Betwixt and Between: Playing with Liminality and the Liminoid in Before Your Eyes, a Transformative Video Game on the Transience of Life
Aesthetic experiences can serve as powerful catalysts for emotional, psychological, and spiritual transformation. More recently, video games have drawn attention as an artistic medium in their own right, capable of inspiring profound transformation in ways similar to conventional art forms. Video ga...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer Science Business Media B. V.
2024
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| In: |
Pastoral psychology
Year: 2024, Volume: 73, Issue: 4, Pages: 459-478 |
| Further subjects: | B
Terminal Illness
B Liminality B Transformation B Artificial Intelligence B Liminoid B Video Games B Medical Ethics B Aesthetic Experience |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Aesthetic experiences can serve as powerful catalysts for emotional, psychological, and spiritual transformation. More recently, video games have drawn attention as an artistic medium in their own right, capable of inspiring profound transformation in ways similar to conventional art forms. Video games, like other artistic media, can be seen as thresholds to transformative aesthetic experiences, rendering them especially suitable for analysis through the lens of Victor Turner’s work on liminality and the liminoid. This article employs these concepts as a framework to assess video games as liminoid structures in which players can engage with simulated liminal experiences and undergo transformative aesthetic experiences through ritual-like, interactive play. In particular, it integrates concepts from games studies to explore how video games have uniquely liminoid characteristics that distinguish them from other liminoid entities, including art and leisure activities. As a case study, this article also explores manifestations of liminality and the liminoid in the setting, narrative, and gameplay of indie video game Before Your Eyes. It examines how these elements act synergistically to provide a nuanced, intimate depiction of terminal illness, coming of age, and existential judgment in the afterlife, encouraging players to surrender themselves to the emotional world portrayed within the game and become transformed in the process. |
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| ISSN: | 1573-6679 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Pastoral psychology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s11089-024-01138-7 |