B Nicoll
Biographic Data
| ID | 45873 |
|---|---|
| NAME | B Nicoll |
| GIVEN NAMES | B |
| FAMILY NAME | Nicoll |
| SIGNATURE | NICOLL B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queensland University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9424-6439 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The subject of videogame addiction
Most videogame theorists dismiss videogame addiction as a product of discourse, leaving little space for critical accounts of videogame addiction as a psychical phenomenon. This article develops such an account by drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis. It defines the subject of videogame addiction as a being who seeks to administer enjoyment at will by reducing the Other to a pure demand. To substantiate this definition, the article synthesises two …
Latent Freedom in Videogames
Critical commentary about player freedom in videogames usually begins and ends with a critique of the ideology of free will. This focus misses a key way in which actual player freedom differs from the ideology of free will. Actual player freedom lies in the unconscious drive to fail rather than the capacity to make self-interested choices. When players satisfy their drive to fail, they experience a surplus of what Jacques Lacan calls jouissance, …
Enjoyment in the Anthropocene: The extimacy of ecological catastrophe in Donut County
Consciousness raising seems to be the most pressing task facing any project for environmental sustainability today. A psychoanalytic interpretation of the climate crisis, however, reveals that a far more urgent challenge is recognizing that we might be deriving jouissance, or unconscious enjoyment, from the very worsening of the crisis. This article contends that videogames are the ideal medium through which to grasp the form that our unconscious…
Enjoyment With(out) Exception: Sex and the Unconscious Drive to Fail in Videogame Play
While considerations of gender predominate in scholarly accounts of why and how people derive pleasure from videogame play, the question of sex remains either undertheorized or conspicuously absent from the conversation. Drawing on Jacques Lacan’s formulae of sexuation, this article argues that the jouissance (enjoyment) of videogame play is sexed rather than gendered. It theorizes two logics of enjoyment in videogame play: enjoyment with excepti…
‘What Was Your First Experience of a Videogame?’: The Fantasmatic Structure of Videogame Memory
Videogame memories are not simply mental records of what happened in the past; they are also texts to be interpreted. Taking a psychoanalytic approach, this article conducts a textual analysis of 115 recorded acts of videogame memory from Checkpoints, a podcast that ran from 2015 to 2018. Analysing subjects’ responses to the question ‘what was your first experience of a videogame?’, it argues that what is absent from videogame memory – what canno…
Looking for the Gamic Gaze: Desire, Fantasy, and Enjoyment in Gorogoa
It seems intuitive to conflate the gamic gaze with the player’s act of looking. To do so, however, would be to inherit from the first wave of psychoanalytic screen theory a misleading presupposition that the gaze is synonymous with the look. Taking influence from new Lacanian film theorists such as Joan Copjec and Todd McGowan, this article contends that the gamic gaze is an object in the visual field of play that disrupts the mastery of the play…
Platformisation in game development
This article draws on case studies of two software development platforms, Unity and Twine, to unpack how the game development process both adheres to and challenges understandings of ‘platformisation’
Minor Platforms in Videogame History
Videogame history is not just a history of one successful technology replacing the next. It is also a history of platforms and communities that never quite made it; that struggled to make their voices heard; that aggravated against the conventions of the day; and that never enjoyed the commercial success or recognition of their major counterparts. In Minor Platforms in Videogame History, Benjamin Nicoll argues that 'minor' videogame histories are…
The Unity Game Engine and the Circuits of Cultural Software
Mimetic Production in YouTube Toy Unboxing Videos
This article contributes to research on children's participation on social media by analyzing 'toy unboxing' videos. Toy unboxing videos are a popular genre on the video-sharing platform YouTube, in which children and adults record themselves unpacking and reviewing various commercial toys. Emerging research in this area has focused on case studies of how these videos are consumed within the home as a means of augmenting offline toys and play pra…
Bridging the Gap: The Neo Geo, the Media Imaginary, and the Domestication of Arcade Games
This article recovers the popular imaginaries surrounding an obsolete video game platform, the Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System (AES), through a thematic discourse analysis of British and North American gaming magazines from the 1990s. Released in Japan in 1990, the Neo Geo AES was marketed as a home video game system capable of bridging the gap between the public space of the gaming arcade and the domestic environment of the home. "Imaginar…
Mimesis as mediation: A dialectical conception of the videogame interface
Phenomenological accounts of technology, mediation, and embodiment are beginning to problematize traditional distinctions between subject (human) and object (machine). This shift is often attributed to a material or post-human turn since it is usually associated with an interest in the non-human actors and objects that make media interfaces possible. This article contends that these tendencies should also be considered part of a deeper lineage of…
Mimetic Production in YouTube Toy Unboxing Videos
This article contributes to research on children's participation on social media by analyzing 'toy unboxing' videos. Toy unboxing videos are a popular genre on the video-sharing platform YouTube, in which children and adults record themselves unpacking and reviewing various commercial toys. Emerging research in this area has focused on case studies of how these videos are consumed within the home as a means of augmenting offline toys and play pra…
Enjoyment With(out) Exception: Sex and the Unconscious Drive to Fail in Videogame Play
While considerations of gender predominate in scholarly accounts of why and how people derive pleasure from videogame play, the question of sex remains either undertheorized or conspicuously absent from the conversation. Drawing on Jacques Lacan’s formulae of sexuation, this article argues that the jouissance (enjoyment) of videogame play is sexed rather than gendered. It theorizes two logics of enjoyment in videogame play: enjoyment with excepti…
Latent Freedom in Videogames
Critical commentary about player freedom in videogames usually begins and ends with a critique of the ideology of free will. This focus misses a key way in which actual player freedom differs from the ideology of free will. Actual player freedom lies in the unconscious drive to fail rather than the capacity to make self-interested choices. When players satisfy their drive to fail, they experience a surplus of what Jacques Lacan calls jouissance, …
Enjoyment in the Anthropocene: The extimacy of ecological catastrophe in Donut County
Consciousness raising seems to be the most pressing task facing any project for environmental sustainability today. A psychoanalytic interpretation of the climate crisis, however, reveals that a far more urgent challenge is recognizing that we might be deriving jouissance, or unconscious enjoyment, from the very worsening of the crisis. This article contends that videogames are the ideal medium through which to grasp the form that our unconscious…
Looking for the Gamic Gaze: Desire, Fantasy, and Enjoyment in Gorogoa
It seems intuitive to conflate the gamic gaze with the player’s act of looking. To do so, however, would be to inherit from the first wave of psychoanalytic screen theory a misleading presupposition that the gaze is synonymous with the look. Taking influence from new Lacanian film theorists such as Joan Copjec and Todd McGowan, this article contends that the gamic gaze is an object in the visual field of play that disrupts the mastery of the play…
Bridging the Gap: The Neo Geo, the Media Imaginary, and the Domestication of Arcade Games
This article recovers the popular imaginaries surrounding an obsolete video game platform, the Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System (AES), through a thematic discourse analysis of British and North American gaming magazines from the 1990s. Released in Japan in 1990, the Neo Geo AES was marketed as a home video game system capable of bridging the gap between the public space of the gaming arcade and the domestic environment of the home. "Imaginar…
Mimesis as mediation: A dialectical conception of the videogame interface
Phenomenological accounts of technology, mediation, and embodiment are beginning to problematize traditional distinctions between subject (human) and object (machine). This shift is often attributed to a material or post-human turn since it is usually associated with an interest in the non-human actors and objects that make media interfaces possible. This article contends that these tendencies should also be considered part of a deeper lineage of…
Mimesis as mediation: A dialectical conception of the videogame interface
Phenomenological accounts of technology, mediation, and embodiment are beginning to problematize traditional distinctions between subject (human) and object (machine). This shift is often attributed to a material or post-human turn since it is usually associated with an interest in the non-human actors and objects that make media interfaces possible. This article contends that these tendencies should also be considered part of a deeper lineage of…
Bridging the Gap: The Neo Geo, the Media Imaginary, and the Domestication of Arcade Games
This article recovers the popular imaginaries surrounding an obsolete video game platform, the Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System (AES), through a thematic discourse analysis of British and North American gaming magazines from the 1990s. Released in Japan in 1990, the Neo Geo AES was marketed as a home video game system capable of bridging the gap between the public space of the gaming arcade and the domestic environment of the home. "Imaginar…
Mimetic Production in YouTube Toy Unboxing Videos
This article contributes to research on children's participation on social media by analyzing 'toy unboxing' videos. Toy unboxing videos are a popular genre on the video-sharing platform YouTube, in which children and adults record themselves unpacking and reviewing various commercial toys. Emerging research in this area has focused on case studies of how these videos are consumed within the home as a means of augmenting offline toys and play pra…
Minor Platforms in Videogame History
Videogame history is not just a history of one successful technology replacing the next. It is also a history of platforms and communities that never quite made it; that struggled to make their voices heard; that aggravated against the conventions of the day; and that never enjoyed the commercial success or recognition of their major counterparts. In Minor Platforms in Videogame History, Benjamin Nicoll argues that 'minor' videogame histories are…
The Unity Game Engine and the Circuits of Cultural Software
Platformisation in game development
This article draws on case studies of two software development platforms, Unity and Twine, to unpack how the game development process both adheres to and challenges understandings of ‘platformisation’
Looking for the Gamic Gaze: Desire, Fantasy, and Enjoyment in Gorogoa
It seems intuitive to conflate the gamic gaze with the player’s act of looking. To do so, however, would be to inherit from the first wave of psychoanalytic screen theory a misleading presupposition that the gaze is synonymous with the look. Taking influence from new Lacanian film theorists such as Joan Copjec and Todd McGowan, this article contends that the gamic gaze is an object in the visual field of play that disrupts the mastery of the play…
‘What Was Your First Experience of a Videogame?’: The Fantasmatic Structure of Videogame Memory
Videogame memories are not simply mental records of what happened in the past; they are also texts to be interpreted. Taking a psychoanalytic approach, this article conducts a textual analysis of 115 recorded acts of videogame memory from Checkpoints, a podcast that ran from 2015 to 2018. Analysing subjects’ responses to the question ‘what was your first experience of a videogame?’, it argues that what is absent from videogame memory – what canno…
Enjoyment in the Anthropocene: The extimacy of ecological catastrophe in Donut County
Consciousness raising seems to be the most pressing task facing any project for environmental sustainability today. A psychoanalytic interpretation of the climate crisis, however, reveals that a far more urgent challenge is recognizing that we might be deriving jouissance, or unconscious enjoyment, from the very worsening of the crisis. This article contends that videogames are the ideal medium through which to grasp the form that our unconscious…
Enjoyment With(out) Exception: Sex and the Unconscious Drive to Fail in Videogame Play
While considerations of gender predominate in scholarly accounts of why and how people derive pleasure from videogame play, the question of sex remains either undertheorized or conspicuously absent from the conversation. Drawing on Jacques Lacan’s formulae of sexuation, this article argues that the jouissance (enjoyment) of videogame play is sexed rather than gendered. It theorizes two logics of enjoyment in videogame play: enjoyment with excepti…
The subject of videogame addiction
Most videogame theorists dismiss videogame addiction as a product of discourse, leaving little space for critical accounts of videogame addiction as a psychical phenomenon. This article develops such an account by drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis. It defines the subject of videogame addiction as a being who seeks to administer enjoyment at will by reducing the Other to a pure demand. To substantiate this definition, the article synthesises two …
Latent Freedom in Videogames
Critical commentary about player freedom in videogames usually begins and ends with a critique of the ideology of free will. This focus misses a key way in which actual player freedom differs from the ideology of free will. Actual player freedom lies in the unconscious drive to fail rather than the capacity to make self-interested choices. When players satisfy their drive to fail, they experience a surplus of what Jacques Lacan calls jouissance, …
Digital Games and Media (11 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Art (5 works) · Cinema and Media Studies (5 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Psychoanalysis (4 works) · Psychology (4 works)