From player representation to enactive presence: The case of "boomer shooters"

Presentation abstract

Just forget it. You know they are demons; we know they are demons; we both want to shoot them in the face. Let’s just go (Hugo Martin 2016).

The videogame medium generated novel forms of storytelling and character representation, matters that were discussed in length in the context of game studies. This proposal, concerns a persistent and sizeable part of videogames that offer neither stories, nor player-character representations per se. Just action journeys. Such game experiences often evade analytical lenses due to difficulties of accounting for nothing but moment-to-moment action in virtual space.

These cases are not about how the protagonist is represented (who is usually silent) nor a storyline (which often is a necessary wrapper around a sequence of predictably escalating challenges). What they celebrate instead are affective non-verbal aesthetics of virtual enaction.A prevalent example of this type is the ‘boomer/movement shooter’ genre, a resurgence of the co-called ‘old school,’ ‘mindless’ first-person shooters, which was kickstarted with the modern reboot of Doom (id Software) in 2016.
Games of this genre often display contempt toward high brow or consistent narratives. Here, any potential or necessary injection of story elements is rather utilitarian, serving as pacing break, setting up the gameworld, and empowering the player, often toward the ridiculous.

“Just forget it […] Let’s just go,” Doom director Hugo Martin remarked on its ridiculous staging. Whether, Nazis, demons, aliens or other necessary evils, what these games suggest is a mode of representation through identification with what the protagonist can practically do in the gameworld, and less than, or even against notions such as who they are, or why they do. They boil down to enactive representation: the mastery of actions like jumping, dashing, sliding and shooting, which define and set apart the protagonist in both worlds – what Martin termed ‘Doom dance.’

Workshop programme

Tuesday August 29

09.30 Registration and Introductions

10.00-11.30   Representation, Imagination and Fiction

Stacie Friend

11.30-13.00  Lunch break

13.00-13.45   Representations of the Immaterial Through Player as a Prop in Video Games

Maciej Jemioł

13.45-14.30  From Player Representation to Enactive Presence: The Case of ‘Boomer Shooters’

Constantinos Mitiadis

14.30-15.15  The Game of Video Game Objects

Jesper Juul

15.15-15.45  Coffee break

15.45-16.30  The Epistemic Power of Perception In Virtual Worlds and Virtual Games

Joseph Larse

16.30-17.15   Ludofictionality

John Sageng

17.15-18.00  SNES is my Co-Author??? Authorship, Videogames, and Generative Glitches

Nathan Wildman

20.15  Conference dinner at “Madklubben”, St. Kongensgade 66

Wednesday August 30

09.30-11.00  Cybersemantics

Peter Pagin

11.00-11.45 –  Diegetic versus Deictic Fiction

Rune Klevjer

11.45-13.00  Lunch break

13.00-13.45  Perceiving Represented Gameworlds: Actual, Fictional, and Imaginative Perceptions

Nele van der Mossalen 

13.45-14.30  The Challenge of Genius Loci and Spatial Representation in Virtual Worlds

Daniele Monaco 

14.30-15.15 Reasoning in Computerized and Non-Computerized Games

Ida Jorgensen

15.15-15.45  Coffee break

15.45-16.30  Against Metaphysical Interpretations of VR

Grant Tavinor

16.30-17.15 Why VR Does Not Involve Picture Perception – a Gibsonian Account

Edward Baggs, Paweł Grabarczyk and Zuzanna Rucińska

17.15-18.00 – Veridical Representation through Exaggeration in “Hans Christian and I”

Dooley Murphy