Medium Specific Uncanny in Contemporary Video Games

Series Film and Media Studies Issues Volume 24, 2023 – Uncanny Intermediality Medium Specific Uncanny in Contemporary Video Games

Volume 24, 2023 – Uncanny Intermediality

Tamás Csönge

Acta Univ. Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 24 (2023) 185–202

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ausfm-2023-0020

Abstract. The academic discourse on the uncanny in video games usually focuses on the phenomenon of the so-called “uncanny valley” (Mori 2012). The article explores the emergence of other, medium-specific occurrences of the effect, prioritizing interactivity as a key factor in its establishment. Two unique areas are particularly prominent in the increasingly photorealistic worlds of video games where uncanny moments associated with the wider, Freudian concept can be found. These are linked to necessary (structuring) and contingent (destructuring) components of the game: namely its heterogeneous ontology and the glitches that may appear in it. The author hypothesizes that these less conceptualized uncanny situations are regular features of the gaming experience and emerge when the immersion in an iconically realistic environment has been broken and eerie absences or ghostly presences pop up either through encounters with the game’s boundaries that result from the technological limitations of the software or the appearance of unintended errors in its processes.

Keywords: video games, simulation, reality-effect, uncanny, glitch, bug

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Volume 24, 2023 – Uncanny Intermediality

Uncanny (Inter)Mediality and Photo Futures, Arild Fetveit Uncanny Colours of the Past. Phenomenological Notes on Remediation and Colourization of Black-and-White Footage, Kamilla Simor The Uncanniness of Intermediality. Joanna Hogg’s Eerily Self-Reflexive Cinema, Ágnes Pethő Filial Care and Familial Postmemory. On the Uncanny and Affective Intermediality of Analogue Media Use in Recent European Documentaries, Melinda Blos-Jáni The Crisis of Care and Uncanny Intersensuality in Sally Potter’s The Roads Not Taken, Judit Pieldner Rural Landscapes and Affective Encounters in Radu Muntean’s Film, Întregalde, Katalin Sándor Ritual as Intermedial Interjection in Ritwik Ghatak’s The Cloud-Capped Star, Sanskriti Chattopadhyay, Deb Kamal Ganguly Jane Austen and the Uncanny: The Colonial Past in Patricia Rozema’s Adaptation, Mansfield Park, Polina Rybina Media Representation and Affective Intermediality in Der Tote im Bunker and Vielleicht Esther, Giulia Bigongiari Medium Specific Uncanny in Contemporary Video Games, Tamás Csönge Pandora’s Myth and Cultural Trauma in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, Boglárka Farkas Framing Anxiety. Intermedial Techniques of the Uncanny, Michaela Wünsch Front pages in PDF, Inside covers in PDF,

Medium Specific Uncanny in Contemporary Video Games - Acta Universitatis Sapientiae