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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.

Modern narratological researches are quite well developed and has long gone beyond the purely philological field. One of the applications of narratology is the study of computer games, the most relevant new medium. This paper is devoted to the issue of unusual narrative strategies used in games on the example of Final Fantasy XIII-2. The analysis is conducted via the possible-worlds method, which is currently in demand in modern humanities, but it is less known in Russia. The aim of the research is to determine the function of possible worlds existing in Final Fantasy XIII-2 for a better understanding of the game design. In the course of the work, the author examines the internal structure of the game world with the help of the theory of possible worlds, analyzes the narrative strategy, and makes a game scheme of possible worlds with accessibility links which let to see the deep internal structure of the narrative game world. In conclusion, it is clear that Final Fantasy XIII-2 contains a non-trivial narrative structure with multiple branches that is smoothed out by the gameplay and cinematic experience of the player, although such a composition of possible worlds represents a complex scheme of the game's macrocosm which demands a close attention to the narrative. The article is intended for various humanitarian specialists interested in the study of computer games.

This article attempts to define the complex relationship of truth and fiction in the autobiographical context of Georges Perec’s novel W, or the Memory of Childhood (1975). Georges Perec is a classic of French literature who immigrated as a Polish Jew, whose family suffered the horrors of the Second World War. In France, his literary heritage remains relevant to scholars, although many works are already devoted to him, but in Russia he is still little known and poorly understood. Within his most famous novel W, or the Memory of Childhood Perec presents two stories that are intertwined in a special way: autobiographical and fictional. The purpose of this article is to establish not just textual differences between two stories that have deceptive paratextual boundaries, but to establish how the factual and fictional mutation occurs in Perec’s autobiographical text, often referred to by researchers as autofiction. Autofiction is applied to almost all French literature of 60-70s as a certain literary tendency of comprehending and aesthetization of infraordinary life. Thus, the study of autofiction in Perec’s works allows us to better understand not only his poetics, but also the typical features of the literature of that time period. The author of the article considers the genre features of the work, its structure, the essence of various narrators. The article concludes that the writer has a complex perception of the relationship between truth or fact and fiction, expressed in the form of autofiction, not because of the desire to play with the reader, but because of the game with its own memory, which reveals the real indistinguishability of some memories as false or true.

Настоящая работа посвящена анализу специфики исторической рефлексии в компьютерных играх. Автор показывает, как игры могут аккумулировать историю, размышлять о ней, трансформировать ее в угоду игровым условностям, а также в некотором роде изменять культурную память. «Игровая» историография иногда связана с понятиями «эдьютеймент» и «serious game», которые направлены на обучение. Однако в исследовании используется авторский термин «энциклопедическая игра» для обозначения такого вида игр, которые могут быть «прочитаны» как форма достоверных знаний, но при этом были созданы как независимые продукты с частично вымышленным миром. Основной целью исследования является попытка выявить способы организации исторического материала в форме компьютерной игры. В ходе исследования автор описывает общие особенности истории в играх и ее проблемы, обосновывает использование термина «энциклопедическая игра», выделяет различные виды «энциклопедизма». В итоге автор приходит к выводу, что «энциклопедическая игра» является уникальной формой медиума компьютерных игр, способной «говорить» на темы истории повседневности и ментальности в «тотальном» виде.