Abstract Giannis Perperidis

Time matters! Searching for authentic experience in video games in relation to their temporal structure

Philosophers of perception have tried to assess the ways in which humans understand the world and the objects around them. Humans as perceiving “Subjects” and the world as a perceived “object” was the classic idea that was developed within the first centuries of modernity. But within the 19th and 20th century, things in the area of philosophy of perception began to change when time was designated as an important factor for perceiving the world. Philosophers like Henri Bergson with his notion of duration or Martin Heidegger with his Dasein contributed in changing the way human beings perceive the world. Nowadays, within the much developing area of game studies, the question of how gamers perceive games’ affordances or the games themselves arouses rapidly. The digital world that a game opens up is under question and evaluation. In this paper I try to examine the changes in perception and feeling that a game would create had it been designed under the temporal principle of duration. By referring to open-world games such as The elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda 2011) and Elden Ring (Bandai Namco Entertainment 2022) I will attempt to show that a temporal structure based on elements such as memory, could possibly lead to a very different aesthetic perception of the game. That I think would mean a much more authentic experience for the gamer. What would happen to one’s Skyrim experience if NPCs had memory? If they would remember that you stole from their shop? Such questions do not just suggest some changes to one or another aspect of the game. In opposition, they suggest a whole different temporal structure of playing. Elden Ring (and Dark Souls as a series in general) introduces a non-autosaving or manual saving gameplay that alters the overall game experience. The seriousness of the gameplay was brought about only by removing the possibility of pausing or saving the game whenever the gamer wanted; and by removing the idea that when they lose they don’t just restart from last save, but they also lose the ability to progress in the game’s leveling system. I suggest that changes in the temporal structure such as these and many more that relate to memory and duration will lead to a different gaming experience that will amplify the feeling of a game. The virtual world that a game creates can be perceived in a much differentiated way only by having its temporal structure altered. How would a gamer play had they know that their actions completely change the game irreparably? The question over the perception of the game quickly leads to questions over repetition or uniqueness. “Time matters” within the virtual environments of open-world games and that is something that needs to be pointed out in the area of current game studies.