Screenshots as Photography in Gamescapes: An Annotated Psychogeography of Imaginary Places

Paper in proceeding, 2023

Travel is an integral part of our lives, whether for work or leisure. Since the advent of photography, we have documented our journeys, often sharing the images with friends and family to reflect upon the experience, tell stories, or invite commentary. We often lose ourselves in digital media - film, documentary and games - particularly during times when physical travel is unavailable. In this pictorial, we explore the travels of a single player through hundreds of games, presenting annotated game screenshots as photo-documentary through gamescapes, and as a form of the New Games Journalism. We present a New Games Travelogue traversing and formulating the psychogeography of games as imaginary places, and through this process, we unveil transdisciplinary tensions in negotiating and perceiving the importance of visual knowledge in games research, encouraging other researchers to join us in this practice.