Playing with Food: Practices of Consumption Cuisine and Embodiment in Video Games

The implementation of food in video games is extremely common to the medium, yet its function and placement within the cultural paradigms of video games remain unexamined. The purpose of this thesis is to examine games where culinary practices and foodways are brought to the forefront, making them either a key element to gameplay, or the only element of gameplay. By critically examining the various usages of food in game-spaces, this thesis examines the embodied relationship in video game spaces between players and their avatars through their encounters with food in these spaces. The relationships between player, avatar, and food that I examine in this project include the somatic relationship between the eater and the eaten, the cultural implications that the inclusion emergence and inclusion of recipes convey, and the relationship between cake and issues of gender. The affectation of taste works in tandem with cultural representation in the games discussed within this project through culinary imagery to circulate implications about the way in which cultural practices cross not only physical national boundaries, but also the boundary between the tangible body of the player and the incorporeal body of the avatar.