The Game Body: Toward a Phenomenology of Contemporary Video Gaming

Abstract

Synthesizing research in philosophy and phenomenology, this article offers a sympathetic critique of Vivian Sobchack’s view of digital moving images. Focusing on contemporary first- and third-player video games, it examines how digital imagery inscribes bodily dimensions onto a nonindexical world and the different ways in which we inhabit cinematic and electronic space. More specifically, it draws upon the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to build a phenomenological model of bodies in digital imagery and argues that video gaming is a fully embodied, sensuous, carnal activity.