![]() ![]() The original article by Holger Pötzsch, “Playing Games with Shklovsky, Brecht, and Boal: Ostranenie, V-Effect, and Spect-Actors as Analytical Tools for Game Studies” (2017) can be found here.Christopher Reid " Only thing that matters are the words 'Mission Accomplished.' The sooner I hear those words, the sooner I can go home and get back to being me." - Adams.ġst Lieutenant Alphanso Adams is the deuteragonist of Spec Ops: The Line and a member of Walker's Delta squad. Sometimes, we may even experience the world in a completely new way. This also renews our relation to language and art – including digital games. This is achieved through the deployment of specific formal devices that estrange the player and therefore de-habitualises automated forms of seeing and cognition. Estrangement also slows down and complicates processes of reading and other forms of reception, sometimes leading to direct action that can be political in nature. The effect that is achieved through these formal properties (or devices) is that of de-habitualisation, defamiliarisation or a new way of seeing. ![]() In short, estrangement is the effect of certain formal properties in an artifact and which draw attention to themselves through expression. Why is estrangement so important for understanding games, however? Pötzsch underlines that the concept can provide important insights and facilitate innovative practices in game analysis, development, design and play of digital games. In theory, as v-effect provides tools for political action, the experience may even change the player’s approach to the world. This may encourage the player to approach FPS-games as a genre in a different light. The effect of de-familiarisation in Spec Ops: The Line directly challenges the view on the violence that has already become a mundane part of first-person shooter games. Through its aspects of story and game, Spec Ops: The Line appears to question the conventions of FPS-games as well as putting this in the larger societal context of modern warfare. As a device used to achieve estrangement, v -effect is inherently political in nature and may thus provide intellectual tools for politically oriented action, as intended by dramatist Bertolt Brecht who coined the term. The objective is grasping real relations and contradictions hidden in the apparently natural and consensual. In addition, estrangement may have a political objective. Estrangement reinvigorates perception with the purpose of returning a forgotten essence of things. In essence, estrangement is the result of devices used for drawing attention to cultural expressions and naturalised contradictions by making them strange. However, through its poignant reminders of real world politics in the game, simulated through in-game action, the game may even incite the player to take political action. Indeed, playing as Captain Walker potentially makes the player question genre conventions of FPS-games. At the same time, art can challenge us as readers, spectators and users so that we do not only recognise, but truly see the world around us. The technique that art may use to refresh our senses, then, is by making things difficult to internalise. ![]() The function of art is to make us feel something anew, as if we experienced it for the first time. Viktor Shklovsky, a Russian formalist, coined the neologism “ostranenie” (= making strange) to encapsulate what he perceives as the main function of art: to refresh our senses by de-habitualising what convention has turned mundane, thus invisible. The concept of estrangement originates in the work of literary scholars historically known as formalists. To do this, Pötzsch examines the concept of estrangement and how it is relevant for understanding games and play. In his article, “Playing Games with Shklovsky, Brecht, and Boal: Ostranenie, V-Effect, and Spect-Actors as Analytical Tools for Game Studies” Holger Pötzsch sheds some light upon storytelling mechanisms in games like Spec Ops: The Line and how a more systematic approach helps reflect on and understand them. ![]()
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