Animal Eyes: Meeting the Look of the Video Game Animal
First author: HobinYear: 2019
Abstract
Encounters with animals are common in video games, where they are often included to add realism to the gameworld. Encounters with animal subjectivity, however, are not. The anthropocentric nature of video games means that animals are often environmental objects, and sometimes resources, but only occasionally characters, and rarely protagonists. As a consequence, there is no encounter with the animal presence, and often no shared gaze: The look of the animal is instead transformed into something wholly antagonistic (such as in Horizon Zero Dawn), wholly submissive (as in Far Cry Primal) or absent entirely (Red Dead Redemption). Even when video game animals are designed with the intention of “appreciating” the animals, the privileging of their panoptic human spectators just as often results in their objectification.Details
Language: EnglishCountry of affiliation: Canada
Published in: Public
Publication type: Journal article
Source: https://doi.org/10.1386/public.30.59.72_1
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