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Despot: The game that looks back

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Názov: Despot: The game that looks back
Autori: Sarian, Antranig
Zdroj: Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture; Vol. 16 No. 1 (2025): Fictional Games; 57-67
Informácie o vydavateľovi: Septentrio Academic Publishing, 2025.
Rok vydania: 2025
Predmety: Iain Banks, Scottish fantastic, Despot, Complicity, interactive narrative, quantified self
Popis: Iain Banks’ Complicity (1993) features a fictional ‘world-builder’ game called Despot that actively watches and emulates the player. This fictional game emerges as part of the Scottish Fantastic, a literary tradition that explores split selves and divided identities. Despot plays into this literary tradition as it creates a violent ludic other for the otherwise passive protagonist that plays it. Yet as a closer examination of Despot reveals, the game does not ‘uncover’ or ‘mirror’ the protagonist’s latent violence so much as it refracts it through its procedural logic. Despot prophetically predicts and critiques the rise of the quantified self within games, as features like morality meters, achievements, reputation systems and Elo ratings all ‘watch’ and create ludic versions of the player. Towards the end of the novel, the protagonist leaves Despot running and returns to find a radically altered version of the game. Without the protagonist’s interference, his empire has crumbled and been reclaimed by nature. Through this, Banks also provides a lens through which the quantified self can be subverted and repurposed in ways not limited by the cultural logics that produced it.
Druh dokumentu: Article
Popis súboru: application/pdf
Jazyk: English
ISSN: 1866-6124
DOI: 10.7557/23.7912
Prístupová URL adresa: https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/eludamos/article/view/7912
Rights: CC BY
Prístupové číslo: edsair.septentrioac..ab71a48ef04c3ae427f94bca56ea3fd3
Databáza: OpenAIRE
Popis
Abstrakt:Iain Banks’ Complicity (1993) features a fictional ‘world-builder’ game called Despot that actively watches and emulates the player. This fictional game emerges as part of the Scottish Fantastic, a literary tradition that explores split selves and divided identities. Despot plays into this literary tradition as it creates a violent ludic other for the otherwise passive protagonist that plays it. Yet as a closer examination of Despot reveals, the game does not ‘uncover’ or ‘mirror’ the protagonist’s latent violence so much as it refracts it through its procedural logic. Despot prophetically predicts and critiques the rise of the quantified self within games, as features like morality meters, achievements, reputation systems and Elo ratings all ‘watch’ and create ludic versions of the player. Towards the end of the novel, the protagonist leaves Despot running and returns to find a radically altered version of the game. Without the protagonist’s interference, his empire has crumbled and been reclaimed by nature. Through this, Banks also provides a lens through which the quantified self can be subverted and repurposed in ways not limited by the cultural logics that produced it.
ISSN:18666124
DOI:10.7557/23.7912