Rotten and Possessed: Control and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice as Models of Outmersive Game Design

Abstract

Control (Remedy Entertainment) and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (Ninja Theory) demonstrate the potential for game design that defies expectations of immersive gameplay and embodied avatars. Building on game scholarship that recognizes 'immersion' as a "double-axis of incorporation" [8] consisting of a "complex interplay of actual and virtual worlds as perceived through a dually embodied player" [26,p. 73], we can see how these games achieve powerful moments of coattention through outmersive game design-deliberately alienating the player from an embodied avatar experience. Outmersion,a term coined by Gonzalo Frasca, offers a broader categorization for games that procedurally engender "critical distance" by directing player attention to and outside of the game itself [16]. This article uses close-play to explore how the characters of Jesse Faden in Control and Senua in Hellblade make use of the 'coinhabited avatar' trope-in which the avatar is possessed by non-player entities. This article identifies shared outcomes in the outmersive design of these characters, namely that they: 1) directly invoked the player 2) complicated the player's place in the avatar body 3) deceived the player 4) took agency from the player and 5) referenced game structures directly. Through outmersion, these games created provocative moments of player attention and reflection, simultaneously interrogating assumptions of power, rules, and embodiment. This article advocates for further exploration of outmersive game and interactive narrative design to challenge dominant presumptions about player-avatar interactions.