Materiality — |Game Studies Blog|

Dear Player: The Sensing Sim

This abstract proposes we look more deeply at how mechanics in games can articulate novel kinds of sense-perception at the edges of ludic and narrative experiences, and in forms distinct from the previous scholarship more concerned with the experiential implications of virtual reality (Helsel, Meckler 1991 et al). I’m interested in games which wrestle with Haraway’s cyborg and Bogost’s Alien Phenomenology seriously and conceptually in a world where we all too often see sensory augmentation as instrumental progress.

Materiality, SpaceMerlin SellerJuly 5, 2018phenomenology, bogost, scanner sombre, unfinished swan

Dear Player: Re-re-mastering

Sony's recent turn indicates a dramatic shift, from re-masters so subtle that difference is actively negated to a strategy of radical corrective surgery - what does this mean for the way we receive games, and what might it indicate for the future of the past?

Materiality, TimeMerlin SellerJuly 11, 2017Crash Bandicoot, N-Sane, Remasters, re-mastering, game archaeology

Dear Player: Objects to Life

The world is your human-computer-interface. I want to talk about toys, magic, fetishes and yet more toys. To collate some thoughts on the increasing diversity of gaming as an experience, this short piece focuses on new platforms. It’s about video game interfaces, the expanding range of ways we’re able to interact with, or indeed inhabit, virtual worlds.

Materiality, UncategorizedMerlin SellerJune 28, 2016amiibo, Disney ARG, game studies, internet of things, lego: dimensions, NFC, soviet arcade, toys to life, video game studies, video game theory, VR

Dear Player: Over-Flowing Games

What I want to do in this piece is question what we really mean when we use Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi’s term ‘Flow’, and the implications a wider spectrum of Flows might have for our understanding of games.

Flow, Materiality, Space, UncategorizedMerlin SellerJune 22, 2016art games, critical play, flow, game mechanics, merlin seller, ps4, trackmania, trackmania turbo, video game studies, video game theory

Dear Player: Far Cry Primal and Digital Archaeology

I want to talk about how we might ‘excavate’ games, explore their ruins and their leftovers, and by doing so I want us to reflect on the paranoid way in which we’re learning to play.

Mastery, Materiality, Space, TimeMerlin SellerApril 7, 2016archaeogaming, critical play, Far Cry, Far Cry Primal, history of computer games, video game studies, video game theory

Dear Player: Death Driving Games

Heard of the ‘death drive’? Well this time it’s literal. Nought to self-destruction in 60 seconds. A recent sub-genre has caught my eye – a species of racing/runner which blends an ironic horror with a species of racing. What do I mean by that? Racing towards the player’s own doom, this is a kind of game where victory is defeat, self-destruction is progress.

Flow, MaterialityMerlin SellerMay 29, 2015art games, critical play, death drive, Distance, Mad Max, merlin seller, Race the Sun, self-destruction, video game studies

Dear Player: 'Surface' in Games

I once found a paper crane on a train. Left there. Some ordinary magic.

MaterialityMerlin SellerMarch 13, 2015art games, critical play, history of computer games, merlin seller, ps vita, Tearaway, video game studies

Dear Player: The Swapper and the Body-snatcher

We’ve all heard some of the origin myths of film – the audiences who closed their eyes and threw up their hands to protect themselves from oncoming trains. But where are the video game myths? Where is the moment of horror? Where is the body?

MaterialityMerlin SellerDecember 11, 2014art games, critical play, indie games, Swapper review, The Swapper, thing theory, video game studies, video game theory

Dear Player: Performing/Platforming

In defence of generic games

MaterialityMerlin SellerDecember 2, 2014casual games, critical play, flow, history of computer games, rayman, sound shapes, thing theory, video game studies, video game theory

Dear Player: Alien Objects and Isolation

*Bip, bip, bip*. Better put that away – the Alien can hear your interface. In Alien: Isolation, an epic space-tragedy, you spend more time talking to your retro-engineered tools than other human beings. Stuck in space, you’re main enemy is technology.

Materiality, RepresentationMerlin SellerNovember 14, 2014Alien, Alien: Isolation, art games, critical play, history of computer games, lacan, thing theory, video game studies, video game theory