A Hypnotic Digital Artefact

Abstract: This essay investigates what may constitute a hypnotic digital artefact from a design standpoint. This essay is meant to help designers who want to create hypnotic digital artefacts in the shape of a game, or researchers who wants to further this field. With a case study analysing the game Cultist Simulator, this essay observes applications from this essay’s frameworks: NLP, Procedural Rhetorics, Flow, Trance, and Ericksonian Hypnosis. The case study serves to demonstrate how a larger scale reflection of intrinsic cross over points between hypnosis and the video game medium may take place within state-of-the-art discourse. This essay fulfils its design-aid purpose by charting factors that can be put in place to facilitate a trance and a hypnosis in a game, in a design table summarising design methods discussed. The means that may put a player’s mind in abeyance are posited here regarding how this may influence the game experience, including induction techniques, where suggestions are provided in how these might translate to a game format. Through its frameworks and case study, hypnotic content generation is put in focus, where this essay finds that games utilising metaphors and depicting inner spaces carry significance in this pursuit. It also finds that mirroring communication of the unconscious, such as adhering to rules of a dream state, and acknowledging the unconscious’ uses and capacities, has potential in this pursuit. Importantly, the essay includes a discussion on Cultist Simulator’s decadent aesthetics and its role in leading a player towards an alternate state of consciousness.