Gestualidades fotográficas em jogos digitais

Abstract

This thesis investigates the photographic gestures in digital games in view of the material and aesthetic experiments that permeate the trend called in-game photography. It approaches the intertwining of photography and videogame as machines that produce images from the connection with the individual player/photographer. Mobilized by the problem “how do digital games update and communicate photographic gestures in contemporary technoculture?”, we seek to understand the conditions of the experiences that involve production and fruition of photography in the environments of digital games. To support the research object in the scope of Communication Sciences, Games Studies and the Philosophy of Image, we summoned the main concepts of gesture (AGAMBEN, 2008, 2015, 2018), photographic gesture (FLUSSER, 1985, 1994, 2014), gameworld interfaces (JØRGENSEN, 2013) and fiction-image (DUBOIS, 2017, 2018). With the theoretical horizon directed to the paradigms of photography and game in their dimensions of playfulness and mediality, we propose a methodological arrangement based on the principles of Media Archeology (HUHTAMO, 2013; PARIKKA, 2017; FISCHER, 2015), Archeogaming (REINHARD, 2018, 2019a), Cartography and Constellations (BENJAMIN, 2015) and Decipherment linked to the General Theory of Gestures (FLUSSER, 1985, 1994, 2014). Given this set of procedures and methods, we carried out an online mapping (sites, platforms and communities) of games that resulted in a corpus of 20 digital games with photography integrated to their mechanics and/or narrative. To examine in-game photography and operationalize this set of games, we identified three distinct forms of inscription of photography called: photographic gesture as main action, as secondary action and Photo mode. The attribution of a photographic gesture in these cases stems from the presence of the camera in the fictional world of the game or from processes of interruptions in the game's flow that produce a photographic image. Based on this, we decipher: the elements that constitute the narrative and gameplay in games with the photographic gesture as main action, such as Pokémon Snap, Afrika and Fatal Frame; the dynamics of side missions considering the capture processes and the types of photographs produced in secondary action, such as Life is Strange, Watch Dogs 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild; and aspects that refer to instantaneity, ubiquity and connectivity in Photo Mode games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Spiderman. To make sense of the connections and crossings between games and gestures, we created three constellations of photographic gestures: photographic hacking, captures made by the machine and Art of gaming. Finally, we infer that the phenomenon of photographic gestures in digital games transcends the game world itself, emerging as an environment for artistic and photographic creation and experimentation, from which emerges the figure of the screenshooter and in-game photographer.