I've been posting screenshots of videogames on Twitter under the motto Pic of the day in #videogames and #sociology. They all include a sentence extracted from the game as well. I really don't know why I've been doing this. I guess I thought it could be fun and help me to spread the word about the sociological potentiality inside video games. Video games as powerful tools to unleash our sociological imagination.
I'd like to clarify that all the pictures come from my own gameplays. They have not been manipulated in any way. I'm not a Photoshop lover. Not that I would be able to do anything with it even if I could.
I will regularly recap the pics tweeted (in groups of 5) and dropping some cryptic lines on why I chose those particular screenshots and sentences. I leave to the reader the freedom of making deep sociological connections with their quotidian realities.
First round (1-5)!
1 - Deadly Premonition: Zach, everyone has their own sanctuary
Because we all have that special place in which we think we are safe. Or maybe it's just a place we have turned into a delusional sacred space full of ritualistic performances. Zach is nothing else than our objectified identity.
2 - A New Beginning: And the world keeps turning without me
The fabric of social reality may seem to be strong and long-lasting. We experience institutions and social actors as finite, solid and perfectly bounded. But their apparent strength is only an effective illusion that stems from the permanent succession of intertwined agencies. You being in or out is irrelevant, the world (and the agencies that maintain it) will keep turning.
3 - Zeno Clash: I hope the reason nobody ever comes back from the desert is because they find something better at the other side
At the other side of the desert is what we don't know and might never know. The desert is sometimes a metaphor of the long way ahead, sometimes is an actual desert with sand, sun and its mirages. My hypothesis is that there is no such a thing as the other side of the desert. There is only more desert, either a real or a metaphorical one.
4 - Gabriel Knight 3: Oh Yeah? Ya got a theory? Lemme hear it
Gabriel Knight represents the social structure that mocks us and our understanding of things. It can take the shape of fate, of one of your colleagues, of your neighbour, of a Prime Minister, of a scientific journal referee, of your love life. It doesn't matter. You have a theory and, want it or not, society will judge it with painful and profound sarcasm.
5 - Alan Wake: How does it feel to die by the hands of your own creation?
Defeated by your own creation. To die of success. It happens all the time. We all live in our particular version of the (post)modern Prometheus. PhD theses, world championships, androids and indie video games are the usual suspects. But there are others, many others. What those creations probably don't know is they will eventually die by their own creations. And the world will keep turning without them as well.
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