Intimate worlds : reading for intimate affects in contemporary video games
Name
1051218815-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
7.18 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
084c0f4cfe4bc16d62eb9050f38e5469
Author(s)
Doyle-Myerscough, Kaelan
Advisor(s)
Eugenie Brinkema.
Alternative Title
Reading for intimate affects in contemporary video games
Date Issued
2018
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
When we think of pleasures to be found in video games, we often talk about power, control, agency, and fun. But to center these pleasures is to privilege certain stories, players, actions and possibility spaces. This thesis uses the framework of intimacy to closely examine three games for their capacity to create pleasure in vulnerability, the loss of control, dependence on others, and precarity. Drawing from Deleuzian affect theory and feminist, queer and posthuman theorists, I read for intimate affects in the formal, aesthetic, proprioceptive and structural elements of Overwatch, The Last Guardian and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Ultimately, I argue two points: that video games have a unique capacity to generate intimate affects, and that my games of choice push us to rethink our assumptions about what constitutes intimacy more broadly.
Description
Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2018.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 103-109).
Subjects
Comparative Media Studies.
Humanities.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing
Terms of Use
MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.
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