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Dionysiac machines: videogames and the triumph of the simulacra

Dionysiac machines: videogames and the triumph of the simulacra
Dionysiac machines: videogames and the triumph of the simulacra
This article rethinks concepts of the simulational and the simulacral for popular digital culture. It plays concepts of the modern world as hyperreal against the more modest, pragmatic, but vital, insights of game studies into the literally simulational nature of computer media and videogames. Through a reading of Deleuze's essay Platonism and the Simulacrum, taking the GameBoy Advance game Advance Wars 2 as a case study, and proposing the significance of automata, it suggests ways of thinking about the artificial and simulacral character of contemporary technoculture and its devices, not as the implosion of reality, but of its production.
1354-8565
417-431
Giddings, Seth
7d18e858-a849-4633-bae2-777a39937a33
Giddings, Seth
7d18e858-a849-4633-bae2-777a39937a33

Giddings, Seth (2007) Dionysiac machines: videogames and the triumph of the simulacra. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 13 (3), 417-431. (doi:10.1177/1354856507082204).

Record type: Article

Abstract

This article rethinks concepts of the simulational and the simulacral for popular digital culture. It plays concepts of the modern world as hyperreal against the more modest, pragmatic, but vital, insights of game studies into the literally simulational nature of computer media and videogames. Through a reading of Deleuze's essay Platonism and the Simulacrum, taking the GameBoy Advance game Advance Wars 2 as a case study, and proposing the significance of automata, it suggests ways of thinking about the artificial and simulacral character of contemporary technoculture and its devices, not as the implosion of reality, but of its production.

Text
Dionysiac Machines draft - Accepted Manuscript
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Published date: November 2007

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 434416
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/434416
ISSN: 1354-8565
PURE UUID: d8746b70-921b-4174-9a42-b127d5fe485a
ORCID for Seth Giddings: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-7323-9184

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Date deposited: 23 Sep 2019 16:30
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 04:21

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