Playing Dystopia : Nightmarish Worlds in Video Games and the Player's Aesthetic Response

Video games permeate our everyday existence. They immerse players in fascinating gameworlds and exciting experiences, often inviting them in various ways to reflect on the enacted events. Gerald Farca explores the genre of dystopian video games and the player’s aesthetic response to their nightmarish gameworlds. Players, he argues, will gradually come to see similarities between the virtual dystopia and their own offline environment, thus learning to stay wary of social and political developments. In his analysis, Farca draws from a variety of research fields, such as literary theory and game studies, combining them into a coherent theory of aesthetic response to dystopian games.

Gerald Farca completed his doctorate in English literature at the University of Augsburg and is a member of the Augsburg Cultural Ecology Research Group. In 2016, he was a visiting researcher and lecturer at the Center for Computer Games Research of the IT University in Copenhagen.