ABSTRACT
This chapter uses three videogames which put players in command of animal bodies as a way into debates about the player/avatar relationship and the discourse of ‘immersion’ and ‘flow’, exploring claims that digital media address us not as rational agents but as ‘animalized’ bundles of impulses, appetites and reflexes. Tokyo Jungle attempts to create a seamless (or seamless-seeming) cybernetic connection between the player and their animal avatars; Octodad, by contrast, makes players grapple with an intentionally unwieldy control scheme to stop a suburban dad being ‘outed’ as an octopus in disguise – a comic scenario that speaks to gamer culture’s awkward relationship with normative masculinity. Tom McHenry’s Horse Master, meanwhile, is a remorselessly bleak cyberpunk satire that skewers sentimental myths of human/animal companionship. The chapter’s conclusion reviews the modes of managing and manipulating the[RG1] creaturely bodies that these games present, arguing that gaming’s ability to give players a feel for bodies quite unlike their own might be used to help us rethink identity categories such as ethnicity, ability, age, gender and sexuality.
