5X Gaming : A Study of Embodied EXperience and the 4X Game Civilization VI

Sammanfattning

This Master’s Thesis investigates the relationship between the cultural rhetoric and the embodied experience of digital gameplay in relation to the 4X turn-based strategy game Civilization VI. The theoretical approach utilizes concepts from the embodied phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, affect theory, and attunement. It positions them against the embedded rhetorical position of a designed game space. Autoethnography and Critical Phenomenology are the two methods used to bring to light the author’s relationship to the game, and how that relationship challenges or is challenged by the game rhetoric. This research serves to challenge existing literature regarding the disembodied perspective of video game play; and it contributes to the growing body of work in the phenomenology of video games. It is limited by producing a single voice and perspective, but offers a critical tools that may lead to further study by others, or in new games. The thesis concludes that embodied video game play is entangled in the sedimented experiences of the player in ways that manifest consistently over time and are not constrained to video game space.