Att äta digitala djur

Abstract

Eating Digital Animals: Games, Violence and Ideology
 The article aims to study game violence from an ”awry” perspective – that is, it examines how games deal with violence against animals as inherent in the processes of producing and consuming meat. Rockstar’s notorious Manhunt (2003) is utilized as an initial example of the representation of such violence in games. I argue that the focus on gruesome imagery serves an ideological function by masking the real material violence of the game industry. I also explore the ways in which games make visible systemic, yet less palpable forms of ideological violence. My main area of inquiry concerns the ways in which three contemporary open-world games represent the relation between eating meat and the industrial killing of animals. This article combines three basic conceptual perspectives: Slavoj Žižek’s distinction between subjective and objective violence; Melanie Joy’s conceptualization of cultural carnism as a cognitive scheme; and Ian Bogost’s procedural-rhetorical approach to videogames as models of material processes. These are employed in order to analyze three games, featuring varied approac hes to the representation of meat as food: Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), which includes a discursive critique of factory farming without implementing this critique as a gameplay mechanic; Lionhead’s Fable II (2008), which implements ethical and political incentives for vegetarianism in the core mechanics of the game, yet allows for varied approaches in role-playing; and Maxis’ The Sims 3 (2009), which seems to include such incentives yet undermines them by dislodging food from its material origin in its model of the game world.