Magdalena Leichter

While seemingly functioning as a throwaway line the protagonist Geralt mutters to himself in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the above-cited quote also serves as an example of how diverse the approach to atmospheres in digital games can be:Primarily, the line acts as a re-centering element, immersing players in the game's world, reminding them that Geralt feels the atmosphere around him. The line also verbalizes that the game's intradiegetic atmosphere in the sense of meteorological phenomena surrounding and influencing gameplay and story. Additionally, the line adds to the atmosphere as Stimmung,  since it further roots the game in traditional Slavic folklore. Here, as a Reddit user points out, the howling wind would be interpreted as a sign of bad luck and change – two aspects adding to the game's global themes. In this contribution, I will focus on 'game-atmospheres' as remediated meteorological phenomena. My thesis is that, as a hybrid art form, digital games draw from concepts of atmospheres found in other media formats such as literature or films and the players' tacit knowledge about meteorological phenomena and their influence on cultural and societal aspects. Based on these observations, I intend to draft a concept for contextualizing different connotations for and uses of 'atmospheres' as meteorological phenomena in digital games. Although they are often viewed as mere backgrounds or accompaniments, I want to bring them to the foreground and, by taking an intermedial approach, show the atmosphere's role in producing realism, context, meaning, and Stimmung in digital games.