Landscape and gamescape in Dwarf Fortress

“This paper argues that the computer game Dwarf Fortress (Bay 12, 2006-) thematizes a number of tensions around spatiotemporal presence by making these tensions available for playful interaction. Specifically, the game foregrounds tensions between being in the world and the world as object and between presence as a leftover of the past and as an orientation toward the future. These tensions can be clarified by thinking of a player’s engagement with the game as a landscape of sorts, what will be termed here a gamescape. The term is employed to hold together in tension the various spatialities that exist in relation to the game. It is suggested that this strategy can make use of phenomenological approaches to landscape to think through the ways in which the game thematizes presence.