Postphenomenology, Kill Cams and Shooters: Exploring the Code of Replay Sequences

Abstract

The kill cams represent a common feature in many shooters, but little is said about their technological and bodily implications in game studies. By examining postphenomenologically the kill cams code, this article highlights the fact that these gamic cams provoke players to a bodily rethinking of death and failure. The way in which kill cams are embedded is an important topic in understanding their functionality, as it is the very code that determines the power that is attributed to these technologies. Conceiving these kill cams is also a matter of technological mediation, so that one’s own visualization after death produces a sort of objectivity-subjectivity inversion. While the gameplay itself encompasses multiple embodiment relationships, it is noticed that the kill cams’ code of some games completely restricts the player’s agency and rather favors a mere hermeneutic interpretation of its own death.