The rule remains the same: all articles in this journal are written by students in the UTBM’s philosophy courses—courses known as “PH,” hence the title ACID! But the lineup is changing in the world of ACID this year, as students from the “Film Theory / Video Game Theory” course are joining the lineup in place of “Philosophy and Computer Science.”
Half of the articles offer analyses of science fiction works using the method developed by mathematician Yannick Rochat for visualizing character networks. Each analysis is therefore accompanied by a social graph that helps decode the work. The goal is to dissect these works to extract their depictions of science, technology, and politics in science fiction. A major section of the table of contents is thus devoted to the figure of the scientist, in works as diverse as *Rick and Morty* and *Don’t Look Up!*
The other half of the articles are based on research into video games. The range is more diverse. Some focus on practices—e-sports, GeoGuessr, Minecraft Edu—while others explore issues in game design—what is freedom in video games? The entire structure of the table of contents was designed to draw parallels between the analysis of science fiction and video games. This is made easier by the fact that several of the works analyzed using the graphs are video games or video game adaptations. Several articles thus address the question: How do you tell stories in video games? What happens when a video game is reinterpreted as a TV series, as is the case with *League of Legends* and the series *Arcane*? The case of the game *BioShock* allows us to address the question of the avatar’s unique role in video game narratives: can the avatar function as a character? Similarly, the article on the German series *Dark* explores the “treasure hunt” genre, which can draw viewers into a traditional audiovisual narrative. There was already an element of gameplay in crime thrillers!
As with every issue, the cover pays homage to hacker magazines and the tech culture of the 1970s and 1980s. This year’s cover features the American magazine *Byte*, launched in 1975 by communities of hobbyists who were building the first personal computers from spare parts in their garages. The 1982 cover reminds us that the question of the computer’s role in artistic creation was already a major topic in the field of computing, long before today’s Dall-E and ChatGPT.
Mathieu TRICLOT
