Digital Games, Image-Consciousness and Superreality

Abstract

This paper argues that digital games are best understood as a type of image-consciousness (Bildbewusstein). First, I argue how our experiences of digital games are not perceptions. Second, I provide a summary of the phenomenological natures of three basic modes of consciousness in Hus-serl, Fink and Sartre—perception, phantasy and image-consciousness—in order to demonstrate that the latter ultimately finds its place between the other two. Lastly, I spell out the implications and contributions these insights can have for our understanding of digital games, including their quite unique character and force. Indeed, once one understands digital games as a quintessential instantia-tion of this intermediate kind of consciousness, one can also better understand the immense pull digital games can have on us, not least their ‘superreality’.