Zoo Tycoon

Terribly Bored Lizards: Resonating with the Captive Animal in Jurassic World: Evolution

This document is a scholarly paper from the Proceedings of DiGRA 2024 that uses textual analysis and Animal Studies and Affect Studies approaches to examine how Jurassic World: Evolution (Frontier, 2018) represents captive animals.

• The paper argues that Jurassic World: Evolution (Frontier, 2018) uses constrained, repetitive park-management systems so that players grow bored with the dinosaurs rather than encountering them 'in themselves,' and it reads this monotony as a deliberate design choice that creates a space of 'resonance' with the nonhuman.
• Critics frequently described Evolution as repetitious and boring, noting that dinosaurs nap more often than they fight, escapes are routinised, and players must balance a narrow set of happiness parameters for animals and visitors.
• The author characterises the dinosaur as an ambivalent figure that resists Janski's typology of game animals as opponents, background assets, or resources, instead being simultaneously enemy, tool, actual animal, and speculative construction.