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This work is devoted to the issue of traumatic futurism in computer games. This type of game has long become an important element of the everyday culture of many people. That is why it is worth paying special attention to the study of their medial psychological capabilities and mechanisms of influence. In the modern world, games have increasingly begun to address issues of existing problems in the field of politics, society and culture, including periodically related to issues of trauma and disaster, which can be experienced by people both personally and remotely through news or works of art. The concept we use is “traumatic futurism”. It means a special form of medial normalization of the crisis experience that the game subject could experience in his real life. The term is intended to indicate the unique features that gaming simulations and procedures can generate. Throughout the work, we build on the research of various authors who analyzed both the problems of disaster and trauma, as well as various features of the normalization or sedation of difficult real experiences by media. The work presents an analysis of game projects that focus either on the private experience of the traumatic or the collective experience of the catastrophic. In conclusion, different outcomes of traumatic futurism are drawn, which can be considered as a positive therapeutic effect, but also as a sedative, normalizing media factor.

This article is a review of Pippin Barr’s book The Stuff Games Are Made Of (2023), which explores various elements of game worlds. Over the course of ten chapters, including introduction and conclusion, the author of the monograph examine samples with stable basic concepts of computer games and their production. Being a game designer and a theorist, Pippin Barr reflects on many ‘medianized’ aspects of computer games, such as goals and rules, calculations and algorithms, graphics and interface, time and space, cinematography prism, cruelty and violence, and monetarization.

The current paper is a review of the monograph by Czech computer games researcher Jaroslav Švelch “Player vs. Monster. The Making and Breaking of Videogame Monstrosity” (2023). Švelch's work is dedicated to the figure of the monster in the gaming industry. The first chapter examines different theoretical approaches to the monstrosity. The second chapter touches on the classic gaming concept: “Player vs. Environment”. The third chapter analyzes “monster realism” as a special form of visuality. The fourth chapter of the monograph is devoted to new trends in game designers’ attitudes towards the monstrous: the manifestation of sympathy for monsters, the formlessness and incorporeality of monsters.

The article examines intertextual links between the works of the French writers Georges Perec and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Not only early texts by Perec but also further ones in form and content refer to the artistic discoveries and inventions of the representatives of Nouveau Roman. In the modern history of French literature, Perec usually appears as an antipode of the Nouveau Roman approach to writing; nevertheless, it is relevant to see and analyze the places of these discrepancies to understand better the specifics and creativity of Perec and the characteristics of the representatives of the Nouveau Roman. The study focuses on early texts (Les Choses, Un homme qui dort), which reveal direct links with the poetics of the nouveau roman, Alain Robbe-Grillet in particular, and on later ones (La Disparition). The article concludes with the significance of the typological links between Nouveau Roman and Perec’s early work, as well as their significant dissimilarity, which consists of subsequent authorial aspirations and attitudes towards style and writing ideas.

The paper is devoted to the issue of virtual naturalism in computer games, in particular, to such a gaming phenomenon as speedrunning. The author of the study analyzes the essence of speedrunning as a special type of cybersport, as well as a form of counterplay that arose in the minds of gamers around the 1990s. Particular attention is paid to the concept of virtual naturalism, which manifests itself in speed running and can be understood as a form of empirical and materialistic study by gamers of various games and their affordances. The purpose of the work is to establish the features of speedrunning as a research and critical practice, similar to some types of academic analysis, but with different tasks. The central place is occupied by the problem of gamers’ experience during the actualization of speedrunning activity, in which speedrunners study the nature of computer game and call into question game design principles and manipulations, leading to some resistance to artificial prohibitions. This form of confrontation, revealed in different types of speedruns, shows certain nuances of the existence of virtual worlds, which makes it possible to better understand the functioning of computer games as modern cultural artifacts. In result, a conclusion is made about the significance of such borderline phenomena as speedrunning and the need for further study of the counterplay practics.