RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article T1 Inklings and tentacled things: grasping at kinship through video games T2 Inklings y cosas con tentáculos: aferrarse al parentesco a través de videojuegos A1 Bianchi, Melissa K1 Video games K1 Play K1 Digital rhetoric K1 Ecocriticism K1 Media studies K1 Cephalopods K1 Videojuegos K1 Juego K1 Retórica digital K1 Ecocrítica K1 Estudios de medios K1 Cefalópodo K1 Literatura K1 Literature K1 Medio ambiente K1 Environmental science AB Connecting Haraway’s recent observations about “making kin” to video games, this essay examines how particular elements of the medium might cultivate nuanced considerations for multispecies relations. To fully grasp how video games broadly redefine relations between human and nonhuman animals, we must consider the role of game aesthetics and play mechanics in players’ experiences of becoming-with. These elements of games fundamentally shape players’ engagements with the medium and are inextricably linked to their storytelling and production. Moreover, game aesthetics and play mechanics (in conjunction with storytelling) demand that players take specific actions and inhabit distinct roles during play, enabling players to not only think alternative kinships, but also “enact” making them. To demonstrate these points, I examine the aesthetics and gameplay of two tentacular video games, analyzing how they offer rhetorical models for productively thinking about humans’ relations to nonhuman species. I primarily focus on games that heavily feature cephalopod creatures because this specific animal class is often viewed as a rich site for phenomenological and ontological investigations (including in Haraway’s work). Thus, my research attends to specific video games and their tentacled characters to determine how they challenge players to entertain and enact alternative ontologies and human-animal relationships through play. PB Universidad de Alcalá SN 2171-9594 YR 2017 FD 2017 LK http://hdl.handle.net/10017/31337 UL http://hdl.handle.net/10017/31337 LA eng DS MINDS@UW RD 25-abr-2024