Glitches and ghosts: The digital uncanny in video games and creepypasta

Abstract

This article seeks to address the phenomenon of glitches and ‘creepypasta’, or short anonymous stories (usually in prose but sometimes presented in other media), that focus on video games and related ludic media. The inherent uncanniness of the glitch – as an affront to player agency and an assertion of mysterious operations performed ‘under the hood’, as though possessed of an agency of their own – is assessed, as well as the ways in which such eerie interruptions are put to use in fictional narratives about haunted video games. It is argued that the glitch, as an instance of a video gamer asserting its own agency which is alien and often actively opposed to that of the player, is fertile ground for narratives about games which exert their own occulted willpower. Stories about such games often feature the player being overpowered by the media they engage with, inverting the normal ontological hierarchy between the player and the played.