Terminology Analysis of Digital Games, part 10

Continued from part 9.

Brendan Keogh uses N. Katherine Hayles' media criticism techniques to understand digital games as an embodied textuality. I believe it is this sense of embodiment that digital games convey that is key to understanding the unique aesthetic qualities of digital games. While all forms of texts may be said to be embodied (films, plays, novels, music, etc.), digital game players enter a cyborgian circuit with the game machine, through its physical interface, integrate into an algorithmic coupling with the simulated world, and experience a sense of navigation through virtual space that I call cyberkinaesthesia.

The author interfacing with a game controller (2018)

EMBODIMENT: is experiencing something as if it is an extension of one's own body. 

There are other definitions and ways of understanding embodiment, from embodied cognitive sciences to aspects of mindfulness, but here the concept is mostly adapted from philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's work on embodied perception and the ability of a person to add elements of the environment to their body schema (such as the example of the blind man's cane, as reviewed previously). This forms the basis of understanding a player's embodiment in perceiving a virtual world while interfaced with a digital game apparatus.

Embodiment is vital to understanding the aesthetics of digital games. As early game scholar James Newman states, "the pleasures of videogame play are not principally visual, but rather are kinaesthetic. The way it feels to be in the... gameworld is... of paramount importance" (Newman "The Myth of the Ergodic Video Game" Game Studies vol. 2 no. 1 2002 original emphasis). Brendan Keogh rightly points out that, while true, Newman's statement fails to account for the importance of visuals (and audio) in producing the digitally kinaesthetic (Keogh 2018 pp. 11-12).

Petri Lankoski published an initial study of embodiment with digital game players, devising a method for studying a player's perceived level of embodiment. These early findings show evidence that embodiment increases as a player becomes more skilled at a game, embodiment is connected to a sense of presence, and that different camera modes may affect the player's degree of embodiment. The research also shows the embodiment may be measured along two different dimensions, controller ownership and player-character embodiment, though there may be more dimensions (Lankoski "Embodiment in Character-Based Videogames" Academic Mindtrek '16 2016). This points to both a material embodiment within the physical interface (with the game controller) and an ideal embodiment within the game world (with the player-character, or avatar).

How does a video game make us feel like we are navigating through a virtual world? How do the visuals and other aspects affect our sense of motion and embodiment?

To be continued...