Thanatogaming: Death, Videogames, and the Biopolitical State (original) (raw)

A Hero's Death: Human Mortality and Video Games

Death is a nearly ubiquitous feature of video games. It is used most commonly as a technique to limit play sessions (players have a limited number of “lives” before the game is over), as a teaching tool (by dying repeatedly, the player masters the game), and as a punitive mechanic (progress is lost upon death). But simulated ludic deaths bear little resemblance to real world death. This paper investigates the representation of mortality in video games and its relationship to the human impulse of death denial as described by the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, and further developed in the field of social psychology as Terror Management Theory (TMT). The method of “research-play” was used with the video game Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014) as material for further inquiry. A condensed summary of The Denial of Death (Becker, 1973) is provided.

Oh No, I'm Dead! ... Again. Death as a Crossroad Where Different Pathways in the Study of Video Games Converge

2011

This thesis will approach death in video games as a crossroad where different pathways in the study of games converge. Death, be that of the avatar or of a non player character, is a crucial part of video game design and an integral part of the experience of play. As such this text will investigate the nature of death in video games. This text starts with a short historical exploration of death and how its mechanics have changed and evolved over time. Then I will examine the fundamental role that death plays within the design of the game mechanics, how it influences the design of the virtual world, and the way time works. Further I will show how death influences the make-believe and the narrative elements of video games, and the ways game designers include it in the plots of their games and how it influences players’ experiences. Moreover I investigate the quasi obsessive relationship death has with video games, and why it is so present in our minds. I will also examine the relationship between player and avatar, and how the ever lurking presence of death influences it. Additionally, I consider how the potential for avatar death can bring pleasure to the activity of play. Finally, I consider the differences between playing and narrating the experience of play, and how the multiple deaths of the avatar tend to be ignored in this situation.

Death in Games

Play/Write Student Journal Vol.1, 2022

The journal has been formed in 2021 as an effort of students of the Game Studies and Engineering master’s program at the Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt, Austria. It constitutes part of the critical outlet of the student-run Klagenfurt Critical Game Lab. Our student journal offers the opportunity to both review and publish student’s written works in the field of Game Studies. Our aim is to bring together different perspectives on topics in Game Studies from people with differing (scholarly) backgrounds on a student level, to foster skills of critical analysis and writing, and to promote the visibility of students who aim to find their footing in Game Studies.

Wooden Reels and the Maintenance of Virtual Life: Gaming and the Death Drive in a Digital Age

In his 1996 essay “Zen and the Art of Mario Maintenance: Cycles of Death and Rebirth in Video Games and Children’s Subliterature,” Gary Westfahl explores the present-day compulsion to repeat the garish experience of simulated death with reference to what has become a familiar moniker in the videogame industry. Examining the drive to undertake feats of death defiance in games like Super Mario Bros., Westfahl contends that the more often one’s avatar dies, “the better the player becomes; in a true Zen paradox, players must repeatedly kill their Marios in order to better maintain their lives in future games” (213). What this says about the digital gaming experience—particularly those games that function with some semblance to the proverbial “three lives” model—is that the drive to master these virtual worlds is tied to the symbolic experience of death, and that one dies (emulatively) so that one may live. Drawing on Sigmund Freud’s essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, my paper explores how the enjoyment derived from symbolically mastering un-pleasure via newer forms of virtual media reveals that infantile engagement with the death drive is alive and thriving in modern digital gaming experiences.

Death, Fabulation, and Virtual Reality Gaming

Gamevironments, 2019

There are few things more common in video gaming than death. The result of falling, stabbing, shooting, draining, and countless other verbs of decay and destruction. Talk of “dying” in video games often exchanges teleological weight for the more pragmatic machinic signaling of transition back to the actual world from a gamic one. In the relatively short history of the video game medium, there is little evidence that a video game death might trigger any existential self-reflection. This paper argues that contemporary virtual reality technology can change video gaming’s relationship to death through its ability to trigger out-of-body experiences. To make this case, I examine the VR games Arizona Sunshine and Deep Sea in light of scientific studies exploring the affective and ideational influence of VR experiences. I then reframe them using the virtual philosophy of Henri Bergson, specifically his theorization of fabulation as the religious tendency of the human body, exposing VR’s ability to take advantage of various capacities of human embodiment which amplify the visual and tactile affordances of the video game medium. In doing so, this paper raises the ever-present concerns and questions of all new technology and media as they shape how we think about ourselves in relation to death, embodiment and subjectivity.

Playing to Death

American Journal of Play, 2018

The authors discuss the relationship of death and play as illuminated by computer games. Although these games, they argue, do illustrate the value of being—and staying—alive, they are not so much about life per se as they are about providing gamers with a playground at the edge of mortality. Using a range of visual, auditory, and rule-based distractions, computer games both push thoughts of death away from consciousness and cultivate a perception that death—real death—is predictable, controllable, reasonable, and ultimately benign. Thus, computer games provide opportunities for death play that is both mundane and remarkable, humbling and empowering. The authors label this fundamental characteristic of game play thanatoludism.

Between death and suffering: resolving the gamer’s dilemma

Ethics and Information Technology

The gamer’s dilemma, initially proposed by Luck (Ethics and Information Technology 11(1):31–36, 2009) posits a moral comparison between in-game acts of murder and in-game acts of paedophilia within single-player videogames. Despite each activity lacking the obvious harms of their real-world equivalents, common intuitions suggest an important difference between them. Some responses to the dilemma suggest that intuitive responses to the two cases are based on important differences between the acts themselves or their social meaning. Others challenge the fundamental assumptions of the dilemma. In this paper, we identify and explore key imaginative and emotional differences in how certain types of in-game violence are experienced by players, consider how these differences factor into the moral lives of players, and use these insights to resolve the dilemma. The view we develop is that the key moral emotion in offensive video gameplay is self-repugnance. This is not repugnance of the act...

Play As Subversion: Video Games In The Age Of Transhumanism

2019

This paper discusses the contemporary relevance of video games within the larger context of an increasingly technologyoriented societies. The argument proposed is that an optimistic view of the future as imagined by transhumanism could lead to an anticipation of radical goals like prolonged lifespan and immortality which, at present, remain unattainable, thereby creating a disconnect between expectations and outcomes. This paper argues that video games act as platforms for subconscious attempts at subverting this disconnect by providing players with the opportunity to create and/or inhabit game avatars. The existence of players within virtual game worlds as avatars is compared to the act of creating horcruxes in the fictional world of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series where horcrux is a contraption that helps overcome death. By comparing the notion of horcrux to the habitation of game avatars, this paper argues that a video game is a potential site for the manifestation of figurat...

"Could you please kill me?" : The virtues of violence in the virtual world of DayZ

In this study I have answered the research question “what is the ethical meaning and relevance of violence for the players in the virtual world of DayZ?” by analysing a forum discussion on the subject of killing on sight (KOS) in a massive multiplayer online (MMO) videogame DayZ. I found, that the measure of the morality of actions and events was their purpose in serving the ‘story’ or the ‘narrative’ created by the players in the multi-appreciator fiction the MMO provided. Virtues of a ‘good player’ do not necessarily aim for the refinement of the player directly, but for the fun and enjoyment of story the player’s of the game are creating and experiencing, making the appraisal of ethics of actions an aesthetical one.

Video Games and the Militarisation of Society: Towards a Theoretical and Conceptual Framework

This paper outlines the relationship between Military themed or oriented video and computer games and the process of militarisation. A theoretical and analytical framework which draws on elements of sociology, cultural studies and media analysis is required to help to understand the complex interplay between entertainment in the form of playable media, the military and the maintenance of Empire. At one level games can be described as simple forms of entertainment designed to engage players in a pleasurable fun activity. However, any form of media whether playable or not, contains within it a set of ideological and political structures, meanings and ways of depicting the world. For the purpose of this paper playable media with a military theme or orientation will be described as political tools helping to shape the mental framework of players through the extension of a form of "military habitus". Playable media with a military theme or orientation such as the Call of Duty series promote and facilitate the extension of the process of militarisation and impact on how players view the world. This worldview can have consequences for national security in promoting pro-war sentiments.