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." It argues that the game translates stellar evolution, planetary collapse, and cultural extinction into embodied experiences structured by specific temporal designs. The study draws on Timothy Morton's concept of hyperobjects, which are phenomena distributed across time and space beyond human perceptual grasp, and demonstrates how Outer Wilds renders their five traits (viscosity, nonlocality, temporal undulation, phasing, and interobjectivity) experientially perceptible.

The analysis integrates three theoretical approaches: embodied phenomenology, the affective turn in game studies, and posthuman perspectives on gaming. It focuses on three interlocking temporal structures within Outer Wilds: recursive, diasporic, and entropic. Recursive temporality, exemplified by the game's 22-minute loop, fosters cosmological attunement by transforming repetition into meaningful engagement where knowledge persists despite material resets. Entropic temporality, drawing on the mesocosm framework, highlights irreversible processes of degradation and collapse, such as planetary decay and the sun's supernova, cultivating an embodied awareness of impermanence. Diasporic temporality emerges from the scattered remnants of the Nomai civilization, requiring players to reconstruct meaning from fragmented histories, thereby rendering cultural extinction affectively tangible.

The paper concludes that Outer Wilds' temporal structures cultivate ecological attunement, guiding players to engage with systems beyond human comprehension and apprehend interdependence, impermanence, and systemic complexity. It contributes to game studies by introducing "temporalised hyperobjects" as a lens for understanding how games render vast systems affectively legible and by demonstrating how structured temporal mechanics can foster ecological consciousness through lived, embodied conditions. The study's scope is focused on a single game, Outer Wilds, and its specific design elements.