From Controllers to Cogeneration: Visions of Reality Mediated by the Video Game Kevin Lee MA/MSc Global Innovation Design Royal College of Art School of Design Imperial College London Dyson School of Design Engineering
[email protected] 2021 Lee 1 Abstract The video game, that maligned, scorned, celebrated, and above all misunderstood cultural artifact, is the defining form of lived experience in postmodern society. By expanding what we consider to be a video game, and what is expected of them, we can begin to formulate a compelling image of future media and their implications for life in a virtual 21st century. Gaming is quickly becoming a lens through which the world is understood and defined. As video games supplant more traditional forms of social entertainment, and as they become ever more "real", their various languages will not only shape ever more of our lived experience, but become tools for imagining, designing, and implementing radically different worlds, far beyond current conceptions of play and gaming. The cogeneration between machine and player at the core of play equips players with not only the understanding required to navigate an increasingly algorithmic world but the ability to conjure and synthesize new and alternate realities. From this ability emerges a nascent, imaginative vision of the future, born from and molded by gaming, a vision which begs to be liberated from the myopia of the terms "video" and "game". Keywords Video games, postmodernism, digital culture, new media, indie games Acknowledgements This dissertation could not have been possible without the love and support of my parents and brother, all of whom have variously struggled with the nebulous-ness of this course and the uncertainty I have thrust myself into with it.