=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3669/paper11
|storemode=property
|title="Beavers don't walk on roads": Beaver-play for more-than-human cartographies
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3669/paper11.pdf
|volume=Vol-3669
|authors=Linas Kristupas Gabrielaitis,Laura op de Beke,Oğuz Buruk,Velvet Spors,Ferran Altarriba Bertran
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/gamifin/GabrielaitisBBS24
}}
=="Beavers don't walk on roads": Beaver-play for more-than-human cartographies==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3669/paper11.pdf
“Beavers don’t walk on roads”: Beaver-play
for more-than-human cartographies
Linas Kristupas Gabrielaitis1, Laura op de Beke2, Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk1, Velvet Spors1 and
Ferran Altarriba Bertran1,3
1 Gamification Group, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
2 Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
3 Escola Universitària ERAM, Universitat de Girona, Salt, Catalonia
Abstract
In this paper, we introduce the notion of beaver-play to understand play that challenges spatial
conventions, transgresses boundaries, and redraws territories. Tracing how beavers are imagined in
various contexts such as nature conservation, experimental rewilding practices, and performance art,
we highlight the role of the beaver in stories of ecosystem management, collapse, and restoration. We
investigate beaver imaginaries through the perspective of play and games, taking the popular city-
building video game Timberborn as our case study. We employ sketching as a method to annotate and
analyse play practices in the digital spaces of Timberborn, drawing out three modes of beaver-play:
concerns, crossings, and flows. Highlighting the role of play in territorial and organisational fluidity, we
draw attention to the way that beaver-play scaffolds moving in and out of spatial arrangements,
territories and environmental systems. Discussing how the practices of playing and drawing
intertwined into a process of more-than-human cartography, we extend our investigation to consider
the broader implications of using video games as cartographic, performative spaces for more-than-
human meaning-making.
Keywords
Games, play, more-than-human, cartography, sketching, ecology, spatiality, beavers1
boundaries, relax rigid borders, and reshape
1. Introduction landscapes [4, 5]. Consequently, the beaver has
become a figure through which to imagine new
Tom Tyler’s book Game: Animals, Video Games, and practices that challenge spatial conventions and
Humanity [1] collects a whole menagerie of beasts reconfigure territories [6]. “When beavers inhabit a
between its pages, from boar to fish and from dogs to body of water, they cut channels into the adjoining
lamas. Tyler demonstrates that when we encounter land, transgressing natural boundaries (...). Their
animals in games and play, we do so in ways that are damming and gnawing practices can radically alter
culturally and contextually rich with meaning. Second farmland, redrawing boundaries and redirecting
only, perhaps, to primates, beavers are among the waterways” [7]. While the animal’s ability to
creatures we can most easily identify with: nimble- transgress boundaries has been studied from
fingered master-builders, ecosystem engineers, and perspectives as wide-ranging as ecology to
tireless workers; it’s a flattering comparison. And yet, performance art [8, 6, 9, 10], our contribution lies in
for centuries beavers have also been received as pests, the investigation of the beaver from the perspective of
creatures whose dam(n) projects have conflicted with games and play. More specifically, we develop a notion
our own attempts to harness rivers for water and of beaver-play that can move through ecological
power. In fiction, beavers repeatedly appear as agents boundaries, organising and re-organising spaces.
of environmental change, causing floods and engaging Video games provide an interesting context to study
in other disruptive terraforming practices (e.g. [2, 3]). this type of play because spatial exploration and
As such, beavers often stand in for humans, who, in the territorial expansion are considered to be core aspects
age of climate change have also become dubiously of digital gameplay [11, 12].
responsible for the environment. We start by tracing instances of play with and as
For many artists and ecologists, however, beavers beavers in rewilding practices, theatre and the arts in
are to be celebrated for their ability to traverse
8th International GamiFIN Conference 2024 (GamiFIN 2024), April 2-
5, 2024, Ruka, Finland
linas.gabrielaitis@tuni.fi (L. K. Gabrielaitis); l.h.opdebeke@uu.nl
(L. op de Beke); oguz.buruk@tuni.fi (O. Buruk); velvet.spors@tuni.fi
(V. Spors); ferran.altarribabertran@tuni.fi (F. Altarriba Bertran)
0009-0000-6591-0548 (L. K. Gabrielaitis); 0000-0002-6429-2909
(L. op de Beke); 0000-0002-8655-5327 (O. Buruk); 0000-0001-8947-
615X (V. Spors); 0000-0002-3692-3777 (F. Altarriba Bertran)
© 2024 Copyright for this paper by its authors. The use permitted under
Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR
ceur-ws.org
Workshop ISSN 1613-0073
Proceedings
121
order to build an overview of the roles that beavers Using beavers as pawns in the game of nature
play in stories of ecological management and conservation and environmental restoration requires
restoration. Next, we shift our focus to study the way thinking of them in instrumental terms, however,
humans pick up these roles in a closer analysis of the rewilding circles have been re-examining such
videogame Timberborn by employing the method of approaches by drawing on more-than-human
sketching. Sketching is well-known as a generative perspectives, investigating collaborative ways of
activity for ideation and concept creation [13, 14], but knowing and meaning-making instead [25, 26]. A
it has also seen recent uptake as an analytic tool for model of such creative, non-instrumental play is
meaning-making [15, 16]. By sketching on top of provided by David Overend [6], who oversaw a series
screenshots from Timberborn, we develop the notion of research-driven, site-specific, collaborative, arts-
of beaver-play, describing the extent to which based explorations that engaged a population of
videogames provide cartographic, performative beavers in the Tay Valley in Scotland. Inspired by
spaces for more-than-human meaning-making performance artist Christy Gast’s 2014 film, Castorera
The phrase more-than-human was used by the (A Love Story), Overend and his collaborators played as
ecologist and philosopher David Abram to emphasise beavers by engaging in a series of crossings, following
the embedded nature of human culture within a larger beaver trails over land, through the mud, and into the
web of life, which is filled with animacies that water. In performing such crossings, Overend “sensed
complement and rival human designs [17]. the world, if not quite as a beaver, at least as more-
Agriculture, for example, exists because of the than-human,” demonstrating that playing beaver
collaboration between humans and soil, bacteria, created its own kinds of feral effects for the performing
minerals, and countless other creatures feeding the researchers [6].
earth. When we invoke the term more-than-human in
this article, we use it to describe approaches that keep
this multispecies world in mind.
2. Playing beaver
In this section, we list some examples of playing beaver
in rewilding and conservation practices, in theatre, and
in video games, teasing out how beavers are figured in
stories of ecological management and restoration.
2.1. Rewilding with beavers
Due to hunting and habitat destruction, the Eurasian
beaver almost went extinct at the turn of the twentieth
century. Currently, there are many efforts underway to
reintroduce them to regions where they used to be
endemic and many of these initiatives have been
largely successful [18]. There are good reasons for
wanting to reintroduce beavers in rewilding practices.
They have become a flagstone species for rewilding
efforts as ‘ecosystem engineers’, restoring degraded Figure 1: A poster for parachuting beavers by the
landscapes, creating new wetland areas, and providing California Department of Fish and Game (1950s) [24]
precious habitats for endangered wildlife, such as
amphibians and river fish [19]. By damming rivers,
beavers regulate water flow, slow water movement,
improve stream health and quality, reduce flooding
and restore natural landscapes [20, 8]. Moreover, the
kind of ecosystem engineering that beavers engage in
causes cascading ‘feral effects,’ which have a beneficial
impact on other species and environments, but which
involve processes that exceed what we can perceive or
monitor [21]. In short, beavers provide humans with
“cost-effective ‘nature-based’ solutions to flood
protection” and drought resilience [22]. Already in the Figure 2: Gnawing as a beaver. A scene from the video
1930s, wildlife agencies such as the California Our Strange Plan to Fully Rewild This River (2023) [27]
Department of Fish and Game were introducing The temptation to play at being a beaver has lured
beavers into desiccated, dry landscapes to combat more ostensibly pragmatic minds into performing
erosion and raise water levels [23]. When rewilding crossings as well. Because beavers are still lacking on
inaccessible areas such as the mountains or deep the Scottish Glassie river, the rewilding network Mossy
forests without roads, as shown in figure 1, airplanes Earth—comprising mostly ecologists—is
were used to drop parachuting beavers. experimenting with human-made beaver-like dams to
restore the river’s barren banks [27]. In their video
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update on the project (figure 2), the rewilders got fully space. In collaboration with human geographer
into character, donning neoprene suits for complete Kathryn Yussof, the electronica/glitch-folk duo
immersion. Oblique Curiosities created a song called Cosmic
Beavers in which they playfully relate a queer, anti-
colonial counter-mythology about “giant, trans-
2.2. Acting as beavers dimensional beavers who maintain the Time-Dam”
[33]. This example, as well as the others listed above,
Rather than invite humans to become beaver-like, demonstrates the extent to which beavers have
other instances of beaver-play feature uses of emerged as generative figures in stories of world
anthropomorphisation, such as when the perceived collapse and restoration. As we can make out from the
characteristics of beavers, like their industriousness, brief overview of media provided here, playing beaver
are used to scaffold a deeply human story. For generates moments of both identification, as well as
example, in the 1937 play The Revolt of the Beavers estrangement. It allows us to recognize ourselves as
(figure 3), two children are spirited away to planetary terraformers and world-builders, while also
‘Beaverland’ where they meet a band of oppressed and pushing us to explore alternatives to a rapacious,
exploited beavers who operate ‘the wheel of industry’ earth-moving industrial logic that is driving the
for the sole profit of the chief and his cronies [28]. The climate crisis. Specifically, beaver-play allows us to
play recounts how the workers come together to adopt the playful, boundary-crossing, place-making
overthrow the chief, thus claiming the means of spirit of the beaver.
production for themselves, and sharing the benefits
equally. At the time of its release, the play was reviled
for being too political. In an updated 2018 staging by 3. Timberborn or,
Kit Bix, the final act of the play nods just as overtly to
more contemporary politics [28]. Bix takes beaver welcome to the ‘Castorocene’
anthropomorphism even further, casting them not just
as subjects under capitalism, but as potentially Castorocene means ‘era of the beaver.’ It is the title of
enthusiastic proponents of it (figure 3). George Finlay-Ramsay’s film-poem [34] which
imagines a far future in which humans have defiled the
Earth and beavers are there to clean it up. It was filmed
in Bamff, an area in Scotland known for experimental
ecosystem management, the same place where
Overend and his collaborators performed their
experimental crossings [6]. The work’s title is a play on
the term Anthropocene (anthropos meaning human).
Introduced in the early 2000s, the Anthropocene
denotes the most recent geological epoch, in which
humans have become the main drivers of planetary,
environmental change [35].
Figure 3: Humans acting as beavers. A scene from the
play The Revolt of the Beavers (1937) [29]
Rather than cast beavers as industrialists, some
games imagine beavers as saboteurs acting to disrupt
or undermine environmentally exploitative ventures
like logging enterprises. For example, the local co-op
game Beavers Be Dammed [30] stages a beaver-
operated heist on a sawmill. The challenge involves
manoeuvring stolen logs through difficult parcours full
of crazy obstacles. While lacking the striking visual
design and sharp critical brunt of a game like
Thunderbird Strike [31] by Indigenous designer Figure 4: Beavers acting as humans. The retail cover
Elizabeth LaPensée, in which you play a mythical bird of Timberborn (2021) [36]
taking out machines used to extract oil from the Our case study Timberborn [36] is a popular city-
Athabasca tar sands, Beavers Be Dammed stages a building game involving beavers that is also set long
similar struggle between extractive industry and after the demise of human civilization. It too posits a
nonhuman resistance. Beavers Be Dammed can also be speculative post-Anthropocene era that still carries
understood as a game of ’animal mayhem’, which is the the scars of humans civilization: the ruined remains of
name Marco Caracciolo gives to several recent games buildings, a recurring drought, and (after the game’s
in which non-human protagonists create comical latest update) sources of ‘bad water’. In the game,
situations by meddling in human affairs and wreaking players manage a colony of beavers surviving in this
havoc in human-dominated spaces [32]. Such desiccated landscape, setting up chains of production
examples make use of animal play as an activity that to house, and feed them, while having to weather the
transgresses and disturbs boundaries between human recurring drought. Damming enough water to make it
and animal spaces, making room for investigations on through these gradually lengthening dry seasons is the
the way we share our world with others. game’s primary challenge. By simulating drought,
Lastly, beavers can also act as worldbuilders in a Timberborn joins a number of other recent games like
more expanded sense, upholding cosmic time and Frostpunk [37] and Against the Storm [38] that evoke
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‘dark seasonalities’ [39] by simulating dangerous, In this section, we introduce the practice of sketching
unpredictable weather and climate systems. New as an analytical tool. We explain our rationale of
trends like these demonstrate that the theme of sketching on video game screenshots to investigate
climate change is pushing game developers to video game environments and to unpack beaver-play.
reconsider design conventions, especially those
belonging to the genre of the city-builder. Take for
example Terra Nil [40], a game about rewilding, or 4.1. Sketching for analysis
Lichenia [41], a game about ecological restoration,
both of which explore alternative ways of relating to Sketches are informal drawings or annotations
video game environments. To study games like these, that allow people to deepen their understanding of an
scholars have developed different concepts and object, a space, or a concept. Drawing sketches is an
frameworks, focused on climate change engagement established technique in generative processes such as
[42], ecology [43], anthropocentrism [44] or ecological ideation and concept creation [13, 14, 57, 58]. In
monstrosity [45]. For our part, we look at Timberborn addition, sketching has been gaining attention as an
using the concept of beaver-play since the game’s analytic tool within technology-minded research. For
dynamic environment invites questions about example, Sturdee and Lindley outline how the practice
territory, boundary crossing, and place-making, can situate us within the ’unknown’, and help us make
especially as the player’s terraforming and sense of it [15] as sketching becomes a means for
engineering practices are patterned according to the simultaneously creating and conveying knowledge
game’s seasonal rhythms. [59]. Moreover, as Gansterer explains, sketching is
both reflective, promoting contemplation, as well as
steeped in observation— involving consciously
3.1. Spatiality in Timberborn capturing thought and documenting the processes of
its creation [60]. In this way, sketching allows
The digital spaces found in video games are rarely researchers to generate and incorporate situated,
passive backdrops. Rather, video game spaces qualitative first-person knowledge into their research
constitute frameworks in which meaning is created practice [61, 62, 63].
and situated [46]. Such processes of meaning-making We draw on a specific approach developed by
often rely on spatial exploration and expansion, which, Gamboa et al. to annotate video game screenshots [64].
as Kühne suggests, result in significant alterations to They collect screenshots from video games and
game environments. Thus, play in video games often annotate them for analysis. These annotations draw
reflects the transformative power of player actions out how meaning is created in video game spaces and
over the digital environment. This is especially true for how game mechanics situate the player in imaginary
city-builders where players are often cast as surveyors environments. “The collection of screenshots became
or (military) cartographers, carving up the land and a place for transdisciplinary discussion” [64].
assigning it productive functions [47]. For example, in Similarly, we use the sketches to gather
games such as the Civilization series [48], digital interdisciplinary knowledge. The sketched-on
spaces reflect traces of the player’s spatial mastery screenshots simultaneously count as player-generated
over the environment [49]; and Tropico [50], employs content that documents the intentionality of the player
mechanics reminiscent of ‘colonial techniques of [65, 66], while also reflecting the play practices and the
domination’, which in video game spaces are game mechanics that afford them.
expressed through spatial behaviours such as
exploration, trading, or map-making [51, 52]. Games of
empire and extractivist play revolve around the 4.2. Study procedure
acquisition of geographical space [53] through
activities such as environmental exploration, spatial The screenshots were made by the first author
maneuvering, trading, establishing mines and outposts over the course of two days. They record moments of
[47]. All such in-game actions and behaviours warrant challenging gameplay that required planning, or they
critique and scrutiny given that players may carelessly capture moments of almost-failure [67]. The
adopt the logic encoded in the game, whether rooted screenshots were taken with the game paused and the
in extractivism, imperialism, or colonialism [54, 55, camera positioned to capture the situation. The
56]. sketching itself was carried out on a tablet, where a
In these previously mentioned city-building spatial analysis of the video game environment was
games, the map is static and players exert their made, using sketching to document the river
influence over it. In Timberborn the map is dynamic territories and bank contours. After documenting the
and players are put on the back-foot, having to respond specific spatial arrangements of a situation, sketching
to, and build with the river in mind. In other words, the was used to plan and reflect on the next steps in
river system is encountered as an entity with its own gameplay.
rhythms and moods that you have to share the map Next, the compiled sketched-on screenshots from
with. Over the course of play, there emerges a more- Timberborn served as a foundation for communication
than-human partnership between player and river. In and iterative, reflective discussion among the co-
the coming sections, we introduce sketching as a authors. Comparisons were made and parallels were
method for recording and analysing this relationship. drawn between instances of gameplay and the
ecologically rooted more-than-human perspectives
recorded at Bamff by Overend and his collaborators
4. Sketching as method during their crossings [5, 6], and Finlay-Ramsay in his
124
film-poem [34]. Lastly, the sketches were grouped with arrows to speculatively identify the concerns that
based on the three themes that emerged through the the colony might have (as shown in figure 5). As a
comparisons. The findings presented in the following response to hunger, the drying berry bushes and trees,
section adopt a first-person perspective to articulate beaver-play became a process of extending the reach
the immersive attention cultivated through the of my colony to react to the emerging concerns (figure
process of sketching during gameplay. 6).
In a conversation I had with the filmmaker George
Finlay-Ramsay, who created the film-poem
5. Findings: concerns, crossings Castorocene [34], what most surprised the artist, was
and flows the fact that the beavers of Timberborn need roads to
get to where they were going— “beavers don’t walk on
roads”. This inspired further discussion on the
In this section, we describe the kind of beaver-play
function of roads in the game. It is precisely through
encountered in Timberborn through three modes of
extending roads that, as a player, I impart my agency
play: concerns, crossings and flows, highlighting how
over the colony. The only way the beavers can move
they invite more-than-human awareness.
anywhere is via the road network. I thus use the roads
to point at and connect concerns in the landscape that
5.1. Concerns the beavers are programmed to respond to. This
recalls the biological programming of beavers who
Because Timberborn is a city-building game, the player listen and instinctively respond to the sound of
does not adopt the perspective of an individual beaver, running water with the irresistible urge to dam [68]. In
but rather controls the colony from a bird’s eye view. this way, building roads is a way of listening to the
In order to evoke elements that could be part of the river system and identifying its concerns.
nonhuman field of perception, I sketched on top of the
screenshots, using textual annotations in combination
Figure 5: Sketching more-than-human concerns
Figure 6: Sketching more-than-human concerns
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5.2. Crossings area is distinctly different from the rigid, fenced-off
farmlands surrounding it [6]. They recounted that, as
Timberborn requires the player to adapt to a changing they followed beaver trails, they had to cross through
environment since periodically, whole areas of the land, mud and water, physically and imaginatively
map dry up due to a recurring drought. Despite its crossing boundaries between the elements, between
fluctuations, the river’s banks still provided the best biomes, and between species. In performing such
location for my settlement, though I found myself crossings, more-than-human perspectives emerged in
having to keep relocating it depending on the water the muddy spaces where ecosystems converged. In
level, shifting closer (figure 7) or further away (figure Timberborn, the changing state of the river prompts
8). Sketching crossings, I drew contours and zones me to reevaluate and cross out my established
which would get gradually defined throughout play. In settlements, crossing over into new territories. In this
this way, as I responded to the course of the river, I saw way, a more-than-human perspective surfaces in the
beaver-play materialise in the arrows and lines that way the river emerges as a dynamic, snaking entity,
marked where environments were being drawn and one that swells and dries according to an
redrawn. unpredictable rhythm. In response to this rhythm, I am
Examining the influence of beaver rewilding, habitually deterritorialized, moving in and out of
Overend and his collaborators noted how the Bamff territory.
Figure 7: Sketching more-than-human crossings
Figure 8: Sketching more-than-human crossings
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5.3. Flows One of Overend’s collaborators, Laura Bissel, found
herself adopting a more-than-human frame of mind by
At a certain moment in my playthrough, I reached a paying close attention to the water [5]. She was
point of sufficient food security where I was not inspired by all the possible ways that beavers build by
threatened by immediate concerns such as hunger, nor ear, following the sound of noisy water which elicits in
was I any longer caught off guard by the droughts that them the urge to dam. Bissel and Overend observed
used to force me to cross into new territories for how trees lay in horizontal intersections across the
survival. At this point, instead, the gradually submerged architectures, which beavers use as
lengthening dry seasons required me to be less sanctuaries for safety and access to food. Overend and
reactive and to start acting on a new, larger scale. I Bissel listened to the trickle of the water and the flows
found myself zoomed out from the beaver settlement, which beavers harness to float branches downstream
trying to situate myself in the broader flows of the [69]. Timberborn affords a similar, heightened
surroundings. My first dam served as the initial field sensitivity to the dynamic of water, how it flows, how
for experimentation, helping me understand how, and it pools, and how far it seeps into the ground, as well
where the water was flowing from (figure 9). I then as, crucially, where it comes from. In the process of
started preparing for the lengthening dry seasons by sketching, the edges of the map also determined the
making more intricate dams, scheduling the pools and edges of my canvas, which I could speculatively draw
ponds that I could build (figure 10). Here, beaver-play beyond, imagining a broader environmental context
became apparent as a specific feeling of scale, which I for the river’s flow.
could express through the spatial activity of flowing.
By sketching curved arrows, interruptions of flows,
and dammed pools, the sketching activity became a
6. Discussion
way for situating myself alongside larger-scale
In the following section, we first reflect on the
environmental processes.
performed beaver-play, defining it in the context of
Figure 9: Sketching more-than-human flows
Figure 10: Sketching more-than-human flows
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more-than-human cartography. Then, we extend our seasonal, long-term fluctuations in the climate [71].
investigation to consider the broader implications of This type of ecological fluidity allowed our ancestors
using video games as cartographic, performative to switch their modes of production, and with it, their
spaces for more-than-human meaning-making. different socio-political structures, when it suited
them.
For Graeber and Wengrow, play is the underlying
6.1. Beaver-play mechanism behind the cultural practices and creative
freedoms that keep us from getting stuck in
The kind of beaver-play we engaged in goes unsustainable modes of production and organisation.
beyond the portrayal of beavers as mere industrialist Beaver-play can be understood as a kind of spatialized
masterbuilders, ecosystem engineers, and tireless model of this type of play. It can be defined by its
workers. In our study, playing as beavers allowed us to experimentation with spatial arrangements and
perceive the river’s emergence as an environmental territorial fluidity, manifesting in the ability to cross
actant, rhythmically supporting or threatening the through, in and out of ecosystems, across and within
colony. Three modes of beaver-play were identified planetary flows. However, evidently beaver-play too
that helped us recognize this emergence: concerns, can cease to be play when it becomes stuck, and loses
crossings and flows; three modes of play for spatially its experimental quality. This happens in Timberborn
organising with the territories of the river. We’ve when player settlements—now beaver-cities—
captured these modes in figure 11, which illustrates become cemented, and it becomes too costly or
how beaver-play is characterised by spatial laborious to move in sync with the river.
movements, like connecting concerns, crossing out
and over into new territories, and following large-
scale, durational flows. Through these concerns, 6.2. More-than-human
crossings and flows players are subject to a constant cartographies
process of territorializing and being deterritorialized,
which draws attention to the ways in which lands are Timberborn is a game designed for entertainment,
claimed and reclaimed throughout play. not a teaching tool. Nevertheless, as our experience
demonstrates, it has valuable lessons to teach us about
the use of maps as performative spaces. By adding to
the map, both in gameplay and through sketching, we
were able to draw out the more-than-human
relationship between the beaver colony and the river.
This is important, as video games have been criticised
Figure 11: The three modes of beaver-play that give for fostering an impersonal, detached,
rise to more-than-human cartographies in Timberborn instrumentalizing gaze [72]. Such modes of visuality,
perpetuate the logic of domination over nature. The
The three modes of beaver-play are inspired by the designation of protected areas, the enclosure of
boundary-crossing, place-making spirit of the beaver, territories and the delimitation of animal movement
but we are sceptical of the connection between real have become common responses to human-induced
beaver behavior and beaver-play. The introduction of ecosystem collapse [73]. Such designation of territory
roads into the game, although misrepresenting real and space further entrenches dominant power
beavers, does not undermine beaver-play, even if, in dynamics and existing institutional extractivist
reality, “beavers don’t walk on roads”. Additionally, in interests [74]. In response, geographers have been re-
Timberborn, two types of beavers serve as playable evaluating their cartographic practices, seeking
factions: Folktails – the default beavers, and Iron Teeth instead to use maps as performative spaces where
– who are even more industrious, capable of producing nonhuman influences and more-than-human
automated bot-beavers. Interestingly, the play-style commitments emerge [75, 76]. The sketched-on
for each faction differs only minimally as similar screenshots from Timberborn, give evidence to the
concerns, crossings and flows emerge through play with potential of such performative spaces for reflection.
either faction. Crucially, whatever the choice, play Sketching, as a process that documents its own
progressively locks you into rigid, immobile spatial creation [61], resulted in snapshots of specific spatial
arrangements. arrangements, while documenting the mechanics that
As we will explain, in this regard, Timberborn is no allow such spatial arrangements to exist.
different from other contemporary map-based games. In considering video game spaces as performative
The study ‘On Being Stuck in Sid Meier’s Civilization’ spaces for more-than-human meaning-making, we
performs an analysis of the way technological follow in the line of thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
advancement locks the player in place [70]. Mol, who describes poetry as having the ability to “magnify
Politopoulos and Lammes argue that the more you the small” and “micrify the great” [77]. Alenda Chang
play the game, the less free you become, as continues by referring to video games as having the
technological progress locks you into one specific way ability to model both microscopic and galactic scales of
of playing with progressively less freedom to sustainable action [78]. To scaffold the players taking
experiment with alternatives. This study is built on the such perspectives, video games use maps, interfaces,
anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David or HUDs (heads-up displays) to evoke a non-human
Wengrow’s concept of ‘play-farming’ which describes field of perception, which might include scent-vision to
the flexible way in which our ancestors switched represent the sense-world of a dog [1], or other tricks
between farming and hunter-gathering depending on to evoke animal subjectivities [79]. Distinct from such
128
perspective-taking game mechanics, beaver-play
scaffolds the territorial, the cartographic acts for
Acknowledgments
more-than-human engagements.
This research was supported by Jane and Aatos Erkko
Foundation through the CONVERGENCE project.
7. Future work Thank you to the reviewers, thank you George,
Johannes, and Çağlar for the conversations.
Potential future work includes the use of beaver-play
in the spatial analysis of video games. As more
contemporary games introduce climate change as an
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