22 | 2002

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Raum, Zeit und Körper in Actionspielen: MAX PAYNE
Gunzenhäuser, Randi (2002) , S. 1-23
The essay examines genre discourses in the action game Max Payne (2001). It draws attention to notions of space, time, and bodies by positioning the game in relation to Hollywood action movies. This entails an examination of the technological specifity of the cinematic and game apparatus respectively. Aesthetic and narrative properties of the action genre are then being related to a parallel construction prevailing in the complex aesthetics of the sublime and the beautiful, a theory which foregrounds gendered power relations. I argue that gaming technologies mediate presence in historically and culturally specific ways, allowing male users to experience their subject function in distinct ways. Therefore, an intertextual examination of the computer gaze allows a reappraisal of computer-generated environments in terms of cultural constructions of identity.