Katja Aller

University of Cologne

Katja Aller is a PhD candidate in Media Studies at Cologne University. She has recently started to work on her dissertation about “The Narrative Capacities of Spaces and Objects in Walking Simulator Games” and is primarily interested in the connections and relationships between narrative(s) and the material world. Her research interests include (transmedial) Narratology, Theory of Space, New Materialism and Object Studies. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature as well as a joint master’s degree (M.A./MLitt) in German and Comparative Literature from the University of Bonn (Germany) and the University of St Andrews (Scotland).

As a former literature scholar, she has a soft spot for narrative-heavy games and so-called walking simulators – a genre she has been exploring for several years now. A bachelor thesis on “The Epic in New Media – The Motif of the Hero’s Journey in Homer’s Odyssee and thatgamecompany’s Journey” (2017) reinforced her interest in the narratological analysis of digital games. In 2016, she gave a seminar on “The Island as Psycho-Geographical Space in Dear Esther” at Bonn University. Her master thesis “A Comparative Approach to Magical Realist Object Narratives in Gabriel García
Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Giant Sparrow’s What Remains of Edith Finch“ (2019) laid the groundwork for her current PhD project.

All Sessions by Katja Aller

  • 4. Young Academcs Workshop

    July 7 - Open only for Participants

  • 11:35  - 11:55
    With a focus on gamespaces, avatars, and the player's point of view, this paper (WIP) explores the spatial atmosphere of „the uncanny“ in walking simulator games. During my past research I came across many well known walking simulator games and noticed that most of them (such as Gone Home, Dear Esther, or What Remains of Edith Finch) share the trait of an eerie mood. In my paper I want to show why this “ubiquity” of uncanny elements is more than just personal perception and how walking simulators reproduce atmospheres of the uncanny through genre specific characteristics. The definition of the uncanny used in this paper is mainly based on the works of Freud, Jentsch, Fuchs, Heidegger, and Böhme.  Exploration of the gamespace is a main characteristic of the walking simulator. Many walking sims use architecture and objects to (re)produce the uncanny, a particular form of spatial atmosphere. Uncanny spaces are characterised by a certain ambiguity that arises when the familiar becomes strange. Das Heimliche becomes das Unheimliche. Both Gone Home and Edith Finch, for example, use domestic settings in which normality and alienation merge into a state of ambiguity. In both games, the protagonist returns to her family home whereby she experiences the return “[zum] Altbekannten, Längstvertraute[n]”. There, Freud locates the roots of the uncanny. The interaction between player and the digital figure of the avatar reflects another feature of the uncanny: the player controlled entity is neither dead nor alive which, according to Jentsch, is an uncanny state.  Most walking simulators use first person perspective. Through this perspective, the player's sense of peripheral vision is removed. In real life, the resulting 'tunnel vision' usually occurs when the body senses fear or distress. The genre-typical POV thus adds to the uneasy atmosphere.
    Where
    Zoom

  • 14:00  - 15:30
    20-30 min for each paper. Group A: Björn, Vadim, Felipe, Miruna, Su-Jin Group B: Katja, Jonathan, Anh-Thu, Magdalena, Felix, Jimena
    Where
    Zoom




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Katja Aller