Abstract Daniel O'Shiel

This paper argues that digital games are best understood as a type of image-consciousness (Bildbewusstein). First I argue how our experiences of digital games are not perceptions. Second I provide a summary of the phenomenological natures of three basic modes of consciousness in Husserl, Fink and Sartre – perception, phantasy and image-consciousness – in order to demonstrate that the latter ultimately finds its place between the other two. Lastly I spell out the implications and contributions these insights can have for our understanding of digital games, including their quite unique character and force. Indeed, once one understands digital games as a quintessential instantiation of this intermediate kind of consciousness, one can also better understand the immense pull digital games can have on us, not least their ‘superreality’.