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Game: Animals, Video Games, and Humanity
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 they’ve 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 children’s 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.
Video games conjure new worlds for those who play them, human or they’ve 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 children’s 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.
- GenresNonfiction
248 pages, Paperback
Published May 31, 2022
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26 people want to read
About the author
Tom Tyler
25 booksLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Tom Tyler, Ph.D. (2005) in Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Culture at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He has published widely on animals in philosophy and critical theory. His book CIFERAE: A Bestiary in Five Fingers is forthcoming.
Tom Tyler, Ph.D. (2005) in Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Culture at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He has published widely on animals in philosophy and critical theory. His book CIFERAE: A Bestiary in Five Fingers is forthcoming.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 19, 2022
Stylishly well-written in a manner that often outshines the more mundane games under examination.
April 8, 2025
13 essays that concern depictions of animals (and more vaguely animal-related subjects, such as infectious diseases and veganism) in a selection of videogames, ranging from Nintendo's Duck Hunt up to Super Meat Boy and Pandemic Inc. A significant number of these essays is essentially linguistic in nature, for example scrutinizing the true etymology of the english word "boar" — which is kind of marginal, but playfully innocent. The most insightful essay discusses the implementation of smell in videogames, deriving from the example of "smellovision" in Dog's Life for the PS2.
Where this truly loses me are some of the last few chapters, which delve into misguided partisan accusations of ableism and carnism in a select range of videogames mainly from the 90s, completely misunderstanding the entire competitive sportsmanslike angle of videogames (insultingly proxy-calling it a "toxic meritocratic rhetoric") and disregarding the developer's own perspective (Tom, the "normal" difficulty typically isn't "normal" for the populace, but "normal" for the developer — it's literally "the norm" i.e. the baseline from which they subsequently derive other difficulty levels), in favor of rooting for videogame designs that "anyone" can play and succeed, i.e. videogames as glorified movies rather than proper games with challenges.
Where this truly loses me are some of the last few chapters, which delve into misguided partisan accusations of ableism and carnism in a select range of videogames mainly from the 90s, completely misunderstanding the entire competitive sportsmanslike angle of videogames (insultingly proxy-calling it a "toxic meritocratic rhetoric") and disregarding the developer's own perspective (Tom, the "normal" difficulty typically isn't "normal" for the populace, but "normal" for the developer — it's literally "the norm" i.e. the baseline from which they subsequently derive other difficulty levels), in favor of rooting for videogame designs that "anyone" can play and succeed, i.e. videogames as glorified movies rather than proper games with challenges.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews