Spaces of Allegory. Non-Euclidean Spatiality as a Ludo-Poetic Device

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Backe Hans-Joachim
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

Studies of digital game spaces have established a solid understanding of the general dissimilarity of game spaces and space in reality, discussing e.g. the particular cardinalities of motion and agency, the significance of projection methods, and the possibility of movement among non-linear paths. This paper applies these theories to a particular phenomenon, the manipulation and defamiliarization of spaces, which has become a rather widespread feature of digital games in recent years. Drawing on postphenomenology and developmental psychology, the paper argues that games with nonEuclidean spatiality challenge real-life epistemologies of space that are acquired early in life. The paper demonstrates the creative use of this form of defamiliarization in two examples, Superliminal and The Witness, which turn it into allegories of dreams, agency, and authorship.

 

Consecutive Endings and the Aesthetic Potential of Cognitive Dissonance

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Backe Hans-Joachim
2018 DiGRA ’18 – Abstract Proceedings of the 2018 DiGRA International Conference: The Game is the Message

 

‘We’re Not Gonna Take It.’ The Countercultural AAA Aesthetics of Wolfenstein: The New Colossus

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Backe Hans-Joachim
2018 DiGRA ’18 – Abstract Proceedings of the 2018 DiGRA International Conference: The Game is the Message

 

Ludic Zombies: An Examination of Zombieism in Games

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Backe Hans-Joachim Aarseth Espen
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

Zombies have become ubiquitous in recent years in all media, including digital games. Zombies have no soul or consciousness, and as completely alien, post-human Other, they seem like the perfect game opponent. Yet their portrayal is always politically charged, as they have historically been used as an allegory for slavery, poverty, and consumerism, and may be read as stand-ins for threatening but too human Others of unwanted class, ethnicity of political opinion. The paper explores the trope‟s iconography and how it is used in a number of paradigmatic games, from Plants vs. Zombies and Call of Duty to the Resident Evil series, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3 (the Tenpenny Tower quests) and DayZ. Through theses comparative analyses, the paper demonstrates the range of usages of zombies in games, ranging from the facile use of a (seemingly) completely deindividuated humanoid for entertainment purposes to politically aware ludifications of the zombie‟s allegorical dimension.