Abstract Berlin: Rune Klevjer

Perception in game space and film space

In this presentation I will compare and contrast the phenomenology of film perception and the phenomenology of perception via a navigable camera in virtual game spaces. My case will be a game-cinema composite event taken from The Last of Us part II, in which cinematics and in-game player navigation is interweaved in a seemingly seamless manner. My general claim is that even if films and games appear to be offering two very similar forms of “cinematic” perception, veridical perception of virtual game space and imagined perception of cinematic space are diametrically opposing perceptual regimes. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2020). “The Film and the New Psychology”. Sobchack, V. (1992). The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Wilson, G. M. (2011). Seeing fictions in film: The epistemology of movies.