ABSTRACT
While metareference has been part of videogames for decades, we are currently witnessing the emergence of new and often medium-specific forms across videogame genres. From Spec Ops: The Line (2012) to Detroit: Become Human (2018), and from The Stanley Parable (2013) to There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension (2020), AAA and especially indie games have been using not only their multimodal surface layer of representation, but also rules, mechanics, interfaces, and even the very platform on which they run to exhibit their own artifice. The first Chapter introduces the phenomenon under investigation and outlines the main aims and trajectory of this book. In addition, it zooms in on the communicative situation in videogames, considering how the gameworld, the game system, the operating system, and the hardware shape the forms and functions of metareference players encounter in them.
