Mythical Monsters or Cute Cartoons? Symbolic Representation of Plants & Animals in Virtual Geography Games

Interpretation and analysis of recreational re-creation and re-enactment paracultures reveals that plants, animals, and even the landscape are shaped to match and create a “folk environment” that evokes the genre’s mood. Plants and animals are personified and artistically rendered in a way that creates the desired virtual geography. In popular social networking games, animals and even plants are cartoonishly cute and exaggerated with simplistic rules for “tending” that bear little resemblance to farming. On the other end of the spectrum, interactive Massive Multiplayer Online environments use a stylization rich with mythological symbols and supernatural attributes that serve the narrative of heroic quests. This data shows that virtual geographies allow us the ultimate venue for comodifying ethnobiological organisms into symbolic representations that ultimately reflect our own desired identities and desire to connect with our folk perceptions of farm, wilderness, or nobility while detaching us from the actual environment.