Still Not Game: Experiencing a Game Engine as an Artistic Studio Space

Linda Loh's "Still Not Game: Experiencing a Game Engine as an Artistic Studio Space" argues that Unreal Engine, a tool built primarily for game development, can serve as a legitimate studio environment for contemplative digital art rather than merely a means of making games. Written as a reflective, practice-based account, the work traces how the author, without prior gaming experience, learned the engine in order to create abstract, luminous, transcendent virtual spaces. Its central thesis is that game engines can be repurposed as artistic media capable of producing experiences that resist conventional game logic, including narrative progression, achievement, and the default "game-like" aesthetic.

The paper's theoretical framework draws on Neoplatonism, Kant's concept of the sublime, the Light and Space movement, Rosalind Krauss's "expanded field," Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau, and Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome. Through these lenses, the author describes a recursive, serendipitous process in which an initially finished virtual world became an accumulating, chaotic space that generated new creative possibilities, with the digital environment functioning as both collaborator and medium. Works such as the 2021 VR piece Agog exemplify the evolution from abstract intent toward an explorable sublime landscape.

The author frames this practice as producing "technological sublime" experiences that evoke awe and altered states of mind, and she argues that such phenomenological, experiential knowledge is a valid outcome of artistic engagement with the tool. The scope is limited to the author's individual practice and reflection; the work offers no quantitative data or broader industry survey, and its findings rest on personal learning and interpretive argument rather than empirical measurement.