“Beyond Their Actual Limits”: Immersion,Interactivity,and the Virtual Sublime in Burke and Video Games

The Sublime and the Video Game

Describing the experience of playing a video game as sublime can be controversial, especially when the account heavily relies on audiovisual representations of objects and environments. The first challenge arises in the complex and variegated meanings attributed to the term sublime, which are the result of its long history. Originally proposed as a quality primarily associated with rhetoric, the sublime was established as an aesthetic response to overwhelming yet pleasure-inducing stimuli in the 18th century, only to be constantly reconfigured and reinterpreted in subsequent centuries. Complicating this history as a philosophical concept is the interrelated yet distinct life of the sublime as an artistic effect or technique in the realms of architecture, music, visual arts, literature, performance, and popular entertainment, always communicating and sometimes overlapping with the former yet never directed by it. The result is an extensive and ever-growing body of theoretical and critical works that find the sublime in increasingly disparate objects, experiences, and ideas, ranging from relatively concrete entities such as impressive industrial constructions to abstract concepts such as the unrepresentable. Although the ever-growing scholarship on the sublime may be the natural result of its continued relevance (Costelloe, 2012, p. 7), increasingly sophisticated theorization risks widening the gap between the sublime as a philosophical concept and as a felt experience (Costelloe, 2012; Kirwan, 2018). Indeed, regardless of the many theoretical revisions and artistic experiments that continuously distance themselves from previous interpretations, the sublime as conceptualized in the 18th century remains relevant in today’s popular culture (Kirwan, 2017).

In the field of video game studies, literature on the sublime tends to focus on media-specific reconceptualizations of the theory. Shinkle (2012) finds the sublime in moments of major computer system or hardware failure, when the familiar and entertaining façade of the video game is shattered and the computer reveals itself as “a technological other” beyond human comprehension, leading to “a sense of the incommensurability of the technology with the subject’s own powers of reason” (103). Expanding this concept, Meades (2015) argues that a similar effect of the sublime can be produced by intentional system failures. Shinkle’s and Meades’ focus on the extraordinary event of failure rather than functional and enjoyable gameplay may reflect the skepticism toward the video game’s ability to produce or maintain sublime feelings, or any type of aesthetic experience, which raises the second challenge. In his analysis of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Martin (2011) argues that the initial impression of the sublime, achieved by the game’s visual and narrative design, is ultimately destroyed as the game reveals itself to be a finite object to be mastered by the player. Martin attributes this failure not to the flaws of this particular game but to the intrinsic qualities of the medium: the inevitable constraints of the program, which makes it impossible to realize actual infinity within the game environment, and the interactive nature of the medium, which necessitates the player’s actions in transforming its own text. According to Atkinson and Parsayi (2020), this media specificity of the video game is unsuitable for not only achieving sublimity but traditional aesthetic values in general. They argue that the relationship between the video game medium and the players, grounded by their immersion in the game environment and the interactivity between their actions and the game’s response, is inherently antithetical to the established mode of aesthetic contemplation, which has developed with a focus on the distance between the object and the observer. However, this conclusion appears to suggest less the negation of applying aesthetic approaches to video games than the need for a new mode of aesthetic appreciation for this new interactive medium, as Atkinson and Parsayi carefully delineate aesthetic contemplation as a cultural construct with its own history and limitations.

Such a novel media-appropriate approach can be found in Vella’s (2015) and O’Sullivan’s (2017) studies, both of which consider the interactivity and resultant mutability of the video game not as obstacles but as the sources of a media-specific version of the sublime. O’Sullivan argues that interactivity is the key constituent of the sublime experience in video games, which is based on the player’s sense of unlimited possibility and consequent awe despite the real constraints of the program and its manifestation. However, he remains ambivalent of the phenomenon, regarding it as an “illusion” created by the programmers’ manipulation of a very finite and calculatable object and the players’ confusion partially caused by the interactivity of the medium (pp. 316–7). This view is representative of the larger trend of misgivings felt toward the notion of the sublime evoked by digital technology, in particular, computer-generated imagery in entertainment cinema (Klassen, 2012; Tuck, 2008).

Vella, in contrast, rejects the view that contrasts the purported illusion created by ordinary and functional game-playing experiences and the deeper truth underlying them. Criticizing the assumed dichotomy between the system as the hidden essence of the video game and the representation as its product and surface that the player experiences, he proposes an approach to the video game as a “phenomenal object” that can be accessed only through the player’s game-playing experience, encompassing all its visual, aural, and narrative elements as well as gameplay (Proceduralism section, para. 11). This conceptualization simultaneously valorizes an ordinary player’s typical game-playing experience as an attempt at gaining “an understanding of the game-as-cosmos” (The Act of Playing section, para. 7) and dooms it as an ultimately impossible task: the systemic nature of the game can never be fully grasped by such phenomenal experiences, yet they are the only means of access to that system. Rather than causing frustration, this “essential, and unbridgeable, gap” (Proceduralism section, para. 11) between experiential gameplay and the “fundamental unknowability” (The Limitations of Perception section, para. 5) of the system functions as the source of the player’s inexhaustible desire for mastery. This further leads to the player’s realization of their own perceptual and cognitive limitations to grasp “the milieu of the gameworld, the computational systems underlying it, and the space of possibilities they structure” (Dark Souls section, para. 1). This is what Vella terms the ludic sublime, the video game equivalent of the overwhelming feeling of smallness in the face of an entity that “exceeds both the field of perception and the grasp of the mind’s faculties” (The Limitations of Perception section, para. 11). Vella’s conceptualization of the ludic sublime is uniquely valuable in its attempt to integrate the player’s gaming experience and the theorization of the sublime as specifically applied to the medium of the video game. Indeed, his analysis of Dark Souls (FromSoftware, 2011) corresponds with the accounts of many players who are drawn to extremely difficult games that deny them the satisfaction of mastery. The inherent inaccessibility of the game underlying its malleable surface is the essence of “replayability,” one of the most highly esteemed values in the gaming community.

This article is informed by Vella’s experiential approach to the video game as an object that is primarily played, Costelloe’s (2012) emphasis on the affective dimensions of the sublime independent of theorization, and Kirwan’s (2017) criticism of academia’s failure to acknowledge the sublimity present in popular culture. This article thus focuses on what Costelloe terms “the human experience” of the sublime (1): the sublime as popularly practiced and experienced outside—albeit not entirely irrelevant to—theoretical discourses. As such, it will primarily rely on the sublime as conceptualized by Burke (1759/1998) in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Although Immanuel Kant’s (1790/2000) notion of the sublime is acknowledged as a more complete and refined version and therefore more widely used by later scholars, Burke’s theory is more applicable to this research, given his focus on the interaction between external stimuli and the psychological response as well as the treatment of artificially engendered sublime effects. Despite his dismissals of the visual arts as an unsuitable medium for the sublime, Burke nevertheless considered visual illusions and simulated experiences to be an adequate source. Many of these techniques and technologies designed to achieve the virtual sublime—some preceding Burke and others developed in response to his treatise—are inherited and revised by video games.

Immersion and Interactivity in the Classical Sublime

Alongside Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790/2000), Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry (1759/1998) is held as a seminal work that configured the way in which we presently understand the sublime as an aesthetic concept. In this five-part treatise, Burke established most of the key elements that are still used to theorize the sublime: its contrast to beauty, terror as its core element, objects that surpass the capacity of the human mind or body as its major source, and its association with nature. Working within the 18th-century discourse of the sublime and simultaneously marking a radical break from the previous tradition, Burke demarcates a sharp boundary between the beautiful and the sublime. If beauty is the quality that evokes pure pleasure without any hint of negative feelings, present in lovable objects associated with comfort and satisfaction, the sublime is an experience that produces gratifying “passion”—which he terms “delight” in contrast to tame “pleasure”—stemming from the fear of “pain” and “danger” (p. 36). Thus, terror is “the ruling principle of the sublime” (p. 54) that functions simultaneously as its origin and defining characteristic. At the same time, Burke emphasizes the “distances” and “modifications” (pp. 36–7) necessary for terrible objects to be perceived as sublime, noting that no real and immediate threat to the self can produce a positive response: “terror is a passion which always produces delight when it does not press too close” (p. 42).

In contrast to Kant’s interest in the psychological mechanism of the sublime as “a movement of the mind” (p. 258), Burke is preoccupied with the sublime as a psychophysical response occurring at the intersection of external stimuli and the body (Ryan, 2001). ¹ His methodology in this endeavor can be described as data-driven: as soon as he establishes a necessary theoretical framework, he focuses on tracing how the sublime is produced on each occasion, following the British empirical tradition. The result is a rich reserve of varied sources of the sublime, encompassing natural and artificial objects as well as material entities and abstract ideas. Here, Burke’s analysis shows a surprising absence of a sharp boundary between the natural and artificial objects of the sublime. The first section on “Obscurity” smoothly transitions from the danger to which “we [cannot] accustom our eyes” (p. 54) to ghosts, to the secretive workings of the despotic government, and to a passage from John Milton’s (1674) Paradise Lost. Similarly, the idea of “power” as the source of the sublime is applied to natural environments, wild animals, poetry, and religious concepts without much differentiation (pp. 59–65).

Burke is particularly interested in the power of literature to create sublime effects: after inserting passages from classical writings, the Bible, and British literature throughout his treatise, he devotes the final part to an examination of the sublime produced by “words” (p. 149). However, it is his treatment of architecture that reveals a surprising insight into what may be anachronically termed the virtual sublime. For Burke, the sublime quality of poetry primarily lies within itself, but architecture must emulate nature to produce the desired effect. Thus, he advises architects to actively and meticulously apply their skills and knowledge to manipulate the spectator’s ideas and perceptions. For example, “all edifices calculated to produce an idea of the sublime, ought rather to be dark and gloomy” (p. 74), since darkness and obscurity are closer to sublimity than light and clarity. Not only is the sublime experience produced by artificially designed environments as legitimate as one caused by natural objects, but shrewd calculation is acceptable and even required. Even more astonishing is his acceptance of the architectural illusions of infinity as a proper source of the sublime. Infinity is a major source of the sublime that “has a tendency to fill the mind with…delightful horror” (p. 67) but a characteristic impossible to achieve in any human construct. However, it can be simulated using two techniques:

1. Succession; which is requisite that the parts may be continued so long, and in such a direction, as by their frequent impulses on the sense to impress the imagination with an idea of their progress beyond their actual limits. 2. Uniformity; because if the figures of the parts should be changed, the imagination at every change finds a check; you are presented at every alteration with the termination of one idea, and the beginning of another; by which means it becomes impossible to continue that uninterrupted progression, which alone can stamp on bounded objects the character of infinity. (p. 68, emphasis added)

What he calls “the artificial infinite” (p. 68) can be seen as an illusion of infinity, a false perception of “bounded objects” with “actual limits” caused by architectural tricks. However, the sublime is primarily a feeling for Burke, which may or may not be triggered by external stimuli but whose locus is always the intersection of bodily organs and human consciousness. What matters is the spectator’s perception of infinity and the resulting physiological and emotional response: whether this perception corresponds to the actuality of the space or the spectator’s belief, or whether this response is a carefully calculated outcome, is of secondary importance. Therefore, Burke openly declares that “[a] true artist should put a generous deceit on the spectators, and effect the noblest designs by easy methods” since “[n]o work of art can be great, but as it deceives; to be otherwise is the prerogative of nature only.” (p. 70) In other words, there are only two kinds of the sublime: the nature-inspired sublime and the virtual sublime produced by human beings.

Emphasizing the centrality of the psychophysical responses of the Burkean sublime (p. 233), as opposed to the actual conditions of the external stimulus, Etlin (2012) notes that the sublime architecture depends solely on the “experiential topography” as felt by the spectator (p. 234). Taking diverse examples ranging from the Roman Pantheon to 18th-century projects, Etlin examines various architectural techniques utilized to evoke a sense of the sublime, including those discussed by Burke and many that predate him. Common to these structures, built for disparate purposes and with varying techniques, is the intended virtuality of their design: they are constructed to make the spectator feel as if they are in a place or space different from their reality. The Pantheon’s dome is designed such that it “appeared to float above the modest attic” (p. 244, emphasis added), while “the asymmetrical and tilted arrangement of the stepped surfaces within the coffers…appear to detach themselves from the surface grid of the dome and…accelerate in movement away from the view below” (p. 245, emphasis added). The effect is even better achieved in Hagia Sophia, where much improved “visual sleights of hand” (p. 253) make the dome appear “somehow not to be raised in a firm manner, but to soar aloft to the peril of those who are there” (Procopius, quoted in Etlin, p. 252). In the Hall of Giants in Palazzo del Te, the undivided and muraled dome gives an illusion—or what might be called a simulated experience—of the painted mountains and gods “crashing down on giants and admiring visitors alike” (p. 255). 18th-century French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée sought to simulate the experience of being “annihilated” by the “inconceivable” vastness of nature, which he compares to that of “the balloonist who, floating through the sky and having lost sight of the objects on the earth, sees in all of nature only the sky,” within his immense yet spatially limited architectural projects (Boullée, quoted in Etlin, pp. 235–6).

Etlin’s analyses of these buildings also highlight the situatedness of the visitors within the structure and the architect’s resulting control over their position and movement as pivotal to the architectural sublime. The visitors to Boullée’s unbuilt Cenotaph for Newton would have been placed in the middle of a vast vault scattered with small sunlit holes so that they would feel “transported into the sky as if by enchantment and carried on the clouds into the immensity of space” (Boullée, quoted in Etlin, p. 236). The Pantheon’s floor patterns direct the visitor to follow them in a rotating movement, which intensifies “a dizzying and disorienting experience consonant to the sublime” (p. 246). The movement of visitors implied in these building designs suggests that they are not only surrounded by the environment but also made active participants in creating the sublime effect. It is perhaps the three-dimensional spatiality of architecture that makes immersion a prerequisite and participation possible, and the comparative limitations of two-dimensional visual art, that made Burke so optimistic about the former’s potential as a medium of the sublime and less so about the latter. ² Burke explains his skepticism of painting’s capacity to achieve sublimity in terms of its strictly representational nature. Painting, he argues, relies solely on the “images it presents…[that] are exactly similar to those in nature” to affect the spectator, which necessitates comprehensible and “clear representations” and severely undermines the medium’s capacity for the “dark, confused, uncertain” (p. 58). The clarity central to painting inevitably destroys any possibility of the sublime effect since nothing can be sublime “whilst we are able to perceive its bounds,” and “to see an object distinctly, and to perceive its bounds, is one and the same thing” (p. 58). For the same reason, he regards words as a far better suited medium for the sublime due to their superior capacity to maintain “the terrible uncertainty of the thing described” (p. 58). Nevertheless, Burke never questions the ability of concrete, finite, and clearly perceivable architectural structures to achieve sublime effects by imitating certain characteristics of nature. This suggests that the problem with paintings may not lie in their clear or imitative quality but in the extent of perceptual control they render to the spectator. An architectural structure encloses and immerses visitors, controlling their vision to produce intended effects, whereas a painting can but bare itself to the all-surveying eye of spectators in its entirety.

However, the distinction between three-dimensional and two-dimensional art forms is not always clear when it comes to the techniques of the sublime. Pictorial representation often plays an important role in achieving or enhancing the architectural sublime (Etlin, 2012). The composition of the lost dome of Domus Aurea is arranged in such a way that it enhances the illusion that the canopy is hovering without any support and the vertiginous feeling of looking upward; the architectural structure and the painting of the gods in the Hall of Giants functioned as an inseparable whole in creating the impression that the gods, as well as the structure itself, was about to fall upon the visitor. Painted depictions of mythological scenes and figures, both classical and Christian, were deployed to maximize the sense of awe. The integration of two-dimensional and three-dimensional media and the resulting sense of immersion is the principle of the panorama, which arose as a new form of entertainment in the late 18th century (Ibata, 2018). By surrounding the viewers with a continuous 360-degree painting, which usually depicted a magnificent landscape or an epic historical scene, the panorama sought to overcome the limits of conventional painting imposed by physical constraints and achieve a sense of the sublime through the unprecedented experience of “immersive spectatorship” (Ibata, p. 148). All these examples indicate that the link between immersion and the sublime, as well as the effectiveness of combining spatial and visual media to achieve the former, has long been understood and utilized.

Conversely, illusory techniques of spatial expansion and the resulting sense of immersion are both exploited by painters to achieve sublime effects in the 18th and 19th centuries. Artists such as Claude-Joseph Vernet, Théodore Géricault, and most notably J. M. W. Turner invoked the feeling of sublime in spectators by “transport[ing] the viewer out of their own time and space and into” the depicted scene or event (Riding, 2013, The Sea section, para. Three; see also Brown, 2013; Monks, 2010/2013). On the one hand, the fact that these painters’ works have been accepted as sublime by both contemporary viewers and later scholars appears to be a direct refutation of Burke’s belief that the nature of painting as a primarily representational medium limits its capacity to register the said feeling. However, the means deployed to make these pieces sublime—which includes not only the painterly techniques such as dynamic brushing styles, manipulation of light and texture, and compositions that suggest the viewer’s involvement in the scene painted, but also the control of the physical circumstances of viewing by adjusting the height of the painting—indicate that Burke’s observation of the limitations of his contemporary 2-dimensional visual art forms is valid despite his erroneous conclusion. The sublime in painting is achieved by dismantling the viewers “clear” knowledge of the depicted subject as explicated by Burke (1759/1998, p. 58) and generating an illusive experience of spatial immersion.

Innovative techniques and technologies involved in these architectural and visual art forms highlight elements of the technological sublime, since the feeling of awe they invoke is at least partially directed toward human crafts (Etlin, 2012, p. 250). Nevertheless, this should not be seen as a case of technological achievements replacing an “exhausted” nature as “new sources of popular wonder and amazement” (Nye, 1996, p. 8). On the contrary, the frequent incorporation of the visual imagery of natural environments and phenomena in these architectural and visual art forms evinces that these new techniques and technologies have long been utilized to blur the boundary between the natural and artificial sublime. The ever-innovative means of immersion were invented to create an effective simulation of a nature-inspired experience. As a medium that primarily relies on the simulation of space through audiovisual stimuli (Aarseth, 2000; Krzywinska, 2002), the video game is particularly well suited for continuing this legacy. Since video games are “organized around the traversal of space” that is predominantly experienced through “visual investigation” (Krzywinska, 2002, p. 217), the hybridization of the spatial and the visual becomes an indispensable element in the experience of the medium. This quality is inseparable from the technology of immersion, which is often seen as the defining characteristic of the video game, and makes it an appropriate medium for creating sublime effects.

The Immersive Sublime of ABZÛ

ABZÛ is an exploration game that lets the player travel through three-dimensionally rendered undersea environments from the first-person perspective. Upon its release in 2016, the game received nearly unanimous praise for its aesthetic style, achieving both critical acclaim and commercial success. Although the game was often described as “beautiful” (Perry, 2016), a quality Burke saw incompatible with the sublime, a closer inspection reveals that the players’ experiences are closer to the sublime: they speak of a sense of “wonder” (Campbell, 2015), “awe” (Meitzler, 2016), and experience of being reduced to “silence just with my mouth open” (RuRu92). Some also pointed out that the “beauty” of the game was tinged with terror (Priestman, 2015), which was seen as complementary to the gaming experience. Matt Nava, the art director of ABZÛ, himself noted in an interview his desire for the game to convey the “awe” and “majesty” of the sea (Newton, 2015). Indeed, the game was often literally described as “sublime” (Perry, 2016; Watts, 2017), although usually in a sense much looser than defined by Burke and Kant and adopted by later scholars.

ABZÛ partly achieves this effect by presenting a series of individual objects, settings, and moments that evoke the sense of the sublime in varying ways, including mysterious ruins of an ancient and possibly alien civilization, dimly lit and sinister landscapes, and awe-inspiring encounters with aquatic megafauna. However, its invocation of the sublime primarily relies on the overall setting of the submarine environment. In this sense, ABZÛ belongs to the long tradition of the aquatic sublime that can be traced back to the inception of the concept by Pseudo-Longinus and was later established by Romantic artists and writers such as Turner, Vernet, Byron, and Poe (Riding, 2013). Monks (2010/2013) argues that the sublime in Turner’s paintings is achieved not only by the depiction of the visible surface of the water but also by the implied yet undepicted depth underneath: the seascape in his works is an ambiguous site between “surface and depth,” or “flotation and the possibility of descent,” which transforms the viewing experience of the spectator from distanced and knowing observation to embodied and overwhelming immersion (para. 9). If so, inviting the viewer into the underwater world in an immersive traveling experience may be a logical next step.

In a way reminiscent of painted domes in Etlin’s research, ABZÛ seeks to engender an experience of the sublime through the interworking of a certain thematic idea, visual representation, and spatial arrangement. The game’s commercial success and favorable reviews prove that many players sustained a connection between the world’s actual ocean and its game representation, as well as the resulting feeling of awe and wonder throughout their gameplay.

However, this success is surprising for two reasons. First, the sublime effect produced by video games is often seen as unsustainable due to either the inherent limits of the human-made program, which inevitably reveals itself (Martin, 2011), or the interactive nature of the video game medium, which eventually directs the player’s attention away from an aesthetic experience or transforms the object of aesthetic appreciation into either utilitarian exploitation or masterful subjugation (Atkinson & Parsayi, 2020). Second, ABZÛ makes no attempt at offering a realistic simulacrum of exploring the vast underwater environment in either its gameplay or map size. Contrary to the ideas of vastness and unboundedness that the real-world ocean evokes, ABZÛ’s map and gameplay options are surprisingly limited, not only when compared to other underwater-themed games but also by the standards of contemporary video games in general. The debut work of a newly launched independent development company, ABZÛ is a small game composed of countable areas of manageable size to be explored in a strictly linear manner. The average play time is a mere 3–4 hours, and the range of allowed actions is restricted to swimming around, solving a few rudimentary puzzles, engaging in optional interactions with some fish and objects, and meditating on the surrounding sea life. If the vastness of the playable environments in open-world games and the complexity of narratives in hypertext fictions create the illusion of unlimitedness (O’Sullivan, 2017), there is no room for such in ABZÛ.

However, as specified by Burke, the feeling of the sublime does not necessarily correspond to the spectator’s prior knowledge. The average spectator is clearly aware that “[t]here are scarce any things which can become the objects of our senses that are really, and in their own nature infinite,” but the impression of infinity resulting from the inability “to perceive the bounds” is sufficient to produce “the most genuine effect” of the sublime (p. 67). This is the principle on which Etlin’s architectural examples and many video game environments, including that of ABZÛ, function. ABZÛ creates a simulated experience of navigating through a part of the inconceivably vast and mysterious ocean through a moderately sized map that the players clearly understand to be artificially designed. Crucial to this process is the player’s immersive and proactive engagement with in-game environments and lifeforms. This engagement is made possible through the combination of the clever design of the game’s three-dimensional virtual space and the confined range of perception characteristic of first-person games. Although space functions as a major constituent of the player’s experience in all types of computer games (Günzel, 2008), the three-dimensional game space provides a uniquely affective way of interacting with a fictional world (Nitsche, 2008). Shaw and Warf (2009) argue that three-dimensional games make “[o]n-screen events appear more ‘immanent’ to the player than…in two-dimensional games” (p. 1336) because it endows the game designer with greater control over what the player can or cannot see (p. 1339). Meanwhile, the first-person perspective renders the player’s experience of the game environment “far more experiential” (p. 1339, emphasis in original) as all sensory and physical interactions between the player and the object are experienced from the perspective of the avatar, thereby reflecting its relative position and size. Combined, these two features create a singularly immersive and embodied experience, maximizing the “sense of extended embodiment” in a virtual space (Gregersen & Grodal, 2008, p. 67) and amplifying the emotional and physiological effects of the game environment on the player.

ABZÛ utilizes the limited vision and subjective perception of the first-person perspective in a three-dimensional space to its fullest by making the player accesses the environment through the virtual body of the avatar. Therefore, the player is constantly led to pay more attention to immediate movements and sensory stimuli than their context within the entire game environment. The emphasis is on the immediately perceivable surroundings rather than the deduced entirety of the space. The scale of objects is similarly perceived relative to the avatar and the screen rather than their actual size. As a result, the player’s impression is predominantly shaped by the landscape and lifeforms displayed on the screen as the player progressively observes and navigates through them rather than relying on a rational assessment of the space as a whole. The effect is enhanced by the absence of a map or any other way to survey the overall layout of the area, which allows for immersive perception and movement through the avatar as the only way to experience the game environment.

Indeed, the playing experience of ABZÛ is characterized by immediate emotional responses to sensory stimuli overpowering a more generalized assessment of the setting as a whole. Shortly after the beginning of the game, the player leaves the first area through a small cave to arrive at a rocky region where the vertical and irregular terrain, the lack of light, and the bluish hue create an ominous atmosphere. The effect is amplified by its striking contrast to the pleasant colorfulness of the previous area, which is reflected in the dramatic change in background music, and the sight of a shark that greets the player upon arrival and disappears into a dense kelp forest. However, a brief survey reveals that this area is very small in scale and simple to navigate, functioning merely as a passage to the next stage. Nevertheless, this realization does not entirely negate the initial impression, partly because the player is likely to leave the place before it becomes familiar and unintimidating. Later, the player’s avatar is placed in the midst of vast water without visible surface, bottom, or peripheral boundary. The resulting sense of being suspended in the watery void that overpowers the player at the arrival is not eliminated even after the discovery that the impression of boundless space is an illusion and that the range of the player’s movement is quite limited. In a similar but slightly different vein, the knowledge that the undersea ruins were designed by a human programmer a few years ago does not prevent the feeling of awe and mystery that they instill in the player with their half-demolished state and strange murals suggestive of a long-forgotten alien civilization.

The feeling of wonder is also generated and sustained by the game’s painstaking representation of the complex and manifold ecosystems and topographies of the submarine environment. Inspired by the developer’s real-life experience of scuba diving, ABZÛ seeks to recreate the dynamicity and diversity of the marine environment (Nava, 2017). The game is populated by more than 200 species of fish, besides other forms of marine life, inhabiting areas modeled after their own habitats. During gameplay, the screen often teems with countless species of fish, each following their own cycle of movement and behavior that range from swimming to devouring one another. Viewed through the first-person perspective of the player in movement with its limited vision and sense of immediacy, the ever-dynamic biome of ABZÛ generates a sort of sensory overload, reminding the player of the limits of human perception. The immediate experience of being sensorially overwhelmed compensates for the simplified visual design and inevitably a limited number of organisms.

The elaborately designed spaces through which the player must navigate also serve to sustain a sense of unfamiliarity and magnitude of the setting by complicating the avatar’s movement and emphasizing the limitations of the player’s vision. The view is always compromised by semitransparent seawater of varying degrees of clarity and is obstructed by any combination of fish and sea plants, curiously shaped rock formations, ancient submerged structures, and a shortage of light. This makes the player’s movement a process of continuously discovering that which has hitherto been unobserved. Meanwhile, the sound design constantly suggests a large space beyond the player’s present scope of observation. Consequently, most areas give an impression of inaccessibility and unknowability upon the player’s entrance, which is retained to some extent even after the player has traversed them more than once. The drastic differences in landscapes and biomes among areas also renew the feeling of intimidating alienness and, simultaneously, confound the player’s sense of space by instilling a sense of great distance between connected areas. ABZÛ’s map is composed of multiple strictly divided areas connected by a linear route, never allowing the player to view two or more areas simultaneously. That the player’s perception is embedded in the game space makes it impossible to survey each area in its entirety and thus retains a sense of the immensity of the ocean largely independent of—and thus undisturbed by—the limitedness of the playable areas.

The short analysis above reveals that the player’s sense of immersion and active engagement with the game environment is central to generating the feeling of the sublime. In ABZÛ, the limitations in playing time and in the range of actions also contribute to enhancing and sustaining the feeling of awe and wonder; the strict constraints on the player’s actions and their effects give the impression that the environment and surrounding life forms are not subject to the player’s actions but exist independently. Similarly, the minimal amount of required action encourages the player to move forward before the initial sense of wonder and excitement is exhausted. This suggests a rather ambiguous relationship between interactivity and sublimity in ABZÛ. On the one hand, the unusual restrictions on interactivity help generate and sustain the feeling of the sublime. On the other hand, the reliance of the sublime effect on player-initiated movement also reveals the centrality of interactivity. Furthermore, it could be questioned whether the level of interactivity should be measured by the amount of required action. As controversial and ambiguous as its definition is, if interactivity is inseparable from the player’s agency, then the freedom of the player to choose whether or not to be active cannot be antithetical to the notion of interactivity.

Conclusion

The centrality of interactivity and immersion in the video game experience makes the medium unsuitable for many of the modes and concepts of aesthetic appreciation that have been developed for static art forms such as literature and painting. The history of video game studies has been shaped by this specificity of the medium, beginning with the ludologist rejection of narrative-centered approaches to the more recent interest in the unique ways in which video games trigger, hinder, or reconfigure emotional or cognitive responses. However, while the unique qualities of the medium and the unprecedented experiences it provides must be acknowledged and thoroughly examined, it must also be remembered that the video game, like any medium that was “new” at a certain point, is embedded in a long and complicated media history. This history has fundamentally shaped the medium’s course of development and the ways in which the player experiences it (Bolter & Grusin, 1999). In this context, examining the players’ emotional and aesthetic experiences that do not always correspond with the medium’s traditional categorization and historical periodization, as is the case with the sublime, and the developers’ attempts to engender it may contribute to a better understanding of the complex interworking of continuity and revision between old and new media technologies. Analyzing the ways in which ABZÛ generates the feeling of the sublime reveals the centrality of spatial perception and movement in three-dimensional first-person video games that affords a strong resemblance to architecture. At the same time, it also highlights the inherent connection between immersion and the sublime present in Burke’s theory and its practical applications.

The question remains whether a high level of interactivity hinders or diminishes the feeling of the sublime. Since ABZÛ heavily relies on the player’s movement through a given environment, a certain level of interactivity is indispensable in generating the sublime. However, the fact that the range of actions allowed in this game is extremely limited by the general standards of video games, and the possibility that this limited interactivity may contribute to sustaining the player’s sense of the sublime, makes it unclear whether sublime effects can be achieved in similar ways in more action-oriented genres. Nevertheless, it should be noted that players of action-oriented games such as Bloodborne (Sony Computer Entertainment, 2015) and Hyper Light Drifter (Heart Machine, 2016) do express an aesthetic appreciation of fearful objects that can be most accurately described as the sublime. The mechanisms underlying this psychological process are subject to still-developing research to which this article and Vella’s theory of the ludic sublime contribute.

Despite the aforementioned limitations, examining the roles of immersion, interactivity, and virtuality in the philosophical and practical traditions of the sublime and the ways in which video games like ABZÛ inherit and revise them reveals the reciprocal relationship between aesthetic ideas and technological developments. Far from destroying the previously available aesthetic values, new media such as video games expand the ways in which they are incorporated and experienced. This should be seen not as a unique characteristic of digital media but as a recent addition to a long and interlinked history of technology and aesthetics. In this context, the immersive sublime of video games marks a new development in the continuous history of the technology of the sublime.