ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we explore the relationship between defamiliarization and the player’s aesthetic experience, which we see as the starting point for our formalist videogame analysis. We begin by clarifying what we mean by “player experience,” and then discuss how, from a formalist perspective, this experience relates to automatization and defamiliarization (or foregrounding). From this, we draw on empirical studies of literature to consider how players exert effort to refamiliarize and thereby make sense of these foregrounded elements of a work by making connections both within and beyond the work. This process of sense-making is grounded in the form of the work, within a particular play context. It is this aesthetic experience that provides the starting point for our formalist videogame analysis.
