Mobius Digital

Temporalised Hyperobjects and Affective Play in Outer Wilds

The paper "Temporalised Hyperobjects and Affective Play in Outer Wilds" investigates how the video game Outer Wilds makes vast, incomprehensible cosmic phenomena emotionally accessible through the concept of "temporalised hyperobjects."

• Outer Wilds is analysed through the concept of 'temporalised hyperobjects', using Timothy Morton's idea of phenomena too massively distributed across time and space for human perception to grasp, such as climate change or nuclear radiation.
• Morton's five hyperobject traits (viscosity, nonlocality, temporal undulation, phasing, interobjectivity) are mapped onto three temporal structures in the game: recursive, entropic, and diasporic.
• The game's 22-minute time loop makes 'viscosity' tangible: knowledge persists across loops via the spaceship interface and the Scout Launcher, so repetition becomes cosmological attunement rather than mere constraint.