Prosthetic metaphors, rejection, and representation in games.

Gardner, Daniel; Hacker, Kelly

Abstract

The prosthetic metaphor is a familiar lens for examining how people may enact their own—or other—identities in games and virtual spaces (eg, Nakamura 1995, Nguyen 2009, Klevjer 2012, and Purnomo et al. 2019). Influenced by science-fiction and cyborg anthropologists (Haraway 1991 [1985]), applying "prosthetic" to virtual bodies that players articulate to interface with virtual worlds seems natural. In this paper, respecting scholars with lived prosthetic experience who have considered this metaphorical use (Kurzman 2001, Sobchack 2006), we re-evaluate how playable game avatars are a mix of practical and metaphorical prosthetics. Using events in the game Rust as a conceptual case study, we present preliminary analysis re-visiting prosthesis as an analytical lens to consider how "prosthetic rejection" may help game scholars reframe how differently represented groups of players may relate to virtual bodies and virtual worlds.

Citation

GARDNER, D. and HACKER, K. 2022. Prosthetic metaphors, rejection, and representation in games. In Abstract proceedings of the 2022 Digital Games Research Association annual meeting (DiGRA 2022): bringing worlds together, 7-11 July 2022, Kraków, Poland. Finland: DiGRA [online], article 1418. Available from: https://dl.digra.org/index.php/dl/article/view/1418/1418

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Abstract
• Conference Name: 2022 Digital games research association annual meeting (DiGRA 2022): bringing worlds together
• Start Date: Jul 7, 2022
• End Date: Jul 11, 2022
• Acceptance Date: Jan 1, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jan 1, 2022
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2022
• Deposit Date: Jan 16, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 10, 2025
• Publisher: Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Article Number: 1418
• Series ISSN: 2342-9666
• Keywords: Representation in games; Prosthetic metaphor; Characters; Avatars; Virtual worlds
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/2662873