Felix Schniz is the co-founder and programme director of the master’s programme Game Studies and Engineering at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English and American studies from the University of Mannheim, where he subsequently joined the master’s programme Cultural Transformations of the Modern Age: Literature and Media. After asking ‘What is a Videogame Experience?’ in his dissertation, his contemporary research focuses on the meaning of experience, genre theory, and the importance of subjectivity for the research of analogue games, video games, and virtual worlds.
Tim Sanders is a Master’s student in the program Game Studies and Engineering at the University of Klagenfurt. After graduating with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from the University of Antwerp, Tim is trying to live up to the interdisciplinary nature of Game Studies and Engineering by shifting focus on the humanities side of the program instead of solely on the technical side with his background in programming. He is writing his Master’s Thesis and soon attaining his Master’s degree.
Scales of Apocalypse: Space and Affect in Dystopian Video Games between Sacred and Profane
FROG 2024 – Talk
Dystopian video games provide drastic emotional experiences between desperation and hope. The spatiotemporal capabilities of the medium that allow players to explore vast wastelands and confined shelters of safety alike enable the exploration of these emotions in varying magnitudes. Hence, these spaces have a decisive role in how they affect players’ vision of the end of the world.
We propose that the ‘scales of apocalypse’ in video games operate between the axioms ‘sacred and profane’ (Woodward 2012, 29-30) and ‘game world dimensions’. Infused by Graeme Kirkpatrick’s observations on rhythmic embodiment in ludic spaces (2011, 73-79) and Massumi’s theory of affect in movement (2002, 3-5), we showcase three negotiations on various tipping points of the scale: Local affect is often present in cosy apocalyptic motifs, where the game world becomes an abstract, guided spiritual metaphor and thus, sacred to the players. We illustrate them with Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (The Chinese Room 2015). A global affect of apocalypses pervades many AAA titles and allows players to lose themselves in assemblages of desperate motives, turning apocalyptic horrors into mundanities. Finally, liminal affect games are a series of titles where one is apocalyptic, and the other is not. This inter-artefact aesthetic is utilised in the games of auteur-designer Yoshimune Kouki (Âge, 2016, 2017). With this strategy, they create a mirrored space that contrasts sacred and profane game states entirely – confronting players with the sacristy of a peaceful world only after separating them from it.
By highlighting the correlation of feeling and form, we raise awareness of the opportunities in experience-based game design. We conclude with a discussion on the unique connection in video games between affect and the game world and how they allow to prepare meaningful journeys in end-of-the-world scenarios.
Sources:
Âge. 2016. Muv-Luv. Microsoft Windows. Ed, All ages English Translation. Tokyo: aNCHOR.
Âge. 2017. Muv-Luv Alternative. Microsoft Windows. Ed, All ages English Translation. Tokyo: aNCHOR.
Kirkpatrick, Graeme. 2011. Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Massumi, Brian. 2002. “Introduction.” In Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, 1-21. Durham: Duke University Press.
Nihon Falcom. 2017. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. Microsoft Windows. Ed, English Localization. California: Xseed Games.
The Chinese Room. 2015. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Brighton: The Chinese Room.
Woodward, Kathryn. 2012. Identity and Difference. London: Sage.
