Game: Animals, Video Games, and Humanity

(Paperback)

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A playful reflection on animals and video games, and what each can teach us about the other

Video games conjure new worlds for those who play them, human or otherwise: theyve been played by cats, orangutans, pigs, and penguins, and they let gamers experience life from the perspective of a pet dog, a predator or a prey animal, or even a pathogen. In Game, author Tom Tyler provides the first sustained consideration of video games and animals and demonstrates how thinking about animals and games together can prompt fresh thinking about both.

Game comprises thirteen short essays, each of which examines a particular video game, franchise, aspect of gameplay, or production in which animals are featured, allowing us to reflect on conventional understandings of humans, animals, and the relationships between them. Tyler contemplates the significance of animals who insert themselves into video games, as protagonists, opponents, and brute resources, but also as ciphers, subjects, and subversive guides to new ways of thinking. These animals encourage us to reconsider how we understand games, contesting established ideas about winning and losing, difficulty settings, accessibility, playing badly, virtuality, vitality and vulnerability, and much more.

Written in a playful style, Game draws from a dizzying array of sources, from childrens television, sitcoms, and regional newspapers to medieval fables, Shakespearean tragedy, and Edwardian comedy; from primatology, entomology, and hunting and fishing manuals to theological tracts and philosophical treatises. By examining video games through the lens of animals and animality, Tyler leads us to a greater humility regarding the nature and status of the human creature, and a greater sensitivity in dealings with other animals.

Reviews

"With his characteristic combination of wit and erudition, Tom Tyler explores the powers of virtualization that stretch from the OED and the literary canon to video games both old and new. As he demonstrates, the power of reading closely, watching keenly, and listening carefully is an invitation to play otherwise, to push back against the force of the generic, whose foremost example might well be what we call, dumbly, the animal."Cary Wolfe, author of What is Posthumanism and founding director, 3CT: Center for Critical and Cultural Theory, Rice University

"Ducks, dogs, sheep, and squidnot to mention dung beetles. These and many more creatures roam through Tom Tyler's lively ruminations on the nature of animals in video games. With its delightful zigzags through etymology, folklore, literature, and history, Tyler shows how thinking about video games by considering the animals within defamiliarizes videogames, recenters the nonhuman, and revitalizes our sense of our own humanness."Mark Sample, Davidson College

"A brisk, insightful, and accessible study of the myriad relationships between animals and games... Tylers Game is a thoughtful reflection on what it means to be human in a hypermediated world on the verge of breakdown, with an eye toward a more ethical multispecies future to come. "Ancillary Review of Books

"A delightful and quirky stroll through everything from game design to primatology and Shakespearean tragedy to the sitcom Frasier."Animal Studies Journal

"In an era of egregious mistreatment and collective willed ignorance about animals and their lives, Game knowingly offers innocent fun with its roster of virtual beasts, alongside an unapologetic investment in the welfare of real animals."Gamers with Glasses

"The book is explicitly designed as a Trojan horse that might appear to be a playful series of essays about the role of animals in video games, but actually poses deep-rooted philosophical questions about what it means to be human."New Formations

Author Bio

Tom Tyler is lecturer in digital culture at the University of Leeds. He is editor of Animal Beings, coeditor of Animal Encounters, and author of CIFERAE: A Bestiary in Five Fingers (Minnesota, 2012).