Introduction

Complex code and advanced algorithms are traversing nearly every part of our mediatized everyday life: automotive workshops do not only replace spare parts but run software to detect programme errors; search engines are not only useful sources of knowledge but evaluate and exploit every query; today's virtual assistants are smart conversation partners with a personality instead of simple programmes with very limited dialogue options. Therefore, research on algorithmic systems has become essential for understanding the world we are living and acting in. But code as part of a smartphone that accompanies us every second, longing for gaze and touch, and causes anxieties when untraceable, evoke different affective responses than code implemented in objects that demand little or no interaction. Always implemented in a processing machine that we encounter, there is no such thing as pure code without matter. This also applies to video games, which are not only simple programmes but programmes running on platforms with specific controls, captivating our senses with their multifaceted output. Alexander Galloway (2006) describes video games as an action-based medium consisting of machine and operator actions, both equally important for the gaming experience: ‘People move their hands, bodies, eyes, and mouths when they play video games. But machines also act. They act in response to player actions as well as independently of them’ (p 4). The human encounter with game hardware and software takes place on eye level instead of being controlled or dominated by the operator input: ‘Humans do not simply manipulate or control machines, data, and networks any more than machines, data, and networks simply manipulate or control us’ (Paasonen et al, 2015:2).

This change of perspective has brought algorithms more and more into the focus of research. Nevertheless, the machinic act in form of processing algorithms should not be overstated in the experience with video games. In her book Playing with Feelings, Aubrey Anable (2018) criticizes the current fetishization of code in combination with the simultaneous neglection of the audiovisual output and haptic quality, that stimulates our senses, in game studies. Her critique is a reaction to the formalist approach of proceduralism which privileges strategically utilized code and computational architecture over its actual realization through hardware coming together with a sensitive and active subject. This transforms the player into a mere button-pushing entity, following the predefined interaction system of the game designer.