Skin Games: Fragrant Play, Scented Media and the Stench of Digital Games

Christopher Niedenthal's 2012 study "Skin Games: Fragrant Play, Scented Media and the Stench of Digital Games" argues that smell is an underexplored dimension of play design, one with strong associative and emotional power but significant technical, cultural, and perceptual obstacles. The work contends that scent remains difficult to digitize and standardize because olfaction lacks the universal notation systems and mature simulation technologies available for sight and sound, even though human cultures have long used fragrance for categorization, ritual, and spectacle. Its central thesis is that scent is a promising but challenging medium for play, especially where customization and retrospective memory are involved.

The study surveys a long history of attempts to bring scent into media, from Smell-O-Vision and AromaRama to iSmell, Kojima's scented floppy disk concept, and the scratch-and-sniff cards of adventure games such as Leather Goddesses of Phobos and Leisure Suit Larry 7. These efforts are largely characterized as failures, undermined by problems of distribution, synchronization, sequencing, residue, and cultural dismissal of smell, though the scratch-and-sniff examples show that carefully designed scent can achieve narrative and comic effect. Discworld Noir's depiction of odors as colored clouds is presented as a workaround that turns scent into a gameplay mechanic without requiring actual odor output.

Niedenthal's design analysis draws on Ermi and Mäyrä's immersion model, illustrating sensory, challenge-based, and imaginative immersion through examples such as Spice Chess, odor-discrimination challenges, and the Nordic LARP Dragonbane. The recurring conclusion is that smell-based play must remain simple, rely on a single signature scent, and be extensively tested given individual and cultural variation, while perfume history offers useful strategies around identity, temporality, and play. The study also examines fragrance-themed games and communities, including Savignac's Jeu des Parfums, Axe's Maneater advergame, and the Basenotes community, and proposes speculative gameplay themes framed as research for design rather than empirical findings.

Methodologically, the work advocates multidisciplinary inquiry spanning sensory psychology, sensory anthropology, media history, and game and community studies. It concludes that diverse scent-related phenomena, from eggshell props and scratch-and-sniff media to in-game perfume and the c