Shooting a metastable object: targeting as trigger for the actor-network in the open-world videogames

Targeting, to aim a crosshair at an object, is the most basic skill for a gamer to survive from enemies, solve puzzles, and make a story unfolded in videogames. As the trigger for the game objects’ reciprocal operations, this simple action functions to individuate the objects kept in their abstract initial state into the concrete functional units participating in a topological network operational in a videogame to achieve the gamer’s goal. In today’s open-world games, these objects disclose their agencies through the auras perceivable when the player characters use certain magical skills and technological aids. In this genre, a gamer’s narrative and ludic experiences, all triggered by one’s performance to target at the objects on the human side of the interface, are translated, on the machinic side, into the topological transformations of the objects’ network. As an experiment for a nonhuman turn in videogame studies, this essay examines how this topological network behind an open-world mobilizes the ludic and narrative behaviors of gamers for its never-ending transformation.