Electronic games are attracting a growing non-player audience, with many“cloud gamers” watching game footage as if it were cinematic work. From the audience’s perspective, the concept of “remediation”helps to analyze the relationship between games and imagery. This process of remediation inevitably involves an absorption of traditional viewing habits. The social driver for this phenomenon is the remediation of games by digital interfaces and internet technologies, which emphasize user-driven input and integrate both human-machine and human-human interactions. However, the transformative social potential of this process has been diluted by the prevalent overuse of interactivity, rooted in an imbalance between dialogic and discursive media. To explore potential solutions, it is necessary to reconsider the dialectical relationship between viewing and playing, starting with an acknowledgment of“cloud gamers”and a reinterpretation of media shifts in contemporary popular culture.

game imagery, remediation, “cloud gamers”, overuse of interactivity