Abstract
This paper discusses the nature and limits of player embodiment within digital games. We identify a convergence between everyday bodily actions and activity within digital environments, and a trend towards incorporating natural forms of movement into gaming worlds through mimetic control devices. We examine recent literature in the area of immersion and presence in digital gaming; Calleja’s (2011) recent Player Involvement Model of gaming is discussed and found to rely on a probematic notion of embodiment as 'incorporation'. We go on to further reflect on the nature of player involvement in digital gaming environments by applying insights from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. It is argued that digital embodiment differs so significantly from primordial embodiment that any idea of total immersion is simply fantasy. We subsequently argue that digital game media nonetheless provide us with unique opportunities for exploring the nature of distinctively human forms of embodiment, and so we need more complete and more reliable phenomenological descriptions of the experiences associated with computer games.
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Notes
It is worth noting that the PIM was developed on the basis of data gathered from MMORPGs, perhaps indicating an awareness of intersubjectivity for creating meaning in games. Perhaps only MMORPGs offer the kind of meaning-generating interactions that could reasonably justify the label of intersubjectivity, though this is a claim that we will not examine in any detail in this paper.
Heidegger’s terminology is now well established within HCI discourse, though there is a tendency (e.g. Dourish 2001:139) to understand the concept of being ready-at-hand as an abstract property or state rather than a seamless aspect of conscious experience.
These may work quite well, but there are other proprioceptive aspects of embodied sensory experience which could never conceivably be reproduced within digital environments as we know them: gravity, heat, etc.
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Acknowledgements
The views expressed herein are those of the authors, who wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Hewlett Foundation (http://www.hewlett.org/) and the Open Learning Network (http://www.olnet.org/) which made conference participation possible. We are grateful to the organisers and attendees of the 6th International Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games where an earlier draft of this paper was presented under the title ‘In The Game’? Embodied Subjectivity in Gaming Environments. We are also grateful to anonymous reviewers for their comments.
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Farrow, R., Iacovides, I. Gaming and the limits of digital embodiment. Philos. Technol. 27, 221–233 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-013-0111-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-013-0111-1