Grand Theft Eco: Environmental Futures of Los Angeles is a creative film project that repurposes the game engine and design of the video game Grand Theft Auto V to explore possible eco-futures of Los Angeles in the year 2050. Over the past five years, I’ve co-led (with Ursula Heise) a large team of UCLA undergrad and grad students, postdoctoral researchers, and affiliated faculty to develop three 30-minute animated “machinima” videos about environmental change and its consequences for a major metropolis. The animation is being developed on the basis of “modding” the storyworld of the video game Grand Theft Auto V to produce a new vision of ecological futures in Los Angeles. The films offer an alternative to dominant dystopian narratives about climate change futures by developing nuanced storyworlds in which crucial environmental problems have been addressed, but issues of social inequality continue to trouble how the solutions are experienced. The machinima videos translate research about climate change, urban ecology, urban biodiversity, migration, and infrastructure into a popular storytelling format to inspire visions of environmental solutions and improved urban futures without naïve optimism: instead, they show how the entanglement of ecological with social problems will require continued thought and activism.
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For updates on the project, see our IoES page.
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