The nothingness as an ontological category on the video game: Analyzing Sad Satan

Abstract

This study tries to explore the idea of nothingness as an ontological category on the construction of virtual worlds. The research is framed in the metaphysical study of video games, trying to go over the narratological readings, and asking about the way in which the designing of virtual worlds is, at the same time, indebted to and divergent from our concrete experience of the real world. To achieve our goal, in the first place, we will try to make a brief comment about different applications of the Heideggerian ontology to the video game world, specifically using parameters such as time, space and interface. After that, we will explore the consequences of this context in the concrete analysis of Sad Satan, a video game that emerged from the Deep Web in an unknown date and was developed by an unknown company. This analysis will use the methodological tools in the building of virtual worlds –Character, Item and Object– developed by Siabra Fraile in his Wittgensteinian interpretation of the video game.

Keywords

• Game Studies
• Ontología
• Videojuego
• Interacción
• Mecánicas ludoficcionales.