Abstract for 2006 Game Studies Conference
"Time of the Twins: Video Games Presenting the Unrepresentable Through Haunting"
In video games, ghosts can refer to multiple instances: those within the game's machine, the software, those represented in the game narrative, and those that the ghosts represent. This presentation focuses on video games that represent the undocumentable past within game worlds through the act of haunting. Haunting occurs in all digital media through the act of telepresence with the predetermined possibilities set in place by the game designers, and then the traversal and exploration (and possible exploitation) of those possibilities by the player. More traditional notions of haunting occur in games with narrativized ghosts that exist within the game space. These ghosts are sometimes only shadows that cannot be accessed and serve to populate only the visual presentation of the game space. Other times these ghosts are enemies or friends that may affect gameplay.
In addition to more literal examples of haunting, many other games include characters that haunt the game space without ever actually existing in the games. These characters haunt the game world through their remains--their notes, photographs, and other personal affects--but they themselves are never in the game in any corporeal or ethereal manner. Many horror games create haunted spaces by depicting the remains of those who have passed through the game space, yet who are no longer there in any physical sense. The games do so by presenting the remains of the characters who have passed through--their clothing, living quarters, journals, and other personal items. My presentation will first trace the types of haunting in games to show how haunting exists and operates on multiple levels and to show how that haunting affects and alters gameplay in a process of othering the player to the game and the technology of the game space. I will then conclude by focusing specifically on the characters who were never programmed, never created in the games as images or figures, but who still haunt the game space and on their significance to their respective game worlds as othered creatures to the players and the game characters.