Because they act as proxies or stand-ins for our own body within the gameworld, prosthetic avatars are crucially different from more familiar kinds of bodily extensions, like tools or musical instruments. The core idea is that when we play, directly controllable avatars like Mario or Lara Croft, as well as racing cars or other kinds of controllable vehicles, function as prosthetic extensions of our own body, which extend into screen space the dual nature of the body as both subject and object. In this paper I will give a phenomenological account of embodied presence through computer game avatars, based on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of bodily intentionality, bodily space and bodily extensions (2002 ). Thus the thesis is, that puzzles, prospects and fragmental embedded spaces (Totten 2014: 279, 284) replace the need for textual narration or dialogs with NPCs of a typical hero`s journey.

This is enabled by basing the game through and through upon “being perceptive” (Blow 2015). This paper will argue, that THEWITNESS is all about (generating) knowledge within the game world and of the game as a medium, as well as about knowledge itself: To go a step further one can say that appropriating THE WITNESS’s island is a pure epistemic modality in the sense of Michel de Certeau (1980: 181, 192). Bogost 2013) – and MYST (Cyan Worlds/Preston Studios 1993) – a puzzle game classic with iconic mechanics.

At first glance it seems to be a mixture of PROTEUS (Ed Key/David Kanaga 2013) – a recent peek in discourse on what a video game can be or cannot be (c.f. 2016) embodies a distinct form of hybrid game that fulfils ludic core functions like traversing space and solving puzzles but omits an elaborated story arc or complex avatar controls. Somewhere between the categories puzzle, adventure and explorative game Jonathan Blow’s recent release THE WITNESS (Thekla Inc.

Juegos como Myst para Mac os x