Paper short abstract:

How does existential horror feel in the player-body? Using an autoethnographic game experience analysis of SOMA (Frictional Games 2015) , this presentation will extend on the ways rhythmanalysis (Levfebre 2004) offers actor-centred game research insight to embodied play experiences.

Paper long abstract:

Regarded as the most existentially terrifying game, SOMA (Frictional Games 2015) is a challenging emotional journey contemplating simulation, reality, identity, and the meaning of life. SOMA, as many other horror games, rely on atmosphere and environmental storytelling in conveying subtle nuances of creepy, spooky, and horrific scenes. However less interpreted into play experiences is the concept of rhythm.

How does existential horror feel in the player-body? In an emotionally frightful game, the relationship with the game becomes intimate where the player-body’s rhythm connects with the game world’s rhythm. Especially a game like SOMA, which in story contemplates on simulation, threat of AI’s and robots, and the Cartesian mind-body dilemma, elicits survival fear and anxiety whilst contemplating on existence.

Focusing on rhythms offer promising ground in looking at the nuances of game experiences, and existential meaning-making (e.g., Rautalahti 2021), in the case of SOMA. The rhythms and breaks in the game world bleed into the player-body through the computer screen.

Using an autoethnographic game experience analysis of SOMA, the presentation will extend on the ways rhythmanalysis (Levfebre 2004, 27) offers actor-centred game research insight to embodied play experiences (e.g Apperley 2010). While Henri Lefebvre modelled rhythmanalysis as a sociological framing device “seen from the window”, here, seen through the screen illuminates the unique relations of time, measure and feel (e.g., game feel Swink 2009) of embodied play experiences. This approach considers the scholar as an actor in reflecting the embodied aesthetic and emotional gaming experiences beyond representations.

Overall, the horror genre relies deeply on rhythm as a storytelling tool, I argue. Timing of jump scares, cueing sound effects, or sensing the antagonist characters movements require designing and feeling rhythm.

In a game called SOMA, hinting towards a somaestethic understanding of embodied experiences, existence is meaningfully questioned and converged with the player-body.