ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 draws on aesthetic philosophy and explores one of our central concepts, the ludic sublime. The chapter starts with a discussion about how transgressive games position themselves with respect to ideas of the avant-garde and kitsch, and suggest that transgressive game aesthetic can be seen as avant-garde in situations when it is able to create ludic dysphoria. Building on the argument that transgressive game aesthetics is an emotional aesthetic, we show that such games challenge Kant’s ideal disinterested mode of aesthetic appreciation. Redirecting our attention toward classical and modern theories of the sublime spanning from Kant to modern concepts relating to the idea of the technological sublime, we expand Daniel Vella’s concept of the ludic sublime and revisit the experiences of our player respondents to formulate a theory of sublime experiences with transgressive aesthetics in games.
