At least momentarily, making contact with video games requires dwelling on (rarely just one) threshold. Intro sequences, tutorials, character editors, control schemes or instruction manuals, tech demos, and input devices make up a small sample of such paratextual zones of contact. But what happens on the threshold? In a very basic sense: processes of mediation as well as processes of relationing. On the threshold, the rules of a game are negotiated, and narrative and gameplay logics are established; games present as short films, doll houses, or assembly kits; expectations and fantasies fueled; positions stabilized or undermined. Thresholds open spaces for and delimit possibility at the same time.

My dissertation project’s starting point is the threshold metaphor Gérard Genette uses to circumscribe paratexts. As a figure of thought, the threshold undermines binary differentiations such as inside vs. outside or game vs. non-game. The threshold makes visible narrative, gameplay, production and distribution logics – logics which rarely keep to the confines of singular media, but rather have to be understood in a wider landscape of media.

Laura Laabs is a research assistant at the Offenbach University of Art and Design and, as of the winter semester 25/26, at the University of Freiburg. Her current work focuses on practices and body techniques of computer game play: some of the things she writes and plays with in her dissertation include zippers, cardboard boxes, faces, carrier bags, weather maps, and cowboy mailmen. She teaches classes in media theory (Offenbach) and media cultural studies (Freiburg) and is an editorial member with the German game studies journal Paidia. From 2020 to 2023, Laura Laabs was a member of the research training program.