Digital Seriality: The Serial Aesthetics and Practice of Digital Games

• Applicants: Dr. Shane Denson; Privatdozent Dr. Andreas Sudmann
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies ; Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: Funded in 2013
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 68338857

This project investigates the seriality of digital games and game cultures – their aesthetic forms and cultural practices – against the background of general medial and sociocultural transformations in the wake of the digitization of popular media culture. Seriality is a central and multifaceted but largely neglected dimension of popular computer and video games. It is present not only in explicitly marked game series (with their sequels, prequels, remakes, and other types of continuation), but also within games (e.g. in the series of "levels" or "worlds") as well as on the level of transmedial relations between games and other media (e.g. comics, film, and television). Particularly with respect to the processes of "synchronization" (Vergleichzeitigung) that in the current age of digitization and media convergence are challenging the temporal dimensions and developmental logics of predigital seriality (e.g. because once successively appearing series installments are now available for immediate, repeated, and non-linear consumption), computer games are well suited for an exemplary investigation of a specifically digital type of seriality. The subproject looks at serialization processes in digital games and game series and seeks to understand how they relate to digital-era transformations of temporally-serially structured experiences and identifications on the part of historically situated actors. These transformations range from the microtemporal scale of individual players' encounters with algorithmic computation processes (the speed of which is measurable only by technological means) up to the collective brokering of political, cultural, and social identities. To account for this complexity, the project follows a decidedly interdisciplinary approach, combining media-aesthetic/media-philosophical perspectives with resources of cultural history and American studies. The seriality of digital games is approached both in terms of textual and aesthetic forms and in the broader context of serialized game cultures and popular culture at large. In the overall context of the Research Unit, the subproject considers a new medium, as yet unaccounted for in research on seriality, and thus opens a perspective on current developments in the field. The investigation of digital serial forms is designed to bring into view a phase of transformation in the experience and construction of seriality – a transformation that, due to changes in the global media landscape, impacts the contemporary practice and aesthetics of popular culture far more broadly than just in those areas directly affected by digitization. In its effort to identify specific differences of digital from non-digital forms of seriality, the subproject profits from the foundational work conducted by the Research Unit in its first phase. In particular, the project aligns closely with the investigations of TP3 (on the nexus of seriality and mediality) and builds directly upon the research conducted by TP5 (on the dynamics of "one-upmanship" in recent television series) and TP4 (on "sprawling" or "cascading" serial forms in American comics culture).

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 1091: Popular Seriality: Aesthetics and Practice