The Walden Video Game

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/27/opinion/the-walden-video-game.html

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To the Editor:

Re “In Walden Video Game, the Object Is Stillness” (front page, Feb. 25):

It will be interesting to see if this innovative video game can actually help connect people to nature. The main problem is that a video game is a synthetic device that can provide only a fragment of nature’s sensations.

It can reproduce sights and sounds, but it cannot directly present other sensory experiences, like the sensations of cool breezes and warm sunshine or the scents of plants and animals.

If a person attends to real nature around her and keeps all her senses open and alive (as Thoreau advocated), a sense of deep peace sometimes arrives, but I doubt that a video game can provide this experience.

Still, it’s great that a video game will introduce people to Thoreau. Players are likely to get an idea of why he valued nature so highly. And who knows? Perhaps, as the game’s developer suggests, players will be inspired to drop their electronic devices and experience real nature freshly and directly.

WILLIAM CRAIN

New York

The writer is a professor of psychology at City College, CUNY.