ConcernedApe

Uncanny Homecoming: The Temporality of Dwelling and Return in Digital Games

This paper, written by Justyna Janik and Daniel Vella for DiGRA 2025, examines how temporality shapes the player experience of home places in digital games.

• The paper argues that the feeling of returning to a game home that no longer feels like home can be understood through the concept of the uncanny, drawing on Royle's 'unhomely at the heart of hearth and home' and a Derrida-inspired hauntological framework.
• Its central contribution is a taxonomy of five kinds of uncanny homecoming: narrative, progression, negated, abandoned, and nostalgic homecoming.
• Progression homecoming occurs when a player revisits a previously inhabited place, such as Candlekeep in Baldur's Gate or Kokiri Forest in Ocarina of Time, and finds it changed, a disjuncture grounded in the player's alterbiography.