Abstract
This chapter critiques Galloway’s notion of videogames as ‘collapsed allegory’, contrasting it with the idea of the framing device. Where the former can only account for the avatar’s movement, the latter is able to accommodate the many types of movement seen in FPS games. The problem then becomes one of identifying the ways that the multiple framing devices ‘collapse’ toward the game’s conclusion, thereby structuring its temporality. Two classes of framing device are identified: integral (those incorporated into the graphical, sound or tactile design of the game) and hypermediate (those which are more overt frames or screen demarcations).
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Notes
- 1.
I am indebted to film scholar Alexandra Heller-Nicholas for alerting me to this history in detail.
- 2.
Half-Life 2’s expansions, titled Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2, are particularly valuable because the studio has produced commentary tracks on the games which are informative documents of the creation of a high-quality game design.
- 3.
See Chapter 9 for a formal terminology that can account for this: ‘primary digitalization’.
- 4.
The player character, for example, is promised cake by GLaDOS upon completion of the sequence of tests, but comes across graffiti repeating the phrase ‘The cake is a lie.’
- 5.
Benjamin’s term would be ‘innervation’ – a term that will be taken up in Chapter 8.
- 6.
As security guard Barney Calhoun enthuses after Freeman manipulates a lever in Half-Life 2, ‘Great job, Gordon! Throwing that switch and all, I can see your MIT education really pays for itself.’
- 7.
Anticipating the terms fully developed in Chapters 8 and 9, players encounter these signifiers in a state of ‘distracted habituation’ and ‘primary digitalization’.
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Jayemanne, D. (2017). Anterior Motives – From Subjective Shot to Portal’s Figure of Reversal. In: Performativity in Art, Literature, and Videogames. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54451-9_5
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