Jamming Econo: The Phenomenon of Perspectival Shifts in Indie Video Games

By their nature, video games create perspectival relationships between the game space, with its mechanics,characters, etc. and their players. Perspectival mechanics in games like Monument Valley andFez require one to simultaneously transform the environment, the objects in the environment, and one'segocentric reference frames, illustrating the complex nature intrinsic to video game spaces. The authorsseek to investigate the ways perspectival mechanics in video games are both created and experiencedusing postphenomenological inquiry. This investigation is situated within the indie genre of games inparticular, a context where these mechanics are intentionally being explored. In addition, this chapterdraws parallels between indie games and indie music, contexts where boundary pushing is the norm. Inaddition to explicating the phenomenon of perspectival shifts in indie games, the authors review researchrelated to spatial thinking, conjecturing affordances of indie games as geometric gifts, possibly wellpositioned to support spatial thinking.