Project Title: 
Developing an Ecological Game Design Guide for Responsive Natural Environments in Video Games

Project Description:
Natural environments in video games are often designed as static backdrops, visually lush yet ecologically asleep. Players move across landscapes that look alive but lack cause-and-effect relationships between environmental elements. This thesis addresses the gap by developing an ecological game design guide that proposes a framework, methodology, and accessible process for designing responsive virtual ecosystems. The framework introduces spatial and temporal lenses, which orient designers toward systems thinking across nested scales of environmental behavior. The methodology pairs analogue prototyping techniques, including system mapping and paper-based simulation, with digital planning strategies for managing growing system complexity. Developed through a research through and for design approach, insights were generated across three iterative Unity prototypes and revised through guided journaling, contextual review, and a pilot classroom assignment with undergraduate design students. The resulting guide is intended for game designers, from hobbyists to practitioners, who wish to move natural environments from background scenery into active participants in gameplay.

Committee Members:
Maria Palazzi (Advisor), Shadrick Kuteh, Will Nickley

Keywords:
ecological game design, virtual ecosystems, systems thinking, research through design, research for design, spatial and temporal scales, game environment design, procedural simulation

Exhibition Artifact: 
Tileset 1, Tileset 2, Tileset 3

Artifact Description:
Throughout graduate school, I've explored ways to convert digital work into physical artifacts. First, I bought a Line-us drawing robot, which let me experiment with computational drawing in a small 5"×3" space. Then I converted my Ender 3 into a 2D plotter, feeding it G-Code and using it to draw a dot for each pixel of a digital artwork. Now I work with an AxiDraw V3, using p5.js to convert pixelated images into hatchable fills I can send to the machine.

These three prints are tilesets for simulations I created as part of my thesis research. Each contains various  tiles, the small units that, when compiled together, represent a world as a whole image. Tilesets are commonly used in game development to reduce computation by reusing the same image assets. Yet despite their similarity, each tile carries behavior, and when placed alongside others in the simulation, produces a unique composition of space. These prints exist to feed my curiosity about what these tiles might be doing, and what else might contribute to their system.

Technical Description:
Three prints in three 9"x9" white frames. Ink on heavyweight paper.