Heather Maycock

This project analyses death procedures and the implications of these procedures in single-player role-playing videogames. I aim to investigate games as designed experiences to understand the relationship between death procedures in digital games and the necropolitical horizon. In my approach I intend to coax death out from behind the veil of abstraction and ask: to what extent can we know the ultimate ‘otherness’ of death? What forms of knowing death are available? And how does ‘dying’ in videogames contend with the loaded implications that surround death in modern society. These considerations will allow conversation on how death is conceptualised in Western culture and how this can be persuasively reflected in transformative digital media. My research methodologies will bring together autoethnography, phenomenological theory, close readings of games and their mechanics, and perspectives from within the death industries to assess the potential of game design processes to re-familiarise death and dying beyond abstract alienation.