Chiel Kattenbelt & Joost Raessens

K, R , , ,

COMPUTER GAMES AND THE COMPLEXITY OF EXPERIENCE
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Computer games are usually studied on the basis of a sensory- motor model related to classical cinema, a model which is almost exclusively oriented towards the actuality and causality of action. This assumption of an actiondriven, Aristotelean dramaturgy does not only concern the possible world which is represented in the game, but also the playing of the game itself. We argue that such an approach does not sufficiently recognize the complexity of the experience represented in the game and gone through by the game player. In order to determine the complexity of experience, two other –this time modern-cinema related – models are used, based on Peirce’s phenomenological categories of firstness, secondness and thirdness, and on Deleuze’s cinematographical categories of the movementimage, the time-image, and the thought-image. According to these triadic theories the actuality and causality of action is broken through by the predominance of the intensity of experience and/or the reflexivity of thought. We develop a conceptual framework which provides us the tools in order to understand the three dimensions of the experience of the game and of the playing of the game in their triadic relations.