Plushies, Dollies, and Action Figurines

This chapter examines videogames with toylike avatars, including Pikmin 3, FallGuys, Scribblenauts Unlimited, and the LittleBigPlanet series. I consider how these player characters shape childlike subject positions for players, while also exploring latent transgressive scripts that invite players to engage in destructive roughhousing. I use the puzzle-platform videogame Unravel to introduce the relationship between sensory nostalgia and spectral nostalgia. I argue that videogames can invite players to travel along their own developmental timelines and experience a sense of co-location with their childselves. I conclude by comparing the spatialisation of childhood to the spatialisation of play as a ‘magic circle’, drawing attention to shared qualities of liminality, porousness, and plasticity.