‘Everything Is True’: Urban Gothic Meets the Chthulucene in Multiplayer Online Game, The Secret World

Abstract

This chapter argues that a new ludic aesthetic has emerged within multiplayer online games enabled by new technological capabilities that produce edgy and contemporary urban Gothic in the Chthulucene. These games relocate screen action to contemporary urban environments in realistically rendered and familiar worlds based on real-life cities. Krzywinska reports on the vertiginous nature of the weird and the psychoactive blend of the urban Gothic and myth. She suggests that this melding of the real with the gaming persona and the very unreal nature of the actual game cultivates a sense of unease and uncertainty that has moved the gaming experience on to something new. Players may gain physical mastery over the game’s interface but in the context of this weird and urban context where factions, histories and interpretations constantly slide, there is forever a spiralling sense of paranoia and uncertainty that overturns the usual certainties and predictabilities found in multiplayer games.