Pętla śmierci jako komponent

Assuming its premise in the experience of being stuck in a death loop in Fallout: New Vegas (2010), this essay theorises the possibilities of interpretation in single-player computer game play. This amounts to a critical examination of the paradigmatic approach of interpreting computer games as games accessible for analysis and critique through ‘research-play’. Comparing the role of rules in the activity facilitated by ‘playable artefacts’ like single-player computer games or pinball machines to rules in traditional, or more accurately “transmedial” (Juul 2003) games, the essay questions the feasibility of considering computer games ‘games’ and suggests that a defining characteristic of ‘playable artefacts’ is to be found from the relationship between materiality and process. Situating playable artefacts in the context of post-phenomenological philosophy of technology, the essay differentiates between attitudes of player, designer, and a scholar. The essay argues that analysis of playable artefacts as ‘games’ is reductive and can be
justified only from the perspectives of a player and a game design researcher. Based on analysis of how playable artefacts become meaningful through material resistance, the essay reconfirms the feasibility of the methodological programme of ‘research-play’ while calling for its re-contextualization in relation to authentic interpretation and empathy.