The Time Machine and the Voodoo Doll: Exploring Customized Computer Game Controllers and Their Influence on the Experience of Play

This paper turns attention towards an overlooked area of research: the customized computer game controller and its influence on the experience of play. Through two experimental design cases of customized game controllers, a time machine and a voodoo doll, we challenge the present theoretical assumptions inherently at play about game controllers: the Heideggerian binary paradigm where computer game controllers are either “visible” or “invisible’’. Moving beyond this philosophical paradigm, we propose a fresh new theoretical take where customized controllers situate themselves in a third position of being simultaneously “visible” and “invisible”. This third position, we discovered, transformed the game controllers into physical game objects. Thus, the customized game controllers belonged to the game world and simultaneously acted as traditional controllers. During play the customized computer game controllers managed to draw attention to themselves without “breaking” immersion. Consequently, the customized game controllers challenged the dominant thinking about game controllers together with the theoretical backdrop on which the predominant conceptions of immersion rest. Following, we challenge the theoretical conditions upon which the present understandings of immersion are erected. Furthermore, we will advance a revitalized comprehension of the and between the player, the game controller, and the game world.