agency of players. Their forthcoming modpack, For the Trees, begins in a degraded wasteland and requires players to regreen the world, and the authors frame their project as a platform for emergent exploration rather than a puzzle with a correct answer.