Dionysiac machines: Videogames and the triumph of the simulacra

Giddings, Seth

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.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2007
• Journal: Convergence
• Print ISSN: 1354-8565
• Electronic ISSN: 1748-7382
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 417-431
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856507082204
• Keywords: automata, computer games, cyberculture, Deleuze, game studies, simulacra, simulation, technoculture, videogames
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1023815
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1354856507082204
• Related Public URLs: http://www.dcrc.org.uk/publications/dionysiac-machines-videogames-and-triumph-simulacra