videogame

How do videogames imagine diegetic and extradiegetic posthuman agents? In a sense, videogame play is already posthuman. The player of a videogame is redistributed in an interrelational assemblage of human and non-human agents (Braidotti 2013); of physical world, player, technology, player character, and virtual environment (Taylor 2009).

Thus, videogames, by their very “nature” should allow us to play out versions of breaking away from anthropocentric idealism and experience what new modes of subjectivity and agency might entail. 

One such attempt is found in the 2017 videogame NieR: Automata (PlatinumGames 2017), lauded as a work of existential nihilism and post-humanity (as “after-human” as well as “beyond-“ or “more-than-human”). NieR: Automata is a role-playing action adventure videogame set in a post-apocalyptic version of Earth where androids and machines are caught in an eternal war. The player “controls” the android 2B, and later other androids and drone companions, to fight machines on behalf of humanity.

The director, Yoko Taro, has explained that the videogame intentionally avoids asking, “What does it mean to be human?” in favor of asking questions about what is left when we are gone (Muncy 2018).

The videogame more than nods at the posthuman in its narrative and gameplay, as it rejects standardized perception (Gerrish 2018) and traditional depictions of characters (Wright 2020) for machines interacting outside of the human sensorium, and idiosyncratic narrative structures (Backe 2018; Jaćević 2017).

Yet even if the humans behind the conflict are revealed to be long gone, their traces linger as machines and androids are struggling with concepts of human society such as gender, race, and human language. What happens to the posthuman stance of videogame play when machines are breaking away from humanism’s restricted notion of what being human is while continuously performing versions of it?

This presentation investigates how NieR: Automata consolidates reversing an anthropocentric view with firmly situating the human in the network. Through conceptualizing the posthuman as an interrelated agent (Braidotti 2013; Hayles 1999; 2017), the videogame presents oppositions to the humanist fantasy of autonomy on several fronts, especially in the final scene of the videogame. Here, the player has to shoot (and by extension, kill) the credits with names of the developers.

After removing the creators, the player can choose to “release” the player characters by deleting the videogame’s save file, thus stopping the perpetual circle of war, dying, and rebirth that the videogame presents. Is this part of the posthuman agent? Ultimately, in the tension between accelerating and inhibiting agency, in joining and distributing perspectives, in prompting continuation and condemning it, NieR: Automata imagines a paradoxical posthuman future of a human present.

Christine Wilks is an awarded digital writer, artist and developer of playable stories who participated in different projects in the field of electronic literature. In this interview, she talks about her interest in electronic literature, her activism in the different projects as well as the use of different media tools and of ludic elements in her works.

Though scholars of literature and the arts remain skeptical, Strunk explores some of the ways "videogames are making the transition into being objects worthy of artistic attention."

The current Indian government’s dream of a ‘Digital India’ does not include digital culture or the digital humanities. The country now has its digital library of digitised analog works (mainly printed texts) but it does not have a significant electronic literature. It does have a growing videogames industry that is becoming keener on sophisticated means of non-linear storytelling and also deeper investment in digital storytelling through platforms such as wevideo etc. mainly for the purposes of raising social awareness. Recent videogames such as the indie RPG, Unrest as well as adaptations of Bollywood films such as Ghajini attempt non-linear storytelling. Digital stories, such as ‘We are Angry’, a story about the recent brutalities against women in India, are becoming a popular medium of spreading awareness.

Together with this, the popularity of using the web as a medium for publishing poetry is on the rise. Some of this poetry, often not acceptable to print journals, tends to go viral on the web and on social media. Indeed, songs such as ‘Kolaveri di’ (sung in Tanglish, a mix of Tamil and English) and ‘Hok Kolorob’ became overnight hits on Youtube and other social media sites. While the former gained cult status in the country, the latter inspired a political movement against a corrupt education system. Another example is the digital recording and dissemination of the late-poet Vidrohi who lived by himself in a university campus in Delhi and composed poems in the oral tradition.

Non-linear traditions of storytelling and poetry have existed in India since ancient times and in a variety of forms ranging from the stories in the Katha traditions to the Urdu dastangoi plays. Strangely, though, despite its recent digital commitment, the government has not considered digital counterparts of such nonlinear literature worthy of its attention. Electronic literature, as it is understood in Europe and the U.S.A, does not have a presence in Indian literary and cultural traditions yet. The few Digital Humanities programmes that have developed in the country might be engaging with electronic literature in their curriculum. If so, the beginnings of e-lit are already evident in older cultural traditions and the process of remediation is certainly This article aims to explore the (non)beginnings of electronic literature in India and to think through larger implications of electronic literature in the digital culture and Humanities teaching at large.

Behind the fluorescent veil of modern big-business video games, a quiet revolution is happening, and it’s centered on a tool called Twine. Taken up by nontraditional game authors to describe distinctly nontraditional subjects—from struggles with depression, explorations of queer identity, and analyses of the world of modern sex and dating to visions of breeding crustacean horses in a dystopian future—the Twine movement to date has created space for those who have previously been voiceless within games culture to tell their own stories, as well as to invent new visions outside of traditional channels of commerce. Videogames for Humans, curated and introduced by Twine author and games theorist merritt kopas, puts Twine authors, literary writers, and games critics into conversation with one another’s work, reacting to, elaborating on, and being affected by the same. The result is an unprecedented kind of book about video games, one that will jump-start the discussions that will define the games culture of tomorrow. (Source: http://www.instarbooks.com/books/videogames-for-humans.html)

Limbo, released in 2010, is a puzzle platformer that features a player character who awakes in Limbo, on the edge of hell. He must traverse a world of bear traps, giant killer spiders, and spinning gears. As with any game, the player of Limbo will necessarily fail while solving the game’s puzzles; however, this game makes those failures especially painful. The player character is decapitated, impaled, and dismembered as the player attempts to solve each puzzle. The game’s monochromatic artwork, its vague storyline, and these gruesome deaths meant that Limbo, predictably, found its way into various “games as art” conversations. However, this presentation asks whether Limbo can serve as a different kind of boundary object. Given its complete lack of text and its minimalist approach to storytelling, what is the status of Limbo as a literary object? Given Katherine Hayles’ arguments that the field of electronic literature is best served by expanding its perspective to the “electronic literary” and Noah Wardrip-Fruin’s research on how both games and digital storytelling can be examined in terms of their expressive processes, it is relatively uncontroversial to consider Limbo in the theoretical context of electronic literature. However, what would such an approach yield? What are the literary traits of such a game, and how might we analyze such traits while ensuring that the game’s procedural expressions and computational expressions are given their due? In short, how might we consider Limbo as having one foot in each world, videogames and the electronic literary, and what would such a consideration provide scholars in electronic literature and game studies?

(Source: Author's abstract at ELO 2013 conference site: http://conference.eliterature.org/critical-writing/limbo-and-edge-liter… )

"The Machinimatic Moment" discusses a type of filmmaking that uses videogame engines (commonly referred to as machinima). I contend machinima exists within a liminal space between a number of diapoles including: production/consumption, play/cognition, and synthesis/critique. While much of machinima can be considered self-referential in that it consistently remarks upon the game itself and, in many ways, its limitations, other productions reveal sophisticated, compelling stories that are neither game nor traditional filmic narrative. I conclude by arguing that its liminality gives machinima distinctive and interesting qualities.

(Source: Author's abstract, 2008 ELO Conference)