Videosguardi videoludici: la sua storia e le cinque notti = Eyes on video game screens: her story and five nights

Abstract

Eyes on video game screens: her story and five nights. The ability to simultaneously manage large amounts of information on a screen has remained the core of the videogame medium and is associated with "multitasking", a term borrowed from computer science and used today in the most disparate areas. In every video game, this feature tends to alternate with "telescoping", a term borrowed from cognitive psychology, in which the user must focus on managing the current resources available while considering their possible future uses. There are some exceptions, however. This essay will examine "Her Story" (Barlow 2015) and "Five Nights at Freddy's" (Cawthon 2014), two video games based on the same core concept: the subjective look on screens, which is the primary activity for the main character and the constant ludic premise followed by a specific polarization of knowledge for the gamer. This essay will consider these two cases to argue that multitasking and telescoping should not necessarily be linked in an alternate process in the videogame medium, but that each of them can represent an autonomous process on which a different experience can be built, articulated on specific semantic characteristics.