Looking for the Gamic Gaze: Desire, Fantasy, and Enjoyment in Gorogoa

Abstract

It seems intuitive to conflate the gamic gaze with the player’s act of looking. To do so, however, would be to inherit from the first wave of psychoanalytic screen theory a misleading presupposition that the gaze is synonymous with the look. Taking influence from new Lacanian film theorists such as Joan Copjec and Todd McGowan, this article contends that the gamic gaze is an object in the visual field of play that disrupts the mastery of the player’s look. I develop this argument through an analysis of the 2017 videogame Gorogoa. By confronting the player with the gaze, Gorogoa reveals that the jouissance (enjoyment) of videogame play consists in the player’s unconscious drive to fail rather than their conscious wish for pleasure or mastery. To borrow terminology from Copjec, the gamic gaze marks the point of the player’s culpability—rather than visibility—in the visual field of play.