Initially, when I started writing about monstrosity mechanics in computer games, I expected the idea of “reverse horror” to become my guiding notion. The recent release of reverse horror game Carrion plus older games like Plague Inc or Prototype offer a unique opportunity to take a closer look at the phenomenon of inhabiting a monstrous body or non-body. However, I quickly came upon an unexpected and curious contradiction. The contradiction resides in the ways monster studies and video game monster studies view monsters. In brief, monster studies have for a long time been informed and relied heavily upon Kant’s “sublime thesis” (Asma 2012). For Kant, an object that evokes the sublime does so because it appears “to be ill-adapted to our faculty of presentation, and to do violence, as it were, to the imagination” (Kant 2007). Therefore, monsters invoke feelings that are brought about by radical otherness. Another important aspect is called “radical vulnerability.” For Asma, it refers to the danger of being crushed by a monster whose power is beyond ours and is difficult to understand (Asma 2012). The sublime thesis and its implications have been fundamental notions for monstrosity research. However, the definitions that stemmed from this vary due to a great deal of interdisciplinarity in the field.
In particular, Richard Kearny described monsters as the ultimate other whose otherness occupies the frontier zone where “reason falters and fantasies flourish” (Kearny 2002). In his description, monsters are closely tied to humans in that they are “tokens of fracture within the human psyche” (Keany 2002). What Keany attempts to capture in his definition of monsters as the “tokens of fracture” is that they are transgressive, contradictory, mad, obscene. Timothy Beal identifies the main quality property of a monster to be its ability to disrupt one’s sense of at-homeness. By disturbing the at-homeness, he means that monsters threaten “one’s of security, stability, integrity, well-being, meaning” (Beal 2002). They make one feel not at home, meaning monsters bring about “chaos and disorientation within order and orientation” (Beal 2002). Monsters, in essence, reveal insecurities about one’s world, one’s society, one’s faith. On the same note, Asma and Mittman claim that the unsettlement is at the core of monstrosity. Unsettlement is brought about by the otherness so radical that is hard to describe and categorize. With a lack of categories and descriptions, monsters bring the radical blend; they immerse one into the state of cognitive vertigo (Mittman 2013 & Asma 2012). Noël Carroll, in his definition, also brings up the issue of vertigo in connection to the category jamming (Carroll 1990). Monsters translate familiar categories into the unfamiliar through category jamming like werewolf or Frankenstein. Shildrick thinks of the ability of monsters to disrupt, jam, and transgress in relation to the very thing which is to be disrupted, namely normality. For her, monsters can threaten and undermine normality (Shildrick 2002). Above are the most notable definitions of monstrosity encountered in research literature except Kristeva’s “abject.” I will come back to the notion of abject later in my paper. Otherwise, all of the definitions describe monsters as figures of radical vertigo, unsettlement, transgression. Something that does not respect borders, rules, something that can not be classified. Monsters always escape categorization through being contradictory, obscene, mad.
The most exciting thing happens when we change the medium of interacting with monsters. What happens if we immerse monsters in the training grounds for our control societies – videogames? The power of computer games is not to be underestimated here. It is crucial to understand that the control videogames establish over monsters is beyond mere panopticon. It is true that in “video games, like in surveillance systems, the hidden is to be revealed and the dangerous is to be eliminated” (Švelch 2013). But video games go beyond that. First of all, monsters in games are basically a set of data. They have particular abilities and limitations that overdetermine them on an algorithmic level. Algorithms contain exhaustive information about them like the number of health points, mana points, armour, attack volume, move speed, attack speed, agility, strength, intellect, behaviour in fights, and reaction delay, everything. Video games monsters are a priori determined, classified, systematized. Algorithms have complete control over beasts that inhabit them.
Algorithms present us with the possibility of obtaining a totalizing vision over gaming monsters because they are reducible to discrete information units. It appears to be a perfect realization of the cybernetic drive described by Crogan, where we have “total control over a world reduced to calculable, mechanical operations” (Crogan 2011). Here is where the conflict happens because while the sublime thesis emphasizes the impossibility of the monster to become an object, this is what video game algorithms do. Monsters “are driven by algorithms and statistics,” which “conform to the rules of the game” (Švelch 2018). Video games, however, make the player face the monsters. They become objects of the player’s actions; their rules are clearly defined and ready to be scrutinized (Švelch 2018). What we are witnessing is a major shift in our conceptualization of monstrosity. The logic of informatic control has now colonized even the things we fear: our monsters, previously deemed to be inscrutable and abject” (Švelch 2018). What Švelch says is basically that monsters are getting presented in fully observable embodied form. In games, we can interact, kill, eliminate, and destroy them. Indexicalization of video game monsters objectifies what previously has been slippery, transgressive, abject.
At the beginning of this paper, I claimed that “monsters invoke feelings that are brought about by the radical otherness.” Now, as we know that the radical otherness of gaming monsters is objectified, classified, contained and overdetermined by algorithms, what is left is the referred “feeling.” This feeling is abjection, and it is always embodied. Kristeva offers a different angle to monsters with the help of the notion of abjection. In her Power of Horrors, monsters are defined as something that disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite (Kristeva 1982). Kristeva describes the “abject” as anything that disturbs conventional identity and the border between subject and object. For her, the monster is the radical unsettlement that involves the collapse of the other and the self. In this scenario, the monstrous other becomes a part of the self. On the same note, Švelch argued that the process of abjection is “vital to constructing the monster as undefinable – or resisting ontological delineation – through Kristeva’s “distinguish[ing] the abject from an object—the former is not ‘definable,’ it is not ‘an ob-ject facing me, which I name or imagine’” (in Švelch 2013). However, again, computer games possess precisely the power to objectify, define, and systematize monsters. The question, then, is there a space for abjection in this scenario? Or are video game monsters stripped of their fundamental characteristics?
To answer this question, I would like to re-introduce the idea of “reverse horror.” It will help me demonstrate the dynamics at play in relation to abjection and algorithmic containment of monsters. First of all, let me shed light on this concept and explain how “reverse horror” works with algorithms. A reverse horror is an approach to diversifying processes of character embodiment. This approach allows players to walk into the shoes of monstrous foes. Rather than being prompted to annihilate, a player is offered a chance to reverse the fundamental antagonism of monsters. Reverse horror in the games like Carrion, Prototype, and Plague Inc represents axiological alignment with otherness (Barbosa 2020). What is most interesting about this approach is what Švelch noticed in his exploration of the Dead Space 2 marketing campaign. It featured middle-aged women who represented gamer’s “mothers.” In this campaign, they were shown the most disturbing and violent moments of the Dead Space 2 game. As Švelch explained, they “hated it” and wondered “why anybody would make something like this” (Švelch 2013). However, such an impression is only possible if one has no actual gameplay experience. The disgust and lack of understanding among “moms” are indeed pronounced, but it is explained by the fact that they meet monsters in a way different from their supposed children. Their supposed children meet these monsters with a plasma cutter in their hands which makes the experience different (Švelch 2013).
I would go as far as to claim that the same applies to the “reverse horror” scenarios. When playing as a monster, a player would usually engage in rampaging human enemies. However, one has no feeling of horror when killing humans, nor reflection, nor emotional involvement, nor after-reflection. On the contrary, these games are described to be fun and enjoyable. Dimorphism appears to be prosthetic, allowing for new ways of moving and killing that players take advantage of. What it signals is that the absence of abjection characterizes the gameplay experience. It happens because algorithms make a player face or inhabit a monstrous body or non-body. When becoming objectified, embodied, scrutinized, defined and acted upon, the new indexicalized monsters are longer inscrutable and abject enough to subvert the logic of informatic control that permeates them through algorithms.
So are these new knowable, unambiguous, non-abject monsters that we encounter in computer games actually monsters even though they no longer possess the characteristics formerly regarded as essential? The answer is yes. The new medium, however, offers a major conceptual shift. Unlike those previously encountered, the new defeatable and targetable monsters are just rule-based. Their mystery is misspelt. The new medium that upholds video games based on logical operations and numerical representation no longer allows monsters to be contradictory or blurred enough to evoke abjection. Monsters can be disgusting and horrific, but their behaviour is still dictated and overdetermined by analyzable and describable algorithms. Nevertheless, algorithms do not make them stop being monsters.
The dynamics at play in the monstrosity identified above are far from unique. We should not be too quick in attempting to come up with an exhaustive interpretation. So, before jumping to a conclusion, I want to make a brief historical overview of the attempts to explain monstrosity to put my argument in perspective. Over the centuries, there were numerous attempts to understand monstrosity or “normalize the marvelous.” In the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries, monsters were brought to laboratories and ended up under the scientist’s scalpel, in a scientist’s jar. Driven by modern scientific thought, researchers believed they could expose the source of monstrosity if they study and analyze physical deformities closely. Teratology was deployed for the studies of monstrosity; thus, special attention was directed to particular organs, the development of which, as said by Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, halted at a stage passed by the other organs (in Canguilhem 1962). As a result, the embodied or visual monstrosity was framed as an aberration in organ development. “Let us believe that the most bizarre forms… serve as a passage to neighbouring forms; that they prepare and lead into the combinations that follow them, as they are led into by those which precede them; that, far from disturbing the order of things, they contribute to it” (qtd in Canguilhem 1962). The exceptional nature of monsters and their transgressive potential were cast doubt upon because of revealing their fundamental naturalness. As Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire argues, “there are no exceptions to the laws of nature; there are only exceptions to the laws of naturalists” (qtd in Canguilhem 1962). The monstrosities of form became just surface variations, redefined as simple variants in the interplay of familiar norms.
At the end of the nineteenth century, it became clear that variation of human morphology is relatively limited. Many cases of embodied monstrosity were rendered explainable, understandable, normal. Monstrosities of form were no longer carrying neither threat nor monstrousness. Visual monstrosity and the embodied monstrosity lost their centrality in framing and signifying the monstrous. Facing the increased transparency of the embodied monstrosity, the theory of monsters moved into the behavioural domain. In the mid 20th century, the works of Michel Foucault have had a considerable influence on the studies of monstrosity. Foucault, in his works, does not insist on the necessary correlation between physical aberration and monstrousness. Instead, in his view, the modern monstrosity was a monstrosity of behaviour (Wright 2013). What is important to notice here is when a feature formerly regarded as the primary signal of monstrosity has been gradually substituted with a different one. The behavioural monstrosity came to the forefront.
This historical example demonstrates that when something about monsters gets exposed or rendered transparent, it leads to the assumption that monstrosity vanishes. However, it does not mean that if gaming monsters are fully contained within algorithms, they are devoid of their monstrosity. The loss of such abilities as disorientation, vertigo, transgression, abjection, disruption do not mean that monsters are no longer monstrous. Neither does it mean that gaming monsters are not fully monsters. Not only gaming monsters continue to be monstrous, but the same characteristics that we named as no longer partaking in the formation of gaming monsters are also still capable of returning in the future through a different medium. It has happened to the visual monstrosity that vanished for a few decades but came back again later.
To conclude, we should be careful to celebrate the new definition of monstrosity because by their nature, “monsters are slippery enough to make the Encyclopaedists nervous” (qtd. in Thorsen & Skadegård 2019). What is crucial to understand here is that the critical element of monstrosity being its ability to “keep emerging on the discursive scene” and to haunt “not only our imagination but also our scientific knowledge-claims” stay intact (qtd. in Thorsen & Skadegård 2019). Previously deemed inscrutable and abject, the new monsters have been subjected to the logic of informatic control. The fact that the algorithms have colonized monsters confirms their ability to haunt our scientific knowledge claims.
_____
Bibliography:
Asma, S. T. (2012). On monsters: an unnatural history of our worst fears. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Barbosa, A, (2020). ‘Gory Reverse-Horror Game Carrion Is Coming To Nintendo Switch’, GameSpot, June 17 (latest access: 12/05/2021).
Beal, T. K. (2002). Religion and its monsters. New York: Routledge.
Braidotti, Rosi. (2017). Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied Differences: A Reader. 10.4324/9781315094106-34.
Canguilhem, G. (1962). Monstrosity and the Monstrous. Diogenes.
Carrion [digital game] [Nintendo Switch] (2020). des. S. Kro?kiewicz, K. Chomicki; dev. Phobia Game Studio, distr. Devolver Digital; Warsaw, Poland and Austin, Texas USA.
Carroll, N. (1990). The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge.
Crogan, P. (2011). Gameplay mode: war, simulation, and technoculture. Electronic mediations 36. Minneapolis, Minn.: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
Hellstrand, I. (2017). From Metaphor to Metamorph? On Science Fiction and the Ethics of Transformative Encounters. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, vol. 25, no 1. 19–31.
Kant, I. (2007). Critique of judgement. Oxford world’s classics. Walker, N. (ed.). Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
Kearney, R. (2002). Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. London; New York: Routledge.
Koistinen, A. (2016). The (Care) Robot in Science Fiction – Monster or a Tool for the Future?. Confero, vol. 4, no 2. 97–109.
Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay On Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.
Mittman, A. S. (2013). Introduction: The Impact of Monsters and Monster Studies. In: Mittman, A. S. & P. Dendle (eds.). The Ashgate research companion to monsters and the monstrous. Ashgate research companions. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 1–14.
Shildrick, M. (2002). Embodying the Monster: Encounters With the Vulnerable Self.
Švelch, J. (2013). Monsters by the numbers: Controlling monstrosity in video games (pre-press).
Thorsen, T., & Skadegård, M. (2019). Monstrous (M)others: From Paranoid to Reparative Readings of Othering Through Ascriptions of Monstrosity. Nordlit, 42: 207-230.
Wright, Alexa. (2013). The Human Monster in Visual Culture. London: I.B.Tauris.