Not sure if you’ve played Skyrim, but it’s good fun.

Over a few years, I ran a small YouTube-channel where I entertained my viewers with epic adventures through the fictional lands of Tamriel. This involved treating the digital world as if it was something that could be scientifically studied.

One of these creatures was an ice wraith or Kurophantasma sp. Giving it a scientific name made me think about taxonomy and phylogeny of these spectral-looking beings. It made my head hurt putting that into a video game setting, so I gave up.

Video game environments host overall extremely low biodiversity with organisms having low morphological and physiological detail, which is completely forgivable given the amount of work that goes into making creature models and animations.

Virtual depictions of flora and fauna are not why most people play video games, though you’d be surprised!