Spatiality, Focalization and Temporality in Horror Games

• Authors: Jancsovics Klaudia
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The horror genre can be found both in books and movies to shock and scare the audience. In digital games, players have to survive, they try to progress while they have to overcome frightening obstacles, otherwise they cannot be successful. The paper analyses three main topics: spatiality (where closed, open and looping spaces are in the centre), focalization (based on G. Genette’s term., We shows how the different angles could contribute to the narrative and what unique methods exist), and temporality (where traumatic experience and looping time is at the focal point, and E. Husserl’s protentions and retention terms will be important as well). We also argue that these games are unusual if we take a look at M. Csíkszentmihályi’s skills-challenges diagram and see if they fit in the flow zone. The paper aims to extend our understanding of horror games.

Keywords

EN

flow; focalization; horror; protention; retention; spatiality; temporality

• Publisher: Univerzita sv. Cyrila a Metoda (Trnava)
• Journal: Acta Ludologica
• Year: 2022
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 72-85
• Physical description: Media and Communication, Game studies, Theory of digital games
• Document type: Article

Contributors

author

Jancsovics Klaudia

• University of Szeged, Department of Comparative Literature