- PROJECT: An academic paper exploring monster representation and sublimity in video games.
- ROLE: Conducted original research; wrote paper informed by extensive research.
- SKILLS: Insights gained on monster theory and sublimity, academic writing at Master’s level.
“It Takes One to Fight One: Sublimity, Technology, and Player as Contained Monster in Prey” is an academically written and sourced paper investigating the relation between concepts of technological sublimity, ontological decoding, and the prominence of monstrous player characters in games. The paper was written as the final exam in a course on games culture, as part of the IT University of Copenhagen’s Master’s degree program.
In the paper, I argue – with reference to a wide range of works and scholars – that games, defined as a fundamentally action-based medium, deprive monsters of their sublime, ineffable qualities. Unlike its literary (and to some extent, cinematic) cousins, the ludic monster is contained within an unbending system of rules, calculations, and ontological quantification. Everything must be known and defined by the game – even the thing that goes bump in the night.
“If Frankenstein had been conceived as a game, the final chapter would have seen the frenzied doctor take on the Creature in a necromantic exoskeleton of his own, comprised of galvanic lightning rods and wiggling body parts.”
In the absence of truly sublime game monsters, a new kind of monstrosity emerges: the monstrous player. Privileging players and player action, games – whether consciously or not – produce ever more monstrous player (characters), a strikingly literal interpretation of the Nietzschean admonition that those who fight monsters will in turn become them. This them can be traced back to (among other things) ancient Iceland sagas and is conspicuously present in a great many popular games, including Baldur’s Gate, The Witcher, and Prey.
An idiosyncratic mix of Norse mythology, gothic literature, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kant, and monster theorist Jaroslav Švelch, the paper ultimately concludes – as all academic writings must – that more research into this nascent concept of the ‘monstrous player’ is required. The paper was well received. You can read it in its entirety below.
