🔎 Fantastic Places And Where To Find Them: Pseudo-Indexical Realities Within Video Games And Game Art
Published in The Video Game Art Reader, 2018
Abstract: This paper examines the early text-based game Colossal Cave Adventure (1975) by William Crowther alongside the VR art installation Primal Tourism (2016) by Jakob Kudsk Steensen. By analyzing these works through an interdisciplinary lens of art history, visual culture, and game studies, this paper shows how depictions of real spaces within game environments can transform our conceptualizations of travel, exploration, and the unknown. I argue that the virtual spaces constructed by Crowther and Steensen both strongly communicate the way that technologies such as remote access, computer simulation, and satellite imagery influence our understanding of the world and how we navigate it. After comparing both works and their pseudo-indexical relationship with reality, I conclude that game art is a critically productive tool for those seeking to deconstruct skewed or compressed representations of real-life spaces within video games or other digital media.
Keywords: Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Primal Tourism, ecomimesis, virtual tourism, virtual reality, game art
Direct link to my paper within the volume
Recommended citation: Bailey, A. (2018). “Fantastic places and where to find them: Pseudo-indexical realities within video games and game art.” The VGA Reader, Issue 2. The Video Game Art Gallery. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12471206