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Controller, Hand, Screen

Aesthetic Form in the Computer Game

University of Manchester, graeme.kirkpatrick{at}manchester.ac.uk

This paper tries to clarify the place of the handheld controller in computer game aesthetics. It starts from the premise that aesthetic form, perhaps the central category of modernist critical theory, is present in our play with computer games. The central argument is that controllers and our use of them are repressed in gameplay and that this repression facilitates a diversion of the player's energy that helps explain the compulsive nature of good games. Our sense of participation in events in game fiction is bought at the price of a loss of interest in our hands. The smooth integration of players into the rough, faltering world of gameplay is made possible by an excess of energy that passes from the unacknowledged tension in the hand into the imaginary relation we have with on-screen action.

Key Words: controller • hand • Focillon • Benjamin • form

This version was published on April 1, 2009

Games and Culture, Vol. 4, No. 2, 127-143 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1555412008325484


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