11/13/2022 0 Comments Eyespy by fraser parkerBut, while the original panopticon produced the effect of surveillance through the clever use of light, these games use sound to effect surveillance.īastion, was developed by the small indie game company Supergiant Games, but was distributed and released by Warner Bros. And, as part of the cybernetics of gameplay, it produces a dispositif of surveillance, akin to Bentham’s panopticon, which lets the player know their actions are constantly being monitored, calculated, and considered by the game’s algorithms. Specifically, I argue that the voice in these examples is an essential point in the feedback loop between player and game. This post compares the use of narration in Bastion and The Stanley Parable in an effort to understand how the voice is used as what Karen Collins would refer to as an “interactive non-diagetic sound,” or, in other words, a sound that is triggered by player actions, but not experienced by the character in the game. And, while I’ve already discussed the ways in which the voice of GLaDOS in Portal invites players to reflect on how they internalize a set of mediated perspectives about how their body ought to be, it is equally important to consider the other ways that a narrator’s voice invites players to reconsider the intersection of agency and surveillance. In particular, it is important to recognize the power relations at stake within the implementation of the human voice as an interactive narrative trope. Image borrowed from darkzabimaru the practice of sound design becomes ever more refined as a key factor in the immersive aspects of gameplay, it is essential to develop a conceptual vocabulary of the ways that sound is implemented as a cultural facet. The world of Bastion is beautifully illustrated and affectively evocative.
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