Modes of Listening to Animal Avatar Cooperative Play Available to Purchase

Instances of cooperative play across species present fascinating cases where soundscapes not only act upon player characters, but they also serve as productive sites to understand how players actively shape, utilize, and engage in cooperative play with the sonic environments they inhabit. Playing as a nonhuman animal offers a range of limitations and affordances to human play; however, this ability for human players to have control over additional body parts and these alternative morphologies offer unexpected in-game interactions with the things and environments of the game world. Examining the use of sound design to listen across and as different species offers insight into how players engage in multi-species and cross-species simulated listening and novel modes of listening to game world environments, offering up new possibilities in terms of what these sonic environments can communicate in gameplay as players play as and along with nonhuman animal avatars. This article examines three modes of animal avatar cooperative play that feature different degrees of nonhuman animal embodiment, sensory play, and relationality: playing with (with the hunting dog and ducks in Duck Hunt), playing as (as the mother badger in Shelter), and playing along (as the wolf cub and fawn in co-op mode in Blanc). What insights are to be gained when we reflect on the varied, telling ways in which animals, including their behavior, movement, and sensory faculties are represented through sound design in games where human players plays as, with, and in cooperation with them?