1-Bit Skin: Materializing Abjection in World of Horror (2023)

This extended abstract, presented at DiGRA 2024, proposes an interdisciplinary study of how the videogame World of Horror (Ysbyrd Games, released October 2023) materializes abjection, drawing on Julia Kristeva's theory from Powers of Horror (1980). The central argument is that videogames, unlike film or text, let players interact with grotesque imagery rather than merely react to it, and that this interactivity reshapes the experience of the abject. The author frames the game as both a virtual archive of cosmic and body-horror references, many of which trace to Junji Ito, H.P. Lovecraft, and the 1954 film Creature from the Black Lagoon, and a generative space where these icons acquire new meaning through proximity.

A particular focus is the materiality of skin, which the paper traces through Galenic and Augustinian theological ideas linking skin to sin and corruption, and through Early Modern conceptions of corporeal disorder. The author asks how a game rendered in 1-bit pixel graphics can still evoke the visceral texture of the abject despite reducing skin to minimal visual form.

The methodology combines art historical analysis with a player-as-analyst approach drawn from Carr (2017), which suits the game's randomized rogue-like structure that prevents repeated identical runs. The analysis is qualitative and conceptual rather than empirical, relying on close reading of the game, a Steam community reference compendium, and theoretical literature. The paper is a proposal-stage abstract, and its conclusions are framed as research aims rather than established findings.