Ile emersji w grach? Recenzja książki: Piotr Kubiński, Gry wideo. Zarys poetyki, Universitas, Kraków 2016

Abstract

Piotr Kubiński’s monograph is an outline of certain specific aspects of video games, examined from the perspective of poetics. Apart from a semiotic analysis of the user interface and a look at how games influence various texts and practices, what the readers will find here is an investigation into the strained relationship between immersion and emersion in video games. Contrary to the popular belief that immersion is unquestionably desirable, Kubiński shows that emersion – a group of phenomena that disrupt the players’ impression of unmediated presence in the game world – can also be a source of ludic and artistic effects that merit a scholarly study. The book offers a well-organized and carefully documented analysis of an understudied dimension of digital games; the tensions between immersion and emersion are present in many, if not all, video games; and the author’s efforts in other publications are making the term “emersion” more visible. For these three reasons, the monograph has the potential to become a significant work in Polish game studies, encouraging other scholars to apply Kubiński’s term in their own research. This would be instrumental in the development of an academic field that has suffered from insufficient accumulation of knowledge.