Projectuality in Digital Gameworlds Daniel Vella University of Malta Msida, MSD2080, Malta [email protected] Stefano Gualeni University of Malta Msida, MSD2080, Malta [email protected]

Keywords Phenomenology, , goals, projects, subjectivity, worldness

INTRODUCTION

With the objective of articulating an understanding of the existential structure of the player’s engagement with the gameworld, this paper draws on the notion of the ‘project,’ as developed in the existential of (1962[1927]) and, in particular, of Jean-Paul Sartre (1966[1943]).

The existential notion of the project could generally defined as an orientation towards an overarching goal that, at its core, reveals the aspiration to shape one’s individual existence in a certain way. The project is an activity of self-determination – a process through which the individual works towards being “a certain type of person” (McInerney, 1979, 667). It is in the light of this projectual disposition that things are recognized as meaningful to the individual. It is because of that attitude that the things a player encounters in a gameworld are interpreted as important, secondary, pleasant, unpleasant, negligible, desirable, right, wrong, etc. The in-game project frames game entities as resources, obstacles, boundaries, friends, foes, and it is in this way that the digital game environment, as the player’s existential situation, takes the conscious form of a meaningful world of possibility.

The paper’s exploration of the player’s engagement with the gameworld through the lens of projectuality shall be structured around two main questions. The first concerns the projectuality of the individual’s being in a non-actual context: how does an existential project give shape to the playing individual’s being in the gameworld? The second question, then, focuses on the relation between the individual’s being in the gameworld and her overarching existential project: in what way(s) does the practice of taking on a virtual project figure in the overarching project of the playing individual’s being?

This paper shall draw on existing existential approaches to the study of virtual world experience (Gualeni 2015), as well as player experience in gameworlds more specifically.

Extended Abstract Presented at DiGRA 2018

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In the latter case, the notions of the gameplay condition (Leino, 2010), the ludic subjectposition (Vella 2015) and the gameplay situation (Kania 2017), in different but related ways, advance a position according to which the digital game environment is adopted as the existential situation for a subjectivity she develops within the gameworld – a “ludic subjectivity” (Vella, 2015, 22).

Tying in with the general recognition, in formalist attempts at game definition, of an orientation towards goals or preferred outcomes as being a key element of games, the three existential approaches to games mentioned above also identify a directedness towards goals or projects as being at the core of the player’s perception of the gameworld (eg. Avedon and Sutton-Smith 1971, 7; Suits 1990[1978], 34; Costikyan 2002, 11-14; Juul 2005, 36). Leino specifically involves Sartre, arguing that digital games “simultaneously facilitate and resist a particular (kind of) project, which makes the particular (kind of) project stand out among all possible (kinds of) projects” (2010, 135). Vella writes that “the setting of goals towards which [the player’s] efforts are directed [...] makes the gameworld appear to the player in the light of these goals” (2015, 284). Likewise, Kania’s notion of the gameplay situation is intimately tied to the pursuit of a goal – the gameplay situation is “experienced as purposeful from the internal perspective [to the gameworld] with relation to its goal” (2017, 62).

In order to answer the first of its two questions, then, the paper will expand upon these understandings to highlight the ways in which the player’s goal-orientation, through shaping what Hans Georg Gadamer terms the “comportment” particular to a given playing, shapes the determination of an in-game ludic self.

To answer the second question, then, the paper will draw upon the notion of the “double perspectival structure” of ludic engagement (Vella 2015, 55-71), according to which the player simultaneously inhabits a subjective standpoint internal to the gameworld (the ludic subjectivity) and her own subjective standpoint as an individual external to the gameworld. On this basis, this paper proposes an understanding of ludic subjectivity as standing in a nested relation to the individual’s subjectivity in the actual world, and argues that it is this relation that allows gameworld experience to gain significance in the light of the individual’s projectual existence.

The arguments advanced in this paper pave the way for a comprehensive understanding of the transformative, self-transformative, and therapeutic possibilities and advantages afforded by the exercising of ludic subjectivities in digital game worlds.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Avedon, E. M., & Sutton-Smith, B. (1971). The Study of Games. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Costikyan, G. (2002) “I Have No Words And I Must Design,” in Mäyrä, F. (ed.), Proceedings of the Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference, Tampere, Finland: Tampere University Press, pp. 9-33. Gadamer, H. G. 1989 [1960] Truth and Method. London: Sheed & Ward. Gualeni, S. (2015) Virtual Worlds as philosophical tools. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Heidegger, M. (1962) [1927] Being and Time. Trans. Macquarrie, J. and Robinson, E. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row Publishers Inc. Juul, J. (2005) Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Kania, M. M. (2017) Perspectives of the Avatar: Sketching the Existential of Digital Games. Wroclaw, Poland: University of Lower Silesia Press. Leino, O.T. (2010) Emotions in Play: On the Constitution of Emotion in Solitary Computer Game Play. [Doctoral dissertation]. IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark McInerney, P. (1979) “Self-Determination and the Project”. In The Journal of Philosophy 76:11, 663-677. Suits, B. (1990) The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. Boston, MA: David R. Godine. Vella, D. (2015) The ludic subject and the ludic self: Investigating the ‘I-in-the Gameworld’. [Doctoral dissertation]. IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

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