Video Games Are Mythology
We're returning to the idea of pop culture as mythology, but this time focusing in on video games. While this video game is a bit more technical, I think it's also really important and may be of interest to people. We get a little into what it is that video games do that situate them as mythology, but more importantly we think a little more about what that actually means.
Repetition as Mechanic and Story
In this essay, I'm looking into repetitive game types, particularly rogue-like and rogue-lite games. Using Hades, Cult of the Lamb and Moonlighter as my primary focus, we talk about how these games utilise repetition to tell the story of the game without fatiguing the player with too much of all the same.
The One Who Waits - Cult of the Lamb
Throughout the game, there is a complicated relationship with death. Despite the ability to die on a dungeon run, there is little consequence of this death. The lamb still comes back to the cult and lives to try again. From a personal perspective, death means very little to the lamb. At the same time, this is combined with the second part of the game’s structure - the cult management part. On your dungeon crawl, you encounter various forest creatures who are being sacrificed to the various bishops. You can save them, and in doing so bring them into your cult. There, you can put them to work for the cult, they worship you, and you take care of their needs. Over time, they grow old and die. Or they are sacrificed and die. Or they go on a mission to get things for the cult and die in the process.
Zelda’s Mythology
For the in-game mythology, it’s a lot more than just the story that gets told to give flavour to the world. It’s there as story, sure, but it’s also present as an important facet of history, architecture and landscape. The history of Hyrule is forever marked by the presence of the story of the goddess/es, particularly in the presence of the Triforce - the mystical wish-bearing divine object the goddesses left behind them.
Tunic, and the Engagement of Story and Player
The recent release of action-adventure game Tunic on PC and XBox has come with an amazing study of implicit storytelling in video games. Tunic's world is left for the player to explore, relying on coded messages and puzzles to solve the questions of the locations and people they encounter. What makes Tunic's story powerful for players is its reliance on the player's engagement with the story and the gameworld, exploiting the nature of the video game medium to great effect. In this essay, I want to explore the storytelling of Tunic: the nature of its cyclical time, and the impact the game has on players.
GLaDOS: an analysis
One of my favourite video game antagonists is Portal’s GLaDOS. In this essay, I want to explore the meaning and development of GLaDOS, and explain why she’s one of the most misunderstood antagonists in video games. We talk about how she gains her power akin to Foucault’s Panopticon, how her assault was hidden and misconstrued in the game and by writers, how GLaDOS’s bound woman theory shows an interesting side of her assault, and how GLaDOS’s role as the unsilenced victim makes her one of the most amazing antagonists.
The True Main Character of Unpacking
The way the story is constructed and enacted by the player is a fascinating one, and fairly unique to Unpacking. Part of this storytelling is the interesting question of who exactly the main character of the game is, an answer that is typically found within the things we unpack in the game. And while I won’t alter this approach too much, I do have a slightly different way of answering the question of who the main character of the story is. So, lets – uh – unpack this game.
The Legend of Zelda: Cyclical Time in Myth and History
If we are to understand the Legend of Zelda from this perspective, rather than a structured timeline, then we understand the shifting nature of myth and legend through the experience of history. History impacts mythology, and mythology and storytelling impacts history.
The Wild Hunt, in the Witcher and Folklore
I think the Witcher series in general is a good one for simply displaying aspects and stories in folklore and mythology in ways that I think are interesting and more-or-less true to form, and the Wild Hunt is no different.
Repetition and Zelda’s Darkest Game
Majora doesn’t rely on scary typical imagery of death. It’s not dark because of the presence of torture devices or pools of blood or zombies. It’s dark because of the confusing nature of the story – the familiar feel of a game that is twisted to something slightly different than we’re used to. And more importantly, the way we play through the game forces us to see the terrible works wrought upon the world of Termina, and then we must reset it.
GLaDOS as Victim: the Anatomy of a Monster
When I think of classic video game antagonists, there’s always one who lingers in my mind. Her taunting monotone voice making fun of every mistake, all listened to while reading the graffiti of “the cake is a lie” is burned into my memory. GLaDOS, the monstrous machine of Valve’s Portal, is an interesting monster to explore in our series because of her role as both monster and victim. GLaDOS’s design as monster is massively complicated. To get at her monstrous heart, we need to understand both her design and her history.
Worldbuilding and Implicit Mythology
Worldbuilding is one of those words frequently used in circles of video game developers and fans. It's process, development and successes can be best understood through a concept given to us by the anthropological study of mythology: implicit mythology. Implicit mythology teaches us that myth is performed, lived, and shared between individuals. Video games as implicit mythology tells us that worldbuilding in video games is a symbiotic experience fostered between developer and player.
Calamity Ganon: Anatomy of a Monster
Welcome to our first deep dive into a specific monster in our Anatomy of a Monster series. I have, for some time, been interested in delving into a particular monster from Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - the Calamity Ganon. Calamity Ganon is an interesting monster because of the form it takes, and its presence as a lingering threat in one of our contemporary mythological stories.
Breath of the Wild’s Sacred Landscape
Breath of the Wild's intricate landscape is painted with the history, mythology and actions and of the people of Hyrule. The Lanayru Promenade demonstrates this due to its place in the world, one that marks an old pilgrimage trail traced from Kakariko Village to Mt. Lanayru. By studying the promenade, the pilgrimage trail, and the mythology of the world, we see how Breath of the Wild's landscape demonstrates its own sacred places in a way that mimics the world outside video games.
The Legend of the Legend of Zelda
This active act of alteration is called jonglerie by anthropologist Seth Kunin. Its a juggling of the variety of identities and importance in a storyteller’s life, and how they use the stories they tell to connect this juggling to others who are listening. In times of great wealth discrepancies, perhaps its most poignant to shift the story to have an outlaw who battles on behalf of the poor - and perhaps it behoves those telling this story to the wealthy at the time to make this figure also a wealthy landowner.
Spiritfarer and the Sociology of Grief
In Spiritfarer, Stella takes on the role of the spiritfarer, or the one who ferries souls across to the land of the dead. Its a beautifully artistic game by indie developer Thunder Lotus Games, and it paints a way to talk about death and grief in very realistic ways, without ever feeling heavy-handed. So let’s explore this game, and why this game paints such a positive depiction of what it feels like to grieve.
A Deeper Exploration of World Building
Like most academic disciplines, anthropology has many different branches, each with their own unique approach. To be clear, I often define myself as a cultural or social anthropologist, and so this is where I’ll be primarily drawing from today. So whose culture am I … anthropologizing? Perhaps in the last episode, I would have answered we were exploring two social circles: the world of Hyrule, and the world of the gamer. This would actually be a bit of a misnomer on how video games work more generally speaking. The game world is not set apart drastically from the physical world of the gamer.
Monster Hunter World and its Implicit Mythology
Monster Hunter World thrives on word of mouth. Not in the sense of marketing, like more indie-developed games, but in actual understanding. It puts an emphasis on playing with others – to be delving into the world with others, and through the exchange of information and experience, more knowledge is built. Community is established through flow of information and shared experience.
Theological Debates in the Dragon Age
There are multiple forms of religiosity which can be found in this world, and often they are designated by race, though not always limited to racial boundaries as conversion occurs. Many of the elves, which are also the culturally oppressed peoples, attempt to keep to their older polytheistic religion. The dwarves are ancestor worshipers. The Qunari, a tall and physically robust peoples with horns, have a very politically and philosophically based religion involving the Qun (of which could be entire discussion itself). And humans tend to be monotheistic.
A Pilgrim's Journey in Journey
o attempt a better answer, let’s try a different approach – that of Victor Turner. When we look at Journey specifically, we see a game about a pilgrim – sometimes encountering other pilgrims on their own journeys. Pilgrimage and video games have both been described as a liminal place (Turner 1974; Dovey and Kennedy 2006: 35). Turner’s concept of play is also often tied to his concepts of liminal and liminoid. So in lieu of enrolling you in a Vic Turner’s Concepts 101 course, I’ll break it down for you in a brief synopsis.