DARC — Digital Aesthetics Research Center www.digital-aestetik.dk Playing Computer Games: Somatic Experience and Experience of the Somatic Copyright © 2012 Henrik Smed Nielsen Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License". www. gnu.org/licenses Layout, illustration and cover design: Ida Knudsen Publisher: Digital Aesthetics Research Center A copy of the book can be found at www.digital-aestetik.dk ISBN 978-87-91810-21-3 EAN 9788791810213 Table of Contents Preface 10 Introduction Addressing Lived Experience 13 Forgetting the Soma 17 A Disembodied Discipline? 17 Thinking Too Much About Rules ... 19 An Aesthetics of Mind 20 The Physical Corpus 22 The Living, Feeling, Sentient, Purposive Body 25 The Moving Body 26 The Technological Body 26 The Fictional Body 27 Between Somatic Experience and Experience of the Somatic 28 Defining Computer Games: A Human–Machine Relationship 31 The Automatic and the Proto-interactive 33 The Somatic Dimension of Human–Machine Relationship 35 An Overview of the Dissertation 38 Chapter 1 A (Post-)Phenomenological Foundation 43 The Phenomenological Movement 44 A Return to ‘Essence’? 47 The Phenomenological Reduction 49 The Intentional Soma 52 A Phenomenology of Computer Games? 56 The Patron Saint of the Body in Game Research 57 Prosthetic Extension 60 Movement and Space 61 Moving Beyond ‘Classical’ Phenomenology 63 Post-Phenomenology 64 A Post-Phenomenology of Computer Games 68 From Disengaged to Displaced Somatic Experience 72 A New Path to Pursue 75 Chapter 2 Awareness of the Somatic 79 Aesthetics: A Theory of Sensory Knowledge 80 The Characteristics of Aesthetic Experiences 82 The Somaesthetic Discipline 86 Somaesthetics and Computer Games 93 Somaesthetic Dimensions of Transformation 95 The Experiential Dimension 98 The Representational Dimension 101 The Performative Dimension 105 Taking the Experiential, Representational and Performative Dimensions to the Next Level 109 Chapter 3 – The Eye The First-Person Shooter Genre 113 Experiential Movement via a First-Person Perspective 119 The Visual Skin 120 Shaping the Unseen Body 122 Vertigo 124 An Experiential Oxymoron 125 Representing the Competent, Military Body 127 Confronting One’s Own Perspective 130 Performing with/for the Quasi-other 132 Death From Above 135 A Somaesthetic of Visual Displacement 137 Chapter 4 – The Hand Bringing the Controller Back into Play 141 An Experiential Grasp on the Guitar-shaped Controller 146 The Limits of being a Guitar Hero 149 The (In)authenticity of the Experiential Grasp 151 The Guitar-shaped Controller as a Representational Object 154 Representational Tension 157 A Performative Grasp on the Guitar-shaped Controller 158 A Somaesthetic Being-in-the-Music 161 The Controller in Non-mimetic Interfaces 165 Chapter 5 – The Ear Approaching Game Sound Somaesthetically 169 Sound as Experientially Reverberant 174 The Voice of a Quasi-other 174 The Soundscape – Places Being Sensed, and Senses Being Placed 177 Auditory Agoraphobia 179 Auditory Claustrophobia 183 Hearing Somatic Reflections 186 Performing Stealth Action 189 An Auditory Illusion 192 Chapter 6 – The ‘Body’ You are the Controller! 197 Kinect Adventures 201 Framing the Experiential Dimension 205 The Reappearance of Technology 208 A Visual Quasi-I 210 The Living Room as the New Interface 215 A Representation of Immersion 218 Photo Moments 220 A Non-controller Performance? 223 The Technological Other 225 The Other 228 A Somaesthetic of Technological Displacement 231 Chapter 7 Research Contributions and Possibilities 235 A New Perspective on Computer Games 237 Screen, Controller and Speaker 239 Gesture Based Game Interfaces 241 The Somaesthetic Discipline 244 The Potential of Perceptual Extremism 245 Phenomenology/Post-phenomenology 250 I–technology–game-world Relations 251 New Somatic Research Areas 253 Desexualising the Design of Computer Games 256 Bibliography 258 Gameography 272 Preface This book is a PhD dissertation, funded by a 4+4 grant from Aarhus University, and written between 2007 and 2011. The dissertation was handed in for evaluation on the 1 September 2011, and the oral defence took place on the 30 November, the same year. With the exception of minor corrections, this book is identical to the dissertation. I would like to thank my supervisor, Søren Pold, and my co- supervisor, Morten Breinbjerg, for investing time and effort in constructive discussions, feedback and advice. Thanks to Christian Ulrik Andersen for taking on the role as chairman of the evaluation committee, and thanks to Susan Kozel and Graeme Kirkpatrick for participating in the evaluation process, providing insightful comments, and making the oral defence a challenging as well as a pleasant experience. Thanks to Richard Shusterman for letting me visit the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture at Florida Atlantic University. Thanks to members of DARC, and colleagues and friends at Aarhus University, with whom I have crossed paths during my work on the dissertation. Thanks to Steffen Brandorff and Aarhus University for granting the funds to improve the English language of the dissertation. Thanks to Ida Knudsen for spending time and creativity on the layout, illustration and cover design for this book. Lastly, thanks to friends, family and my Christina, for love and patience. 10 Introduction ADDRESSING LIVED EXPERIENCE When I have told someone outside the academic community that my work and research, the last years, has involved playing computer games, the usual response is that people laugh, smile and enthusiastically comment, ‘Wow… that must be fun!’ Similarly, in the academic surroundings where my work developed, computer games were also associated with fun and pleasure, for example, returning from the university library, with a stack of games under my arm, I occasionally got a wink ‘Ohh, you are off to do some research, eh?’ or ‘Working hard, I see!?’ And, I definitely agree, computer games are pleasurable and fun, and it is precisely this experienced fun or pleasure of computer games that has been the topic of my research. However, as computer games do not necessarily please or immediately gratify, but often are experienced as frustrating, challenging or provocative, the experience they facilitate is by no means trivial. Furthermore, the notions of pleasure and fun are not intended to associate the activity of playing computer games with a purposeless or neutral passing of time. Instead, my thesis is that, it is the immediate and concrete, yet fleeting, ‘now’ in the playing activity that founds our urge to, and manifests as the pleasure of, playing computer games. To be more specific, I argue that playing computer games is a bodily founded and bodily savoured activity – i.e. the alluring ‘now’ of playing computer games is a bodily ‘now’. In my initial academic encounter with the field of game research, as a student, being introduced to the two classical approaches to computer games, narratology and ludology, I was somewhat puzzled and felt that something very basic, and to some extent also very trivial was 13 missing in their characterisations of computer games. Being a fan of action games (first- and third-person-shooters, racing games and the like), as I grasp the controller to play one of these games, I would not describe my experience as particularly narrative or revolving around identification or role-play, at least, after I have put down the controller, the narrative elements of the game (story-line, character etc.) are quickly forgotten, and never ‘present’ with the same clarity as what I experience after having seen a film or read a novel. Instead, when I leave the computer game, I rub my eyes, stretch my back, loosen up my shoulders and, what I am able to recall with experiential clarity, are the actions I performed in the game, the visceral ‘feel’ of the game, its speed, materiality, the sounds, the colours, the lights – the perceptual spectacle of the game. Similarly, in the immediate game-play experience, I rarely think of the computer game as a game in the classical sense (a formal system or rule structure). When I play chess or another board game, I have an experience of making an effort to think as far ahead as I can, to anticipate what happens next. Meanwhile, positioned at the computer, playing a first-person-shooter or a racing game there is a sense in which I, during game-play, do not have time for such ‘thinking ahead’, I most often just do things, correct mistakes and fine-tune my moves in the flux1 of game-play. All in all, the computer game unfolds or develops much more explicitly as an integral part of my bodily doings. The above characterisation of game-play experience, and my overall thesis, also reveals the theoretical and methodological presuppositions that I will develop in the following chapters: That the body in-the- 1 Although the possible physiological meaning of the word – ‘flux, n. A flowing, flow. 1. a. An abnormally copious flowing of blood, excrement, etc. from the bowels or other organs; a morbid or excessive discharge.’ (Oxford English Dictionary, Second edition, 1989; online version June 2011) – underlines the bodily, material and visceral characteristics that I find essential to the experience of playing computer games, it is also a misdescription/overstatement of these characteristics. Consequently, I am referring to flux as ‘A continuous succession of changes of condition, composition or substance.’ (Oxford English Dictionary, Second edition, 1989; online version June 2011). 14 world is the immediate vehicle for, and object of, the production and evaluation of meaning. In other words, that the world and objects in it (including computer games), make sense and are appreciated through bodily perception and expression, and that this incarnated and enworlded sense-making is best approached from a phenomenological first-person perspective.