This video essay explores the spatio-temporal liminality of games. Non-diegetic gameplay elements such as pausing and saving operate outside game worlds but are integral to them because they give players opportunities to plan and rest. In the survival-horror games, Darkwood and Signalis, these opportunities become semi-diegetic, cultivating player safety through liminal “safe states”: moments and spaces that afford interludes during fear-inducing gameplay.
In Darkwood, daybreak signals the safe state. Diegetic time does not proceed until the player character leaves the safety of their shelter, providing players with an uneasy respite to prepare for the next day. The shelter cultivates a temporary stillness–a break in the flow of time that caters to player comfort. In Signalis, safe states are scattered across the map yet serve a function like Darkwood’s daybreak. Both games demonstrate how safe states enforce active forms of recuperation distinct from the passive inaction of non-diegetic pauses.
Drawing on Mark J.P. Wolf’s theories of spatio-temporality and Darshana Jayemanne’s notion of synchrony in games, we argue that the uneasy security found in safe states is a form of “synchronic liminality.” This concept blends synchrony–the unifying elements of playthroughs that transcend players’ individual experiences–with the fleeting experience of liminality to define the paradoxical stability of safe states. These safe states matter to the design and study of games as they use semi-diegetic respites to not only maintain a balance between players and player-characters but also bridge their stories.
is a Media Studies MA student in the Department of Communication at Concordia University. Claire is interested in the relationships between video games and their players. She is a research assistant for the PPPProject and a member of the Concordia Technoculture, Arts, and Games lab, the Machine Agencies lab, and the mLab. She is a co-author of “Interactive Inspirations: The Case for Incorporating Joy and Play in Open Social Scholarship.” Her master’s thesis, “Games as the Other: Interventional Games as a Venue for Player Introspection,” explores how games use the fourth wall break to reject the transparency of their mediation and establish themselves as their own agents. This research is supported by SSHRC funding.
is an English MA student in the Department of English at Concordia University. A member of the Concordia Technoculture, Arts, and Games lab, her primary interest lies in the representation of monstrous figures–particularly monstrous women–across various mediums and time periods, especially so in epic heroic poetry and modern video games. Her MA thesis focuses on the intersection between grief and care in medieval heroic literature such as Beowulf and The Volsunga, arguing that grief is the logical outcome when the chain of care is broken.