NEW TRICKS

Abstract

The digital game Dog's Life (Frontier Developments, 2003) attempts, by means of its “Smellovision” feature, to communicate something of the alterity of canine perception: the greater field of view, the lower visual perspective, the dichromatic colour vision, as well as the spectacularly impressive sense of smell. At the same time, it encourages players to identify with the game's protagonist: you “are” Jake, digging up bones, marking territory and chasing chickens, as you make your way through the developing narrative. In this essay I argue that Dog's Life effectively comprises an “anti-environment” of the sort described by McLuhan, which altercasts players as dogs and thereby prompts them to notice conventional, anthroponormative assumptions regarding the pre-eminence of human modes of perception. By insisting on an experience both of alterity and identity, the digital game medium here combats clichéd notions of animality and subjectivity, whilst requiring players to reconsider the complex and uneven nature of interspecific, interpersonal control.

Keywords:

• Altercasting
• anti-environment
• Dog's Life
• Smellovision
• video game

Notes

Thanks to Ewan Kirkland for introducing me to Dog's Life; to the Animals and Society Institute and the fellows of the inaugural Human–Animal Studies Fellowship Program at North Carolina State University for an unparalleled research environment; to Erica Fudge, Ron Broglio, Georgina Montgomery, and Claire Molloy for providing opportunities to present my ideas to a wider audience; and to John Ensminger and Susan McHugh for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.

McLuhan and Watson 56–57.

McLuhan and Watson provide no details; on the contested question of the early collaboration, and even co-evolution, of human and canine, see Wang and Tedford esp. chapter 8; Paxton; Bradshaw 3–67 (chapters 1–2).

McLuhan and Watson 56–57; the idioms they quote are taken from Smith 196 (5.vi). Most of the phrases listed are in fact of very recent origin, many deriving from blood sports that bear little relation to the hunting practices in which prehistoric humans and dogs might have engaged.

McLuhan and Watson 57.

Ibid. 54.

Dog's Life was released on 29 October 2003, to mixed reviews. It was nominated for two BAFTAs (“Best Adventure Game” and “Best Children's Game”). The game should not be confused with the Macintosh “interactive storybook” published by Sanctuary Woods in 1994, titled It's a Dog's Life (aka Digby the Dog and Digby's Adventures).

Dog's Life booklet, p. 1.

Incredible as Jake's feats and adventures are, I would caution against suggesting that either he or they are “anthropomorphic”; see Tyler, “If Horses.”

Dog's Life game case, reverse.

Uexküll 43.

Other attempts to represent smells within digital games have included the “cat senses” of the critically panned Catwoman (Electronic Arts, 2004) and the derivative “ScentView” of WolfQuest (Eduweb, 2007). Various devices have been developed to integrate actual smells into digital games, for instance Ruetz Scnet Systems' Sniffman, BIOPAC's Scent Delivery System, and Scent Sciences' forthcoming ScentScape Gaming Suite. See Steffen; Bingham; Scent Sciences.

An excellent overview of canine vision is provided by Miller and Murphy; on colour vision, see Nietz, Geist, and Jacobs; for accessible accounts of canine vision, see Budiansky 106–16; Horowitz 121–37; Bradshaw 224–30.

Miller and Murphy 1623–24, 1633.

Additionally, although neither is replicated in Dog's Life, dogs are probably more adept at motion detection, and can more easily discern fast-changing images; see Miller and Murphy 1624. The latter means that dogs have a higher threshold for flicker fusion, the point at which fast changing images blend into a constant image, which suggests that a digital game such as Dog's Life would appear to canine eyes as a series of distinct images, rather than as a seamless animation. Interestingly, some research has found that playing digital games actually improves visual processing (in humans); see Green and Bavelier and the literature cited therein.

On canine olfaction, see Ensminger; Budiansky 118–23; Horowitz 67–88; Bradshaw 230–49. On urine marking, see Scott and Fuller 69–70; in fact, “eliminative behaviour” does not seem to function as territorial marking at all, as is popularly believed and represented in Dog's Life.

In fact, several species give off a green scent, including parrots, sheep and (sometimes) pigeons. Not all creatures are visibly odorous in Smellovision, presumably in order to simplify gameplay. On cancer detection, see Horowitz 81–82; Pickel et al.

Dog's Life does not tackle the alterity of canine hearing, for instance the ability to detect ultrasonic frequencies; see Budiansky 116–18; Horowitz 92–98.

McLuhan and Fiore, Medium is the Massage 68.

McLuhan and Watson 57.

McLuhan, “Art as Anti-environment” 57. McLuhan also uses the terms counterenvironment (e.g., McLuhan and Watson 77; McLuhan and Parker 2; McLuhan, “Emperor's New Clothes” 342), countersitutation (e.g., McLuhan and Fiore, Medium is the Massage 68; McLuhan, “Emperor's New Clothes” 342), and countergradient (e.g., McLuhan and Parker 2).

McLuhan and Fiore, Medium is the Massage 88; McLuhan, “Emperor's Old Clothes” 4.

McLuhan, “Address at Vision 65” 226; McLuhan and Fiore, Medium is the Massage 93.

McLuhan, “Relation of Environment to Anti-environment” 112. See also idem, “Emperor's New Clothes” 342, 344–45 on Picasso.

McLuhan and Watson 59.

McLuhan and Fiore, Medium is the Massage 92–93; McLuhan, “Relation of Environment to Anti-environment” 112.

McLuhan, “Emperor's Old Clothes” 5; idem, “Address at Vision 65” 226; idem, “Relation of Environment to Anti-environment” 114; idem, “Emperor's New Clothes” 354–56.

McLuhan and Fiore, Medium is the Massage 92; McLuhan and Watson 131–33; McLuhan, Letters 315.

McLuhan, Letters 316; idem, “Relation of Environment to Anti-environment” 113–14.

McLuhan, “Relation of Environment to Anti-environment” 111–12.

Idem, “Classroom without Walls” 1–3.

Idem, “Relation of Environment to Anti-environment” 111.

McLuhan and Watson 198–99.

McLuhan, Letters 312.

Idem, “Emperor's Old Clothes” 4–5; idem, “Address at Vision 65” 226.

Idem, “Emperor's Old Clothes” 10.

In a letter to Jonathan Miller dated 8 January 1965, McLuhan pushes his anti-environmental probe still further, applying it to dreams, cosmetics, perfume, whiskers, speech, clothing, the market and prices, and more; see McLuhan, Letters 315. For an excellent overview and discussion of anti-environments, see Rae.

McLuhan, Letters 315; idem, “Art as Anti-environment” 57.

Idem, “Relation of Environment to Anti-environment” 119.

In 2004, Campbell's released a limited edition tomato soup with “Warhol-inspired labels.” Shoppers who purchased the special four-pack could also “take advantage of an offer for a limited edition Campbell's Andy Warhol magnet set, featuring a collection of four die-cut magnets in the colorful designs of the Warhol labels.” See Campbell Soup Company.

McLuhan, “Emperor's New Clothes” 344.

Idem, “Art as Anti-environment” 57.

McLuhan and Parker 2.

McLuhan and Fiore, War and Peace 168–69; see also McLuhan, Understanding Media 234–45 (chapter 24).

In her essay “Situated Knowledges,” Donna Haraway discusses the problem of objectivity, “the god-trick of seeing everything from nowhere” (189), and the particularity and embodiment of all vision. One prompt to her own account of situated knowledges was imagining how the world looks to her dogs, which is to say “without a fovea and very few retinal cells for colour vision, but with a huge neural processing and sensory area for smells” (190).

On representations of the ambiguous, mixed-breed mutt as a means of social critique, see McHugh 127–70. On the ways in which another species' Umwelt can prompt reassessment of one's own, which he relates to the Russian Formalist notion of ostranenie (defamiliarization), see Winthrop-Young 230–35.

Goffman.

Weinstein and Deutschberger.

Ibid. 454.

Ibid. 456.

For a number of common role-pairs, see Pratkanis 216–22. The terms manded and tact come from Skinner 35–51 (chapter 3) and 81–146 (chapter 5).

Weinstein and Deutschberger 456.

This is not the only role that Jake plays within the game, however. On several occasions he becomes, instead, a mischievous mutt, sometimes at the urging of others (for instance, the children who egg the butcher in Clarkesville Centre), and sometimes on his own initiative (as when a Doberman under his control solicits a bone from a terrified shopkeeper by growling).

Foucault, “Subject and Power” 220.

Ibid. 221.

Ibid. 217.

On methods of training captive animals, see Mellen and Ellis.

On the term “conduct” (conduire), see Foucault, “Subject and Power” 220–21. Cary Wolfe has criticized Vicki Hearne precisely for her failure to reconcile the symmetry of relation that she supposes to pertain between trainer and animal, and the radical asymmetry expressed in her characterization of those animals' rights in terms of property ownership; Wolfe 44–54. In similar vein, Carol J. Adams has taken Donna Haraway to task for her defence of circus trainers, particularly her euphemistic description of performing animals as “the animals they work with,” which overlooks the radically uneven nature of such a working consensus; see Adams. For further discussion of animal training as an instance of Foucauldian power relationship, see Palmer.

See, for instance, Foucault, “Subject and Power” 219, or idem, Will to Knowledge 93. On Foucault's nominalism regarding power, see Spivak 26–37.

Galloway.

Ibid. 50.

See Morris 89–90.

Weinstein and Deutschberger 456.

McLuhan and Fiore, Medium is the Massage 26.

McLuhan and Fiore, War and Peace 168–69; I have addressed the particular ways in which digital games can be considered participative elsewhere; see Tyler, “Procrustean Probe,” especially the section “Retrieving Participation.”

For illuminating discussions of literary, science fictional representations of animal otherness, see Vint.

It is perhaps instructive to imagine an alternative Dog's Life that was not motivated by the imperative of heteronormative coupling, but instead invited players to follow canine standards of sociality and sexuality.