The wounds that never healed : videoludic trauma in Cry of fear

Cet article comprend des références au traumatisme, au suicide, à l'automutilation, au meurtre et à la maltraitance des enfants.This article offers a conceptualization of trauma in horror video games, and in Cry of Fear (Team Psykskallar, 2013) in particular. It argues that video games can cut across the reality/fiction divide, deeply affect the emotional organization of the player, and leave them with wounds that take time to heal—a phenomenon I call “videoludic trauma.” More specifically, it develops the idea that Cry of Fear can induce a form of trauma in the player by putting them in horrifying and intense situations. Drawing on trauma studies, bleed theory, and phenomenology, this paper first defines “videoludic trauma,” contrasts it with “positive discomfort” (Jørgensen, 2016), and introduces the concept of “horror flow.” Then, using these concepts as a starting point, it examines how Cry of Fear represents trauma symptomatology and presents four vignettes that each focuses on a specific aspect or moment in Cry of Fear that had a strong impact on my gaming experience—from the visceral combat system to the feeling of loneliness the game led me to experience. This paper provides new analytical tools and vocabulary to talk about our trauma-like experiences with video games and lays the groundwork for future research focusing on the relationship between trauma and the horror genre

Feeling Like Stories: Empathy and Narrative Engagement

In this thesis I present and defend a theory of empathy, and then apply that theory of empathy to understanding how we engage with stories. I argue that empathy should be understood as a well-grounded demonstrative ascription of the form ‘[the target] feels like this’. I take the well-groundedness of such an ascription to consist in a series of ‘proto-empathic’ imaginings, which justify our ascription to a target by virtue of being congruent with one another. In laying out my conception of empathy I argue against several prominent theories of empathy, including those favoured by Preston and de Waal and Alvin Goldman. I argue in particular against the idea that empathy should be understood as aiming primarily at a matching of affect between an empathiser and their target. Moving on to narrative engagement, I argue that when audiences engage with stories they empathise with an implied narrator of that story. I make this case by showing how empathy can prima facie be employed to solve two outstanding philosophical problems about stories by virtue of its employment of perspective shifting. I sketch a conception of ‘perspectives’ and go on to argue that every story features what I call a ‘narrative perspective’, and by process of elimination conclude that the holder of the narrative perspective must be an implied narrating agency. I then show how an empathic theory of narrative engagement can help us understand how stories can help or hinder our moral education. Finally, I outline a theory of how audiences engage with interactive artworks such as videogames, drawing out the consequences of that view for how we might apply my theory of empathic engagement to furthering the understanding of interactive art

Immunitary Gaming: Mapping the First-Person Shooter

Videogames have been theorised as an action-based medium. The original contribution to knowledge this thesis makes is to reconfigure this claim by considering popular multiplayer FPS games as reaction-based – particularly, immune reactions. I take up Roberto Esposito’s claim that the individual in contemporary biopolitics is defined negatively against the other, controlled and ultimately negated via their reactions to power’s capacity to incessantly generate threats. By inciting insecurity and self-protective gestures, FPS games like Activision’s Call of Duty franchise and EA’s Battlefield series vividly dramatise Esposito’s thought, producing an immunitary gaming. Immunitary Gaming locates the FPS within key moments of change as well as evolution in Western image systems including the emergence of linear perspective, cartography and the early years of the cinema. The FPS appropriates these image systems, but also alters their politics. Giorgio Agamben has argued that the apparatuses of late modernity no longer subjectify like their forebears, but desubjectify the individual, producing an impotent neoliberal body politic. I trace a similar development here. My work also seeks to capture the player’s movements via autoethnographic writing that communicates the viscerally and intensity of the experience. The FPS is framed as capable of giving insight into both the present and the future of our technological and political milieu and ‘sensorium,’ in Walter Benjamin’s terms. In its valorisation of the individual and production of insecurity to incite action, this project argues that the FPS is a symbolic form of immunitary neoliberal governmentality

Faulty Connections : Affective Imaginaries in Peripheral Digital Games

This thesis and associated exhibition view digital games as playful affective structures, which give users and developers a space for figuring out feelings. It is particularly generative to think about game design this way in contexts where there is uncertainty or controversy about how something should feel, or how one should feel about something. I explore figurations of “dynamics” and “aesthetics” in interactive design at the peripheries of games culture, particularly for emerging devices and interfaces with an ambiguous role in social life: early mobile games, recent VR software development, and my own installations of recycled computers and custom hardware in galleries and disused retail spaces. I view game design’s social role as expressing and inscribing affective imaginaries, helping to shape human-human and human-device relationships. An interdisciplinary analysis of affective imaginaries in peripheral games forms the written part of this PhD. Looking at early mobile games and virtual pets, I discuss affective actions such as nurturing, and affective narratives in developers’ accounts of their players’ relationships to their games, connecting these to broader ideas about how users practice “care” through mobile devices. I then look at narratives related to care in discourse around queer indie games, drawing on scholars’ and artists’ critiques of “empathy” narratives that position queer creators as an empathised-with “other”. This informs my 6analysis of early VR applications in which this “empathy machine” narrative has evolved into an imaginary of hi-tech virtual re-embodiment for social good. I have found this way of viewing affect in game design helpful for reflecting on my own art practice, which in turn is a reflection of my research. Throughout the thesis, I discuss artworks that I present in the digital exhibition, which have recontextualised some of the strategies and themes that emerged from this research. Following my study of early mobile virtual pets, I created a “petting zoo” using recycled computers. To further explore affective imaginaries of care and empathy, I applied similar petting dynamics to non-fiction works representing transgender people’s stories as “interactive portraits”. Finally, following analysis of empathy discourse and queer embodiment in video games and VR, I created an ironic “self-portrait” that has the player interrogate how subjectivity is constructed. This exploration of affect in game design is informed by developments in queer game studies, led by scholars such as Bo Ruberg and Adrienne Shaw and building on work on affect by queer theorists such as Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick and Sara Ahmed. By combining practice and analysis, I hope to contribute to this field a sympathetic critique of the affective imaginaries of the games sector. I hope that through this practice-based approach, in which I notice a dynamic and observe what happens when it is recontextualised, there might be a way to avoid the temptation to fall into “paranoid readings” (Kosofsky-Sedgwick) when critiquing the biopolitics of using interactive media to stimulate desirable affects in a player, even prosocial emotions such as empathy. The political significance of affective imaginaries has been clear in events such as Gamergate, which showed that what is at stake in game design and consumption is not just individual players’ emotions, but an interdependent social meaning space that structures normative affects and marks, in Sara Ahmed’s terms, recognisable strangers with alien affect. This thesis contributes a responsive and reflective approach to practising and critiquing interactive design that attempts to influence how someone else feels. The online exhibition is the subject of the three Reflections included in the body of the thesis. It can be found at zoyander.cc/games/exhibition. Additionally, content including photographs, source code, and video footage are stored in Lancaster University Library

Performance Through an Avatar: Exploring Affect and Ideology Through Narrative in Videogames

Videogames are a major source of popular cultural narratives surpassing even Hollywood films. Videogames, however, cast the player as the active agent within the narrative as opposed to film, television, and traditional theatre where the separation between performer and audience is clearly demarcated. This dissertation investigates the affective potential of videogames realized through the relationship of the player and the avatar within the game world. Specifically, I look at the avatar as an affective conduit for the player, how the feedback between the player and avatar creates a cybernetic relationship, how this relationship changes the player, and how this change potentially augments the players interpretation of realityvirtual and otherwise. It is through this changed (and augmented) interpretation of reality that socio/political ideological meaningsintentional or notmay be absorbed by the player. Ethnographic research conducted with six volunteer participants combined with my own autoethnographic research into several recent popular videogames is intersected with theories of affect, embodiment, and ideology. My findings suggest that experience with the virtual realities of game worlds is one step removed from actual experience. Since videogames are composed of representations, the ideological positions embedded within those representations are not simply presented and understood like traditional theatre, film, and television, but are embodied by the player through the avatar as (nearly direct) experience. Theatre, film, and television have rich critical histories and this study of the players performance through the avatar as an affective conduit and receiver/transmitter of ideology joins the growing critical body of work regarding the newer storytelling medium of videogames

KEMAMPUAN BERPIKIR HISTORIS MAHASISWA PENDIDIKAN SEJARAH UNIVERSITAS NEGERI JAKARTA DALAM MEMBANGUN HISTORICAL EMPATHY

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis kemampuan berpikir historis mahasiswa pendidikan sejarah dalam meningkatkan kemampuan historical empathy. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah kualitatif dengan pendekatan studi kasus yang dikembangkan oleh Creswell. Penelitian dilaksanakan pada Program Studi Pendidikan Sejarah Universitas Negeri Jakarta (UNJ) bulan Januari sampai Juli tahun 2020. Penelitian ini juga dibatasi pada mata kuliah Sejarah Indonesia Masa Kolonial pada angkatan 2018 dan Sejarah Indonesia Masa Orde baru pada angkatan 2017. Pengumpulan data dilakukan melalui wawancara, observasi dan dokumentasi. Data-data yang telah dikumpulkan kemudian dianalisis dan ditriangulasikan kemudian dideskripsikan dan diinterpretasi maknanya. Hasil dari penelitian ini ditemukan bahwa terdapat: (1) mahasiswa pendidikan sejarah telah menguasai kemampuan berpikir historis ; (2) menurut dosen yang mengampu mata kuliah Sejarah Indonesia Masa Kolonial dan Sejarah Indonesia Masa Orde Baru, mahasiswa telah menguasai kemampuan berpikir historis karena telah menguasai indikator dalam berpikir historis yang digunakan pada penelitian dari UCLA. (3) pada mata kuliah Sejarah Indonesia Masa Kolonial, perkuliahan dan diskusi dilaksanakan melalui google classroom sedangkan pada mata kuliah Sejarah Indonesia Masa Orde Baru perkuliahan dilaksanakan via whatsapp dan dosen hanya memberikan bahan bacaan untuk mahasiswa agar diakhir dapat membuat sebuah proposal penelitian skripsi. (4) mahasiswa pendidikan sejarah telah memiliki kemampuan kognitif empati sehingga mereka dapat menyikapi sejarah dengan baik dan memahami betul alasan dibalik orang-orang yang ada dimasa lalu bertindak. ************ This study aims to analyze the historical thinking ability of historical education students in improving historical empathy ability. The research method used is qualitative with case study approach developed by Creswell. The research was conducted in the History Education Study Program of Universitas Negeri Jakarta (UNJ) from January to July of 2020. This research is also limited to the courses of Colonial Period Indonesian History in the 2018 class and the History of Indonesia New Order Period in the class of 2017. Data collection is conducted through interviews, observations and documentation. The data that has been collected is then analyzed and stimulated and then described and interpreted its meaning. The results of this study found that there are: (1) history education students have mastered the ability to think historically; (2) According to lecturers who hold courses in Indonesian Colonial History and Indonesian History of the New Order Period, students have mastered the ability to think historically because they have mastered the indicators in historical thinking used in research from UCLA. (3) in the course History of Indonesia Colonial Period, lectures and discussions are carried out through google classroom while in the course History of Indonesia New Order Period lectures are carried out via whatsapp and lecturers only provide reading materials for students so that at the end can make a thesis research proposal. (4) History education students have cognitive empathy skills so that they can handle history well and understand the reasons behind those who have acted in the past

First-Person Participation in Dante's 'Commedia'

This thesis sets out a case for a mode of reading I term first-person participation in relation to Dante’s 'Commedia', a narrative poem I propose to function as an exceptionally participatory text. That Dante’s poem invites active engagement on the part of its readers is widely accepted in scholarship. My objective is to extend this debate by identifying certain of Dante’s innovations in relation to the mechanisms of narrative transmission through which such active engagement is invited. In so doing, I seek to establish that these mechanisms together constitute a narratological strategy of invitations to the reader to engage with the poem, intermittently and electively, in a mode of first-person participation, mentally simulating on her own account the journey to the desire for the divine. My research transfers and adapts for textual literary theory new notions of embodied simulation from cognitive neuroscience and emerging ideas in videogame critical theory relating to the mechanics of player presence and the function of the avatar, suggesting and evidencing parallels with the deeply personal and embodied modes of interaction with devotional texts associated with medieval practices of affective piety. I identify in the 'Commedia' a comprehensive and systematic programme of invitations to participate facilitating three types of presence in the responsive reader, and underpinning the invitation to first-person participation. Spatial presence (the perceptual illusion of ‘being there’) is invited through a multi-layered strategy I describe as narration through situated body states. Social presence (the illusion of being physically in relation with others) is invited by narration through kinaesthetic empathy. Self-presence (the experience that ‘something is happening to me’) is constituted, I suggest, through a combination of five mechanisms: a model of narrating instances that identifies the existence of four “faces” of the Dantean ‘io’; a strategy I borrow from film theory of narration through mobile camera view; a new reading of the functioning of the direct addresses to the reader; a strategy of narrative training; and a comprehensive strategy of narration through the manifold gaps in the text.Keith Sykes Studentship in Medieval Italian Literatur

Empathy, Ethics, and Justice in Children's War Literature

Using cognitive narratology, this theoretical thesis examines how the three linked concepts of empathy, ethics and justice are created and communicated in children’s war literature. Due to the divisive nature of war literature, the basis of this thesis lies on the in- and outgroup theory of empathy, according to which the extend of our empathy is strongly tied to who we identify as “like us” (ingroup) or “unlike us” (outgroup). The limits of our empathy have a direct influence on both our moral frameworks and our ability to perceive the ethical implications of textual actions and characterisation; if we are not empathically engaged, the consequences of a character’s motivations and actions are irrelevant to us. In complex situations like those in war stories there is another layer of moral importance; justice. The reason for going to war, how it is conducted, and how it is resolved are so specific that they have their own justice philosophy. Children cannot be assumed to be aware of this, or to have the power to influence it. Yet it plays a significant part in children’s war literature. This thesis argues that in children’s war literature empathy, ethics, and justice build on each other in a bottom-up manner. It then further examines how this is achieved in the genre, and what its potential impact on the reader may be. The thesis examines this by analysing the construction and communication of each concept separately in a bottom-up approach, starting with empathy and ending with justice. These sections are divided up into two chapters dedicated to the narrative techniques most relevant to the concept analysed, in a top-down approach, starting with narrators and ending with scripts. A different novel is analysed for each technique, both to demonstrate the argument using the most appropriate example, and to showcase the patterns within the genre. The thesis concludes that through these narrative techniques a complex web of empathy, ethics, and justice is constructed, in which each technique plays a direct role in the concept communicated to the reader. Because young readers are still developing cognitively, as well as building their life experience and reading skills, children’s war literature can provide a strongly influential training ground for them to learn and grow as empathic and moral people

The Art of Adaptation in Film and Video Games

This Special Issue of Arts explores the art and practice of adaptation in several different mediums with a focus on film and video games. The topics covered include experimental game design, narrative design, film and trauma, games adapted from literature, video game cinema, film and the pandemic, film and the environment, film and immigration, and film and culture

"It All Feels Too Real”: Digital Storyworlds and Ontological Resonance

This article explores the way that interactive digital narratives play with the boundary between reality and fiction in ways that lead reader/players to perceive bidirectional ontological transfers both during and after the narrative experience—a phenomenon that I define as “ontological resonance.” Drawing on empirical research, it examines Blast Theory's app-fiction Karen as a case study but suggests that ontological resonance is becoming increasingly prevalent throughout digital culture. The article demonstrates how empirical research can reveal ways in which such ontological transfers occur and, crucially, how they are conceptualized by readers. It also suggests that ontological resonances can be generated by and felt in response to narratives across media and concludes that empirical research is vital for accessing authentic reader responses to narrative experiences even when those responses suggest that readers have experienced uncertain ontologies that are logically and/or physically impossible