Instantaneously punctuated picture-music: Re-evaluating videogame expression through Pilgrim in the Microworld

Abstract

Published in 1983, David Sudnow’s Pilgrim in the Microworld performs an autoethnographic analysis of videogames that details how he acquires the gestures and postures required by skilled videogame play. While often seen as a curious experiment in early videogame analysis, Sudnow points to a descriptive mode of evaluating videogames that sees the audiovisual and mechanic aspects as irreducibly constituting a holistic embodied experience of the videogame as played. This article highlights the interventions that Sudnow’s under-examined work can provide contemporary critical videogame scholarship to account for how videogames meaningfully fuse embodied gestures with audiovisual spectacle. At a time when scholars are paying increased attention to the embodied aspects of videogame play, this article argues that Sudnow provides a unique opportunity to re-evaluate the expressive potential of videogames as not just ‘digital games’ nor as ‘computer toys’ but as performed, haptically augmented audiovisual media.