Video game
2019
The development of 3D software and game engines is creating a consistent spatial transition from abstract worlds offered by early video games, towards a hyper-realistic representations of urban environments. Given the historic use of geography as a site of male power, this transition can recall a masculinist epistemological model of control and domination towards space. Subsequently, an increasingly masculine fashion, in terms of the role-play, narrative and character representation, is growing in conjunction with this shift manifested in real time strategy, first person shooter (FPS) and combat based games that predominates the game industry.
Phantasm proposes a degendered aesthetics of game space by examining an object oriented approach to game design that problematizes the notion of subjective agency over the design process. The spaces in this game are generated procedurally with no control over the final form and aesthetics, in an attempt to shift the perception of space in video games from merely an extension of the linear achievement narrative to become the main object in an exploratory performance of new worlds for an egalitarian and expanded domains for play.
Sound by Latefall.