Conor Spence

The objects we encounter in platformised video games like Destiny 2 pose a challenge to philosophical theorisations of the object. For platformised video game objects, their phenomenological position is not spatio-temporally contiguous with the underlying systems leading to their emergence on-screen. While philosophers and media theorists tend to view such objects as simulations, fictions, or data objects that appear within game spaces, comparatively little thought has been given to the ontology of such objects. In this paper I develop an emergentist approach that emphasises the embeddedness of these objects within platform-architectures. I argue that these objects should be viewed as emergent objects that are ontologically contingent on the interrelations occurring between different components of the platform-assemblage yet separate to them.