The creature-collector genre is a space first and foremost dominated by Pokemon, then filled out with many games inspired by it. Lots of kids who grew up on the massively popular IP via the card game, anime, and its many video games are today developers looking to add their own spin on the format--some of them to modest or better acclaim, like TemTem, Cassette Beasts, and Palworld. I enjoy such games, but most of them tend to be uninterested in achieving a vision of a game I've had in my head for years--to no fault of their own, of course. It's my vision, not necessarily theirs. Beastieball, a new creature collector from Wishes Unlimited--the team behind heartfelt indie darlings Chicory: A Colorful Tale and Wandersong--seems serendipitously built from the ground up as though its studio read my mind. Finally, there's a Pokemon-style game that consciously washes its hands of some of the genre's more uncomfortable implications of animals.
I've written about the intersection of animal rights and gaming before, and many readers who previously overloaded my articles with negative comments were, from one perspective, right on the money. Where one may be concerned with animal rights, they need not extend their concern to virtual animals, since these are not living beings. To that, I both previously offered and once more render a resounding duh. But it's never been my point to argue for the liberation of Pokemon, Pals, or, in this case, Beasties.
Rather, my focus remains on portrayals of animals in games. How we present ideas through our media often affects how we view similar subjects in the real world, even if we can't always sense the changes taking shape. If I watch a lot of movies, read a lot of books, or listen to a lot of podcasts, all espousing a particular point of view, how long will it be until I start to believe it's true in real life? One needs only to look at how YouTube algorithms or the "manosphere" have, in many cases, Roganized a generation of (usually) white guys. My concern with how we gamify animal exploitation is not centered on freeing virtual animals from their imaginary shackles; it's about hoping to promote portrayals that reject the tropes we so often see in games--where animals are little more than crafting resources, transportation vessels, and supply chains. If we reconsider how animals are portrayed in games, it would have a knock-on effect in real life for some number of players. That's how progress happens, and Beastieball is a sure sign of it.
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