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The games taken into consideration are Maxis’ major title The Sims 3: Pets (2011) and ConcernedApe’s indie title Stardew Valley (2016). In this way, virtual games can be said to “make arguments about the way systems work in the material world” (Bogost 2007, p. The way a game presents processes related to soccer or nuclear war says something about how soccer or nuclear war is thought to function the way a game implements processes of eating says something about how eating is to be carried out, in relation to what foods, in what context, and for what reason, et cetera.

When a game implements the computational representation of a cultural process, the way it does so presents an implicit understanding of how that particular process works, according to what logic it operates, and how it should be carried out in practice. According to Bogost ( 2007), games explain “processes with other processes” (p. The idea of computer games as arguments is inspired by what media scholar Ian Bogost calls the procedural rhetoric of games. The article considers computer games as arguments on the killability and nonkillability of nonhuman animal species, especially marine animals. Most significantly, the study demonstrates how fish is a prime example of a class of animals that is removed from the realm of moral concern, even in supposedly ethical and animal-friendly games. Thus, the games are seen as models of how similar hierarchies are created in the real world of so-called “meat culture”. The study considers how these games construct a hierarchy of classes of animals that are either included in, or excluded from, the realm of moral concern. Two games that both set out to avoid animal violence, and even promote animal care, are studied: Maxis’ The Sims 3: Pets (2011) and ConcernedApe’s Stardew Valley (2016). It argues that shifting the critical perspective from killing to killability allows us to study the implicit violence found in “nonviolent” or “friendly” games that usually garner little controversy. It focuses on what acts of violence are made possible in games, and against whom. The article considers video games as procedural arguments on the killability and nonkillability of nonhuman animal species, especially marine animals.