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Players’ Exploration of the History Featured in

Video Games Set in Historical Contexts

Burgess, Jacqueline; Jones, Christian M

https://research.usc.edu.au/esploro/outputs/journalArticle/Players-Exploration-of-the-History-Featured/991117352602621/filesAndLinks?index=0

Burgess, J., & Jones, C. M. (2025). Players’ Exploration of the History Featured in Video Games Set in

Historical Contexts. Well Played, 14(1), 9–29. https://doi.org/10.17613/C1qvk-7td23

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WELL PLAYED V14 N1

FOR THE LOVE OF GAMES

WELL PLAYED JOURNAL

DREW DAVIDSON

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise

noted.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.17613/c1qvk-7td23

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CONTENTS

For the Love of Games vii

Drew Davidson

GROWING AS A FAMILY 1

From Maniac Mansions to Mario Parties

Karen (Kat) Schrier

PLAYERS’ EXPLORATION OF THE HISTORY FEATURED

IN VIDEO GAMES SET IN HISTORICAL CONTEXTS 9

Jacqueline Burgess and Christian Jones

THE THIEF OF FATE AND THE DEVIL WHISKEY 30

Paul Gestwicki

A CALL TO DUTY AND THE WELL-PLAYED GAME 45

Imaginative Play, Afﬁnity Groups, and Creative Writing

Stephen R. Mallory

FALLOUT: LONDON 67

A Welcome Return to Traditional Game Development Values

Terry Greer

ALAN WAKE 2 97

A Critical Review of its Combat

Mike Poretta

THE SCAR OF SKY 117

Atmosphere and Caricature

Xiang Kexin

WELL, HERE WE ARE AGAIN 134

Reconstructing the Science of Well-Played in Portal 2

Daniil Kovalenko

FINAL FANTASY AND ISLAMIC COSMOLOGY AND

ARAB CULTURE 150

Amarah Alghadban

“AH, TRAVELER, WE MEET AGAIN!” 162

Gnostic themes in Genshin Impact

Sian Tomkinson

TIFA IS BEST GIRL 178

How Final Fantasy VII Taught Me to Stop Worrying and Love the Game

William Dunkel

TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES (TTRPGS) 191

The Gaming Media Site for Disability Activism

Giuseppe William Femia

A THRILLING ABYSS, OR HOW SOMA TAUGHT ME TO

ENCOUNTER MYSELF 211

Ashleigh Cassemere-Stanﬁeld

About the Authors 221

Well Played Editorial Advisory 225

About Well Played 227

About Play Story Press 229

FOR THE LOVE OF GAMES

DREW DAVIDSON

A lot of us have a special game that inspired us to get more deeply

involved in making, studying and playing games as part of our profes-

sional and personal lives. It may be *the* game for you or just *a* game

that means a lot, and you ﬁnd yourself replaying it regularly. It could

even be a couple of games, or a games series, or a game that disap-

pointed you enough that you were inspired to try and make an even

better one. Whatever the case may be, the essays in this issue focus on,

and analyze, these games, exploring why the authors think it had such

an impact on then, and how it helped deﬁne their love of games in

general.

This issue of the Well Played Journal is a companion to the book,

Well Played: For the Love of Games (https://playstorypress.org/books/

well-played-for-the-love-of-games/). The book curates authors and

their submissions, and this issue provided an open call for participa-

tion. Together, they share a fun range of perspectives on our love of

games.

GROWING AS A FAMILY

FROM MANIAC MANSIONS TO MARIO

PARTIES

KAREN (KAT) SCHRIER

laying games for me has always been about relationship

building—whether with my family, friends, or even myself.

As a child, it meant connecting with my grandmother during

late nights playing Rumikub or sitting around the Apple 2e computer

with my parents and brother, playing Maniac Mansion. Today, it might

mean playing It Takes Two with my daughter, or Mario Party with my

three kids and husband.

In this brief chapter, I focus on how my early game playing with

childhood family inﬂuenced my current (created) family, and how it

also inﬂuences me as a game designer. I discuss how my early gaming

experiences have shaped my family interactions and game design

approaches. What does it mean to “sit around the game” and play as a

family yesterday and today? How do we celebrate care, connection,

and playfulness through games? To do this, I will start with the silly

and innovative game, Maniac Mansion.

Maniac Mansion was one of the ﬁrst point-and-click adventure

games and the ﬁrst game for LucasFilm Games. Though it was eventu-

ally ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the original

version came out in 1987 and was on the Apple II and Commodore 64.

The Edison family at the center of Maniac Mansion was eccentric,

KAREN (KAT) SCHRIER

interesting, and more than a touch evil. It had the mother, Edna, a

creepy nurse, Dr. Fred, a mad scientist, and their son Weird Ed, who

really, really loved his hamster. Then there’s the other family, the friend

group who is tasked with entering the Edison mansion and looking for

clues to ﬁnd Sandy, the girlfriend of Dave Miller, who was kidnapped

by Dr. Fred.

Inside the mansion were also my personal favorite inhabitants, the

Green and Purple Tentacles, who show up later in Day of the Tentacle,

which Kowert (2024) describes in her own personal essay. I especially

admired the Green Tentacle. He was the only character living in Maniac

Mansion that you could really connect with. At ﬁrst you were scared of

him (and might have been forced to run away), but as you learned

more about him, you realized he just wants a friend. He tells you about

his ambitions to become a rock star with his band, Green T. His room is

also silly—he has a Disco Sucks poster, a photo of mom (a green

tentacle that looks just like him), a giant speaker, and a tape of tentacle

mating calls (don’t play that, by the way!). Give him a bowl of wax

fruit from the dining room and he will say things like, “Oh, I’m so

depressed. I’m never going to get my band started. My life is going

nowhere.“ I really wanted to help him and make his dreams come true.

I cared about him. We all did. I spent hours in junior high drawing

pictures of the green tentacle and my family loved to talk about him.

One of the best things about Maniac Mansion is that you can choose

from among 6 different characters. It was a Breakfast Club-style cast of

characters with Jeff, the surfer dude, Wendy, the novelist, and our

personal favorite Bernard, the geek. You were forced to play as Dave

(Sandy’s boyfriend), so we always played as Bernard, Dave, and

Michael, a photographer, or Razor, a musician. Each character has a

special ability that they can use to help win the game. For instance,

with punk rocker Razor (or Syd, another musician), you can make

friends with the Green Tentacle and use this friendship to help the

tentacle make a demo tape. You would then send to the “3 guys who

publish anything,” which sends you back a contract you can use to win

the game (Wendy can also submit a manuscript that helps in the same

way). Or, if you play as Michael, you can use his photography skills to

develop ﬁlm in a hidden room behind the Green Tentacle, and use it to

GROWING AS A FAMILY

give plans to Weird Ed to help stop a Meteor (yes, a random radioac-

tive Meteor). Bernard could also repair a radio to then contact the

police, but we never could get further than that in our version of the

game (though we kept trying). I still have no idea how Jeff, the surfer

dude, could have helped us to win the game.

The game was exciting because it was like a series of interlocking

puzzles within a funny family setting. It also had different possible

endings depending on which player you played as, which made each

play-through unique. Similar to a text adventure game, you could

sneak around the house and explore. You could take certain actions to

reach goals and move the plot forward (e.g., open, close, read, use),

but only certain characters could do certain actions, so the player

would need to orchestrate solutions across multiple characters. In the

kitchen (which was covered in blood and had lots of moldy food in it)

you could open the fridge (and pick up broken bottles of ketchup), or

use the microwave with a cup of water. We needed to explore, try

actions, and fail a lot to be able to problem solve and move to the

next clue. For instance, you might pick up a bunch of food like old

rotting turkey, week old roast, cheese, and fruit drinks to feed to a

character who will help you. Creator Ron Gilbert explains that they

developed the game so that if a pairing of action and object “made

logical sense for the player to do it, we would let you do it. What this

did mean is that we wired up a lot of dead ends….we would let them

screw themselves over….like you could pour the developer fluid on

the plant, keeping you from ever being able to climb up into the

attic.”

Moreover, the interconnected puzzles and multi-character game-

play encouraged collective family deliberations. We ﬁrst needed to

vote on which characters to use. Then, we had to decide how and

when we might use each character to solve the different puzzles. We

had to think through how to choreograph solutions. For instance, at

various points you might need to time things to get a package before

Weird Ed does, or you might need to sneak into the dungeon were

Sandy is held captive while Dr. Fred temporarily leaves her side. You

never knew if you might get caught by Dr. Fred and locked in the

dungeon, caught by Nurse Edna doing her rounds, or attacked by a

KAREN (KAT) SCHRIER

horny Green Tentacle. The game was quite suspenseful, which led to

our family bond through collective fear, excitement, and strategy.

The best parts were the unexpected actions that led to silly and

random results. For instance, you could microwave Weird Ed’s

hamster, which leads to a bloody mess. Gilbert has said that he and his

co-developers put these types of gags into the game and quickly

decided if they worked or not—similar to improv (Gilbert, 2017). Thus,

both the player and the creators were interacting in this try and fail,

iterative, experimental fashion that is both indicative of early game

development, but also of the organic, improvisational nature of a

collective performances like play.

Some of the Maniac Mansion gags even show up later in the games

like Thumbleweed Park, which has a lot of inside jokes from the Maniac

Mansion and Tentacle universe. In fact, even though I hadn’t played

Maniac Mansion in decades, I knew exactly what to do with the

microwave and fridge in the Thumbleweed Park game.

Maniac Mansion was a one-player game, but as a family, we would

sit around our one Apple IIe computer. We would gather a bunch of

chairs, as the oldest child, I would be at the computer, and we would

collectively make choices.

Our original game version on the Apple IIe was not winnable. I

know this because years later when we played it on the NES we were

able to win. We ﬁgured out that there was a bug on that man-eating

piranha plant and it wouldn’t grow no matter what we gave it (Pepsi,

water, paint remover, you name it). It just sorta glitched out and as a

result we never could climb it and win on the original ﬂoppy disk

version—though we did try for hours and hours. (Don’t worry, we did

eventually win the game using the same actions on NES).

Maniac Mansion has encouraged me to put connection, playfulness,

curiosity, challenge, and collective actions at the heart of all the games

that I design. What is unexpected and silly can help to inspire, and can

bring people together to solve hard challenges. It also showed me the

best ways to design educational games: to have opportunities where

players can explore, experiment, and even fail in a fun environment.

Even though Maniac Mansion is not an educational game, I learned

how to work together as a team, cooperate as a family, and work

GROWING AS A FAMILY

together to ﬁnd clues in an era that did not have YouTube or wiki

pages to help us walk through a difﬁcult game. It also showed me how

failure could be valuable. It showed the importance of persistence over

difﬁcult obstacles, the need for multiple perspectives to ﬁgure out hard

problems, and the usefulness of trying out different possibilities until

we eventually ﬁnd the right solution.

Since then, I have also included silliness in my games, even though

most are about serious topics. I include moments of random joy that

invite exploration. There’s a ladybug that pops out of a plant on a desk

in a game that I co-created about family planning; there’s sweet, quirky

aliens in a game that I designed about hand hygiene (WHO, 2024).

Even if my games are single player, I design for care, compassion, and

collective problem solving, such as by having players take care of non-

player characters (NPCs), make choices about their health and safety,

or reﬂect on decisions made with peers and colleagues (Schrier, 2021;

Schrier, 2024). Through my games, I nurture improvisation, experimen-

tation, and yes, even failure. I give clear feedback even if mistakes are

made, just like each action in Maniac Mansion has a response (and

sometimes a very funny one).

So what’s the current silly game where we can “sit around the

computer” and play together as a family? Is there something current

that engages us in a quirky world, and challenges us to be creative,

connected, and caring toward each other? The Mario Party series is a

good example of this (such as Mario Superstars, Mario Party Jamboree,

and Super Mario Party). It’s a game that I often play with my family

now as a mother with three kids and a husband. We can play together

simultaneously (up to four people) and we can choose different

colorful characters from the Mario series and Nintendo universe. In

different editions you can play as the "good characters” like Princess

Daisy, Mario, Luigi, Toad, Donkey Kong, or as villains like Bowser

Junior, Boo, or Wario.

Mario Party consists of a board that you can explore (like ones with

a woods, sci-ﬁ, or a tropical theme). Each round you can roll a die (or

dice) and move spaces and decide which way you want to travel over

the board. In some editions, you can get an “ally” character (NPC) who

will join your character and roll with you. After each round (and after

KAREN (KAT) SCHRIER

each player takes a turn on the board) there is a randomized quick

mini-game. This might include one with snowball or water gun ﬁghts,

or a team-based tug-of-war challenge. Players are aligned sometimes

in pairs or triplets against the other(s) or it might be that you are all

competing against each other. This might mean an I Love Lucy-inspired

conveyer belt challenge where players have to cooperate in pairs to

make the most desserts, or it could be a climbing challenge where you

have to be the one that climbs to the top the fastest (I never win this

one, sadly). Since each game is different, we have to learn as a family

how to collaborate with each other as a collective and as different indi-

viduals. I have to give different types of directions to my nine-year-old

son than to my husband. I also have to know how to adapt to and opti-

mize the abilities of my 12-year-old daughter in terms of precision or

my son in steering, while my older hands are less able to shoot, duck,

or jump as skillfully. (Our youngest doesn’t play yet but enjoys

watching and pretending he is Yoshi).

In Mario Party, the goal is to get the most “stars,” which you can

ﬁnd by purchasing them, by stealing them from other players, by

randomly getting them in a hidden brick (in some editions) and

through bonuses at the end of the game. There’s also lots of random

(good and bad) surprises throughout the game, like landing on a

bowser spot and losing a star, getting warped to a new area of the

board, or having a mega wiggler wiggle around.

When I ﬁrst started playing Mario Party, I thought it was too

random in determining a winner, and that it did not have enough

strategy involved to fully engage me (though I liked the quirky, silly

animations). However, I have played it more and more because my

three kids were interested in it. Seeing it through their eyes, and

watching how they play, I realize that the game involves a lot of

strategic thinking and planning, weighing of choices, risk manage-

ment, and even statistical thinking. For instance, my daughter will

share aloud her planning of using a combination of special dice blocks,

warp zones, changing the board from night to day, and using a key to

unlock a secret pathway where she could steal three stars from another

player (please, please steal from my husband and not me!). I have also

heard my daughter calculate the possibly of getting a certain roll and

GROWING AS A FAMILY

how that might affect her choices of what to do. The game can be

random, though, in that someone who is losing might suddenly have a

twist of fate and get a special card or gift that helps catapult them to

ﬁrst place.

The one thing that is missing from Mario Party is that sense of the

collective, where we are all working toward the same goal. While the

mini-games enable some cooperative problem solving, the overall

game is highly competitive. The “surprise” mechanics, where players

might get awarded an extra star for random reasons (like traveling the

most spaces), can lead to sudden reversals, such as someone who was

losing being the game’s winner. In our family, this leads to a lot of

tears, rage quits, and attempts to assuage hurt feelings when inevitably

one child wins and one doesn’t (no parent is allowed to win so that

never happens). However, it has helped us to lead to collective discus-

sions about how we handle frustrations, like losing, and what we can

do to express feelings constructively or calm ourselves down when we

are angry, sad, scared, or hurt. It has taught us how to talk about and

talk through our own failures. It also helps us to be playful together,

and to celebrate each other’s wins and woes (even if begrudgingly

between siblings). When there are tears, I try to emphasize that the true

goal of the game is to spend time together rather than to win the game.

My family, in our own little maniac mansion, is still learning and grow-

ing, but hopefully my kids will look back fondly on our times playing

around a television with Switch controllers, like I do about Maniac

Mansion.

REFERENCES

Gilbert, R. (2017). “Classic Game Postmortem: Maniac Mansion.” GDC.

Kowert, R. (2024). “How a Green Tentacle and an Opera Octopus

Inspired a Career in Games Research.” In Davidson, D. (Ed.) Well

Played: For the Love of Games.

Maniac Mansion. (1987). LucasFilm Games LLC. (Designers: Ron

Gilbert, Gary Winnick)

Mario Party game series (1998-2024). Nintendo.

Schrier, K. (2024). How Do We Teach Eudaimonia through Games?

KAREN (KAT) SCHRIER

FDG 2024. Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on the

Foundations of Digital Games. Worcester, MA, May 2024. https://doi.

org/10.1145/3649921.3659839

Schrier, K. (2021). We the Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics and Civics.

Oxford University Press.

Thumbleweed Park. Terrible Toybox (Designers: Ron Gilbert, Gary

Winnick)

WHO (2024). My Five Moments: The Game. https://5mgame.lxp.

academy.who.int/

PLAYERS’ EXPLORATION OF

THE HISTORY FEATURED IN

VIDEO GAMES SET IN

HISTORICAL CONTEXTS

JACQUELINE BURGESS AND CHRISTIAN

JONES

ABSTRACT

hile research into video games set in historical contexts

is growing, there remains a research gap concerning how

players explore the history these games present. The

Assassin’s Creed video game series was utilised as the research context

to investigate this research gap. A qualitative online survey with 88

responses was analyzed using thematic analysis. The respondents

enjoyed learning about the various historical contexts in the Assassin’s

Creed games using factual sources of historical information such as

documentaries and podcasts. Some even visited sites depicted in the

games. Therefore, the historical setting and the characters of each

Assassin’s Creed had a direct inﬂuence on how the game impacted upon

players. The results also suggest that video games set in historical

contexts can, due to their impact, inﬂuence how their players spend

their leisure time, education, and tourism choices.

JACQUELINE BURGESS AND CHRISTIAN JONES

BACKGROUND

The global video game industry is bigger than the ﬁlm and music

industries combined (Bass, 2024) generating 182 billion USD in

revenue in 2022 (Newzoo, 2023). Video games have a prominent and

inﬂuential place in modern society and culture (Li, 2021; Yao & Chen,

2022), which includes the representation and communication of history

and the past (Chapman, 2016). Video games set in historical contexts

and designed for entertainment are popular with video game players

(Fenty, 2008; Poole, 2018). For example, the Assassin’s Creed and Civili-

sation video game series have sold over 175 million copies combined,

which few if any historical books have achieved in sales (Apperley,

2018; Chapman, 2016; Ubisoft, 2020). Part of the enjoyment players

derive from playing a video game set in a historical context is being

able to be immersed in the historical time period (Bowman et al., 2023;

Vandewalle et al., 2023). Due to their popularity, these video games

have been inﬂuential and persuasive in the dissemination of ideas

about their historical contexts and the people who lived in the periods

they depict (Apperley, 2018; Stirling & Wood, 2021; Yao & Chen, 2022).

Indeed, their inherently immersive and interactive nature makes video

games set in historical contexts particularly inﬂuential when it comes

to their audiences’ understandings and perceptions about history as

compared to other media such as ﬁlm (Chapman, 2016; Christesen &

Machado, 2010; McCall, 2016).

Video games set in historical contexts allow their players to

encounter and be exposed to historical ideas and contexts in an experi-

ential way that other media cannot replicate (Chapman, 2013). Because

of their interactivity and inﬂuence, they are a useful teaching medium

and resource (Bourgonjon et al., 2016; Stieler-Hunt & Jones, 2019).

Consequently, there has been an increasing amount of research consid-

ering their depictions of history. Some of this diverse research has

examined: their historical accuracy (Campbell, 2008), the use of narra-

tive techniques to present historical information (Koski, 2017), the use

of the video games to present historical discourse (Spring, 2015), the

depiction of religion (Šisler, 2017), the promotional paratexts of such

games (Wright, 2018), how players disseminate their personal experi-

PLAYERS’ EXPLORATION OF THE HISTORY FEATURED IN VID…

ences of history within video game communities (Apperley, 2018), how

the use of history in a video game impacted on students’ under-

standing of that history (Stirling & Wood, 2021), how players under-

stand the accuracy versus authenticity of a historical video game

(Burgess & Jones, 2022), how realistic players understand historical

video games to be (Vandewalle et al., 2023), counterfactual history in

video games (Li, 2021), and if stakeholders within the video game

industry value historical accuracy in video games set in historical

contexts (Copplestone, 2017). There has also been a growing body of

research exploring how video games can be used as educational aides

for teaching history (Hutson & Fulcher, 2022; Moseikina et al., 2022;

Owens, 2011), the context of the past (McCall, 2016), and, due to their

interactivity and immersion, allowing players and students to consider

actions as well as simulations (Fordyce, 2021).

Evidence suggests that video game players respond to and even

value accurate, rather than nonfactual or non-accurate, depictions of

history in historical video games. It should also be noted that there are

various conceptualisations of historical accuracy, and players, develop-

ers, and researchers might have different ones (Burgess & Jones, 2022;

Mochocki, 2021; Šisler et al., 2022; Vandewalle et al., 2023). Prior

research has appeared to differentiate between accuracy and authen-

ticity with accuracy being objective, and authenticity involving more

subjective evaluations of verisimilitude (Burgess & Jones, 2022;

Mochocki, 2021). Copplestone (2017) conducted 156 interviews with

cultural-heritage practitioners, video game developers, and players.

She found that 94% of the video game players she interviewed indi-

cated their perception of the importance of accuracy in games

depended on the genre or style of the game and just 2% indicated it

was never important. Research into the Assassin’s Creed series has also

found appreciation for factual accuracy, although players struggled to

differentiate between accuracy and authenticity as they felt both terms

should involve factual accuracy, and they had disdain for altering or

ﬁctionalising history (Burgess & Jones, 2022).

Developers are aware of players’ appreciation of historical factual-

ity. Indeed, marketing of video games set in historical contexts has

often highlighted that historians have been used as consultants and

JACQUELINE BURGESS AND CHRISTIAN JONES

that in-depth research was conducted as part of the development

(Burgess & Jones, 2022; Cole, 2022). Players have sometimes gone to

great lengths to embed accurate historical depictions within the games

they play. For example, players are known to create ‘mods’, additional

user-created video game content ranging from altering the aesthetics to

brand new game levels or completely changing the game setting

(Postigo, 2007) to introduce missing historical aspects into video games

(Wright, 2022). Players of the Rome Total War game created the Rome

Total Realism mod, which changed the placenames, names of military

units and weapons, the native language of each faction or nation, and

the type of units that could be trained so they were more accurate, as

well as the geography so it more closely matched that at the time the

game was set (Ghitta & Andrikopoulos, 2009). Classical historians

were involved in the mod’s creation to ensure it contained the accuracy

that players desired (Ghitta & Andrikopoulos, 2009).

Players engaging with historians are also evident in the popularity

of the History Respawned podcast that critiques and analyses historical

video games (Whitaker, 2020). The ﬁrst History Respawned Podcast

examined Assassins’ Creed IV: Black Flag and ran for forty-six minutes,

which is relatively long for a podcast. However, responses to the

podcast were highly positive with comments from listeners indicating

that they desired an even longer podcast with more in-depth analysis

(Whitaker, 2016). Players wanted to know how accurate the depictions

of history in the Assassin’s Creed games were from historical practi-

tioners (Whitaker, 2016).

Thus, players’ desire for historical factuality in video games with

historical settings is well established as the impact that such video

games can have on learning, teaching, and perceptions of history.

However, given the inﬂuence that the video game medium has upon

players’ perceptions of history are enhanced by its interactivity, further

understanding is warranted regarding how players respond to and are

impacted and inﬂuenced by playing video games set in historical

contexts. While the immersion and interactivity that video games offer

players increases their enjoyment of the medium, it can affect their

perceptions and understandings of the history and historical context

presented in the games (Bowman et al., 2023; Fordyce, 2021; McCall,

PLAYERS’ EXPLORATION OF THE HISTORY FEATURED IN VID…

2016; Vandewalle et al., 2023; Yao & Chen, 2022). This research thus

seeks to explore players of video games set in historical contexts to

gain further understandings about how they explore the history

presented in the games outside of their gameplay and the meaning

they derive.

METHODS

RESEARCH CONTEXT

The Assassin’s Creed video game series began in 2007 and now encom-

passes fourteen main games as well as side-games and extra down-

loadable content. The series has now sold more than 155 million copies

between 2007 and 2020 (Ubisoft, 2020). There has also been a wide

variety of licensed merchandise created such as books, keyboards,

clothing, collectable ﬁgures, and so on. The Assassin’s Creed series is

one of the most commonly used for researching video games set in

historical contexts (Wright, 2018) because of its wide appeal and varied

historical settings (Vanderwalle et al., 2023). The series was selected as

the context for this research because Assassin’s Creed players will have

more than ten years to familiarize themselves with the games and

reﬂect on how the games were inﬂuential and persuasive in their

exploration of the history presented in the series.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND DATA ANALYSIS

Qualitative analysis was used for the data analysis method as it is

considered best to use when examining online communities (Kozinets,

2002). A qualitative survey was conducted on the Assassin’s Creed

subreddit after ethics approval from the Human Research Ethics

Committee at the authors’ institution (approval number A191327). The

subreddit was chosen as it had many posters, who were thus most

likely to be players of a number of the Assassin’s Creed games and thus

would have formed opinions about the presentations of history

depicted in the games.

All of the 88 respondents gave explicit, informed consent before

JACQUELINE BURGESS AND CHRISTIAN JONES

completing the online survey. Respondents were asked which games

they had played, which game in the series was their favourite, to

explain why they nominated their favourite game, how their interest in

history in general, and the people and places associated with the Assas-

sin’s Creed games, had been impacted by playing the games and if it

had changed, and which activities related to exploring historical facts

and eras they had done.

Braun and Clarke’s (2006) methods and directions for thematic

analysis were used to investigate the major themes that arose from the

participants’ answers to open-ended survey questions. Thematic

analysis was chosen due to its ﬂexibility when used in various theoret-

ical methodologies (Braun & Clarke, 2006), and so is an appropriate

analysis method when researching a multi-disciplinary ﬁeld like video

games (Hjorth, 2011). Thematic analysis is appropriate for discovering

how participants think, behave, and feel in particular situations (Guest

et al., 2012), which makes it a suitable method to investigate players’

exploration with the history presented in the Assassin’s Creed series.

A theoretical coding approach was used to uncover themes about

how players consumed and perceived the history presented in the

Assassin’s Creed game series, rather than a description of the data, to

ensure that the thematic analysis remained focused on the research

aims (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Before the analysis started, all the survey

responses were read to ensure an overview of the themes and content

(Åkerlind, 2012; McCosker et al., 2004). The analysis was iterative and

continuous with survey answers being re-examined to reﬁne codes and

groups of comments as they arose and their meaning (McCosker et al.,

2004).

The lead author’s coding was informed via taking on the role of an

active story interpreter. The active story interpret role involves being

immersed in the context surrounding the data by playing games in the

series, watching YouTube videos about the games, lurking on forums

dedicated to the Assassins Creed series, and reading news articles that

discuss the series, all to ensure a valid analysis (Burgess & Jones, 2022;

Reid & Duffy, 2018). The role of active story interpreter enabled under-

standing of sarcasm, slang, jokes, implicit meanings, references in the

comments (Scholz & Smith, 2019), and a more accurate representation

PLAYERS’ EXPLORATION OF THE HISTORY FEATURED IN VID…

of the feelings expressed by the posters (Mittell, 2015). Peer debrieﬁng

was also utilised throughout the coding via meetings with the second

author to validate the analysis and codes (Burgess & Jones, 2022;

Creswell & Miller, 2000).

RESULTS

RESPONDENTS

Respondents to the qualitative survey were 92% male (n=81), 5.7%

female (n=5), and those who identiﬁed as other/non-binary were 2.3%

(n=2) ranging in age between 18 and 54. Seventy-eight of the respon-

dents, 88%, were aged between 18 and 29 with the remaining ten aged

between 30 and 54. The mean age was 23. The respondents mostly

came from Germany (n=6), the UK (n=14), and the USA (n=24).

73.9% (65/88) of respondents had played 10 or more Assassin’s

Creed games, while 67% (59/88) of respondents had completed 10 or

more Assassin’s Creed games The three games that respondents were

most likely to mark as their favourite were Assassin’s Creed Origins

(21/88, 23.9% of respondents), Assassin’s Creed 2 (17/88, 19.3% respon-

dents), and Assassin’s Creed Black Flag and Assassin’s Creed Unity (10/88,

11.4% of respondents each). These results indicate that the respondents

had played many of the Assassin’s Creed games and so had exposure

with many different historical contexts in virtual worlds. Therefore,

their interest in and exposure to various historical contexts in video

games validated them as appropriate respondents for the survey and

this research.

When asked, via an open-ended question, respondents gave

various reasons for nominating their favourite game, Table 1. Each

response could be coded to multiple themes, but multiple instances of

a single theme within a response were coded just once. These

included believing that the game had well-constructed characters

(Characters), fun gameplay including combat and side quests (Game-

play), an evolving and well-constructed story (Story), or felt nostalgic

as a result of the passage of time (Nostalgia) as some players played

the first few games of the series at the time of their release eight to

JACQUELINE BURGESS AND CHRISTIAN JONES

twelve years before. However, the most common reason and code

was the historical setting and era, including the architecture and land-

scape (Historical setting). For example: ‘I enjoy the historical and

cultural environment of Assassin's Creed II the most. I have always

been interested in Renaissance and Italian landscapes’, ‘loved the

Victorian era and that game goes above and beyond with trying to

recreate the feeling of that era’, and ‘I am incredibly fascinated by

Egyptology, and it was wonderful seeing it brought to life’ (Historical

setting).

Table 1: Theme 1: Reason for Favourite Assassin’s Creed Game -

Subthemes and Counts

Respondents also noted how they appreciated the accuracy of the

depictions: ‘It just feels like Ancient Egypt with all the historically

accurate buildings’ (Historical setting). This ﬁnding is worth noting

because story, gameplay, combat, and characters were traditionally

thought to be some of the most inﬂuential factors in determining the

entertainment value, or attractiveness of a video game (Egenfeldt-

Nielsen et al., 2016; Newman, 2013). However, it would appear the

historical setting of the video game was more impactful than more

traditional gameplay elements such as gameplay, story, and character

construction for some respondents when it came to identifying their

favourite game.

PLAYERS’ EXPLORATION OF THE HISTORY FEATURED IN VID…

ASSASSIN’S CREED GAMES’ INFLUENCE ON

INTEREST IN HISTORY

Respondents were also asked, via an open-ended question, how

playing Assassin’s Creed inﬂuenced their interest in history. Again, each

response could be coded to multiple themes. Respondents noted that

the game’s impact on them resulted in the consumption of a variety of

media to explore and understand history such as podcasts, documen-

taries, books, videos, websites, and Wikipedia pages (Consuming more

history) as a result of playing the games. Furthermore, respondents

noted that they thought playing historical games like Assassin’s Creed

made history much more enjoyable and accessible (Games make

history more accessible). As respondents noted: ‘Actually seeing these

people and talking to them brings them to life in a way that textbooks

just can't accomplish’, and ‘Getting some simulated personal involve-

ment with the events that I'd only read dry source material about, has

made those stories more interesting and spurred me to revisit some of

those events and people’ (Games make history more accessible), Table

2. Therefore, the Assassin’s Creed games had a profound impact on how

history was presented to respondents as compared to other media the

respondents had encountered.

Table 2: Theme 2: How Assassin’s Creed Inﬂuenced Respondents

Interest in History Subthemes and Counts

Furthermore, it was also noted that after playing Assassin’s Creed

JACQUELINE BURGESS AND CHRISTIAN JONES

games, respondents now found history more relevant and understood

how it was connected to their modern lives (Games make history more

relevant). For example: ‘They helped me to gain a new point of view

on studying history. Thanks to them, it was no longer just dates and

disconnected facts, they taught me how to see the context and how

interconnected everything is’ (Games make history more relevant). The

games made history more relatable and as a result several respondents

noted that their interest in learning more about history in general, and

not just the eras explored in the Assassin’s Creed games, had increased

since playing the games (Exploring more history in general). Thus, the

Assassin’s Creed games were inﬂuential and impactful in terms of play-

ers’ exploration and enjoyment of history and historical contexts.

Six respondents even noted that they were, or had, studied history

formally, either in high school or higher education, as a result of their

Assassin’s Creed play. For example: ‘Because of the AC games I took

history in High School studying the French and American revolution’

(Study history formally). This represents a substantial impact and

investment of time and resources in history as a result of their game-

play demonstrating the inﬂuence and meaning derived from Assassin’s

Creed.

Likewise, multiple respondents either had visited a real-life loca-

tion depicted in the games or wanted to do so in the future. These

respondents were motivated to visit, not just because of the historical

signiﬁcance of the location they were visiting, but also speciﬁcally

because they had seen it depicted in the video games. For example: ‘I

visited Rome and sought out certain locations in the city (like Tiber

Island) because of their presence in Assassin's Creed’ (Visiting the loca-

tion). The video games also drew respondents back to locations they

might have visited before playing Assassin’s Creed games, but which

were then more meaningful. Therefore, the Assassin’s Creed games were

so signiﬁcant to some respondents that they felt the need to make a fan

pilgrimage.

Interestingly, nine respondents noted they already had a substantial

interest in history and played the games due to it, not the other way

around (Already largely interested in history). Thus, the games did not

particularly inﬂuence their history interest. However, ﬁfteen noted that

PLAYERS’ EXPLORATION OF THE HISTORY FEATURED IN VID…

they came to the Assassin’s Creed games already with an interest in

history, but the games helped cement and enhance this interest and

appreciation. For example: ‘I always liked history especially roman

history, but AC games fully ignited that interest’, and ‘I mean I've

always liked history but the AC games took it to a whole other level’

(Games reinforced love of history).

Respondents, who had not explored history in the past or speciﬁc

historical eras, were inspired by the Assassin’s Creed games to explore

more about the events, eras, and people by researching and reading

online (Learnt more about the era). For example: ‘I've never really

cared much about history, but playing the games has led me to look up

a lot of things as I go through the games out of curiosity for what really

happened’, and ‘I found myself looking up historical events and

ﬁgures depicted in games in order to understand more about them and

to check if the game's depiction of them was historically accurate’

(Learnt more about the era).

Some respondents noted that it was the characters in the games that

prompted them to learn and explore more about history. For example:

‘Assassin’s Creed does a very good job in turning important ﬁgures into

likeable characters, and they do it so well that most of the time I end

up wanting to learn more about them!’ (Learn more about the charac-

ters of the era). Thus, for some respondents, it was the personality and

construction of the characters that motivated their interest in history,

rather than the overall setting or plot. This is not surprising given that

video game players can form intense attachments to video game char-

acters and, as a result, invest signiﬁcant time into activities motivated

by this attachment such as online discussion and fanart (Burgess &

Jones, 2020). It appears these activities can also include researching the

historical basis and history of the characters.

CHANGE IN INTEREST IN HISTORY

Respondents were asked, via a Likert scale list of options, if their

interest in history in general, as well as the speciﬁc people and places

depicted in the Assassin’s Creed games, had increased as a result of

consuming the games. 89.8% (n=79) of respondents indicated that their

JACQUELINE BURGESS AND CHRISTIAN JONES

interest in history in general had increased to some extent, and 88.7%

(n=78) reported that their interest in speciﬁc people and places

depicted in the Assassin’s Creed games had also increased, see Table 3.

Fifty-one respondents of the 88 responded that their level of interest in

both had increased a lot suggesting that the games had a powerful

impact on players.

Table 3: Overall Change in Interest in History

RESPONDENTS’ HISTORICAL EXPLORATION

ACTIVITIES

Respondents were asked, via a list of options, which of the following

activities related to exploring historical facts and eras they had done.

The most common responses were watching historical documentaries

and reading books about history. Only 20.5% (n=18) of the respondents

had not taken part in any activities related to historical exploration,

Table 4.

PLAYERS’ EXPLORATION OF THE HISTORY FEATURED IN VID…

Table 4: Overall Historical Exploration Counts

DISCUSSION

The characters, story, or gameplay are usually considered the key

factors that make a video game attractive and entertaining (Egenfeldt-

Nielsen, 2016; Newman, 2013). Gameplay in particular is thought to be

critical when determining how pleasurable a video game is for players

(Rogers et al., 2017). However, respondents indicated the historical

contexts were the most common reason and theme when asked to

explain their favourite Assassin’s Creed game. Respondents described

their interest and appreciation for the various historical contexts

presented in the series, which indicates how inﬂuential a historical

context can be. Prior research has suggested that immersion in a histor-

ical setting is part of the enjoyment players derive from playing a

historical game (Bowman et al., 2023). Some players will inevitably be

pre-disposed to, and have an existing interest in certain historical

contexts, including appreciating historical accuracy. This pre-disposi-

tion would be expected to inﬂuence which speciﬁc Assassin’s Creed

game would be a player’s favourite and most enjoyable and would

thus increase the meaning that players derived from the game. There-

fore, the historical setting of each Assassin’s Creed game had a direct

inﬂuence on the impact of the game on players.

Several respondents noted that they were already interested in and

explored history, which is why they chose to play the Assassin’s Creed

games. Again, this would be expected as historical video games natu-

JACQUELINE BURGESS AND CHRISTIAN JONES

rally attract players, who are already interested in history (Burgess &

Jones, 2022). However, ﬁfteen respondents reported that the games did

help to reinforce their love of history further increasing the impact the

game had on them. Interestingly, this effect appears to be similar to

fandom where exposure and participation within a fan community

will enhance interest, and attachment in and towards, the object of the

fandom (Burgess & Jones, 2020; Jenkins, 2012). Thus, a historical video

game series like Assassin’s Creed could help to attract those players,

who have an interest in history, but would also help to reinforce or

nourish players’ emerging interest in history.

Due to their interactive and immersive qualities, it would be

expected that a video game would make history more appealing for

players (Bowman et al., 2023; Fordyce, 2021; McCall, 2016; Vandewalle

et al., 2023; Yao & Chen, 2022). Respondents reported it was easier to

explore and become interested in history when it was presented in the

Assassin’s Creed games. Some respondents also noted how the historical

depictions in the games helped them to see how history was relevant

to them in the present. The value of video games in education in

general (Stieler-Hunt & Jones, 2019), as well as historical education

speciﬁcally, is well established (Fordyce, 2021; McCall, 2016). However,

the results of this research suggest that the Assassin’s Creed video

games, which were designed primarily for entertainment, rather than

education, inﬂuenced players to explore and seek out more factual

sources to increase their historical knowledge, despite not being

designed to explicitly foster learning. Therefore, the Assassin’s Creed

games had an educational impact on respondents, despite not being

designed to and this educational impact was potentially more mean-

ingful than what other media could produce given the interactive and

appealing nature of the games.

Respondents’ exploration of history motived by playing the Assas-

sin’s Creed games could be extensive and in-depth manifesting in

educational and tourism choices. Therefore, games had such a mean-

ingful impact on players that they made high-cost decisions relating to

travel and study. Thus, it can be seen that entertainment video games

can have a powerful inﬂuence on historical learning and create the

desire to engage with historical, scholarly activities. The actions under-

PLAYERS’ EXPLORATION OF THE HISTORY FEATURED IN VID…

taken by respondents to learn more about the historical contexts

presented in the Assassin’s Creed games also appear similar to readers

of historical ﬁctional novels. Readers of the historical genre are known

to seek out further, factual sources to supplement their learning (de

Groot, 2010).

Rather than learning more about the overall historical context of

certain games in the Assassin’s Creed series, some respondents reported

that their desire for historical knowledge was to learn what exactly

happened to the places and characters depicted in the games. Respon-

dents even explicitly stated that it was their emotional attachment to

historical characters in a game that motivated them to learn more

about them. Characters are understood to be a major reason why

players develop emotional attachments to video game narratives

(Burgess & Jones, 2020). Furthermore, prior research into students’

understanding of history via video games set in historical contexts

found that the characters helped to make history more relatable and

engaging (Stirling & Wood, 2021). It appears that these emotional

attachments may also prompt exploration of the historical ﬁgures

depicted in video games set in historical contexts due to the bonds

players formed with the characters.

The emotional attachment to the Assassin’s Creed series prompted

signiﬁcant investment in time and resources for some respondents to

visit the real-life locations depicted within the games. Visiting locations

that have been featured in narratives that audiences have enjoyed

consuming can often be an impactful and spiritual experience

(Bowman et al., 2023; Hills, 2002), in addition to the meaning that can

be derived from a visit to a historically signiﬁcant location. Therefore,

what made the Assassin’s Creed series meaningful and important to

players in terms of players’ historical exploration was two-fold: the

characters in the games and the places in the historical context.

CONCLUSION

The results suggest that video games set in historical contexts, due to

the impact they have on players, can inﬂuence how their players spend

their leisure and spare time and their education and tourism choices.

JACQUELINE BURGESS AND CHRISTIAN JONES

The historical setting and the characters of each Assassin’s Creed game

had a direct inﬂuence on how the game impacted upon players. The

results also suggest that video game players, mirroring readers of

historical ﬁction, wish to learn more about the historical contexts

presented in video games again due to the impact these games had on

players and the meaning players derived from the games.

Therefore, there would appear to be value for video game devel-

opers to ensure that when historical contexts are depicted in video

games, such as the Assassin’s Creed series, they contain a high level of

accuracy given the appeal of accuracy for players. Furthermore, there

are ﬁnancial and branding opportunities from including historical

information within the games or launching branded paratexts. For

example, a branded podcast, or books that explore the factual history

depicted. By collaborating with historians in the preparation of these

paratexts, video game developers could present an accurate product,

which would increase the value of the game and the paratexts to

players as well as their educational value and validity. Such collabora-

tions would also likely increase the impact of the games on players.

The results of this research suggest that the Assassins’ Creed games

were meaningful and impactful on players. Players were motivated by

the Assassin’s Creed games to undertake a range of behaviours,

including high-cost activities such as tourism and education. Providing

players of games set in historical contexts with more content and prod-

ucts linked to the games would give players more opportunities to

interact with games that have already proven themselves to be highly

important and meaningful to them.

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THE THIEF OF FATE AND THE

DEVIL WHISKEY

PAUL GESTWICKI

INTRODUCTION

n the corner of my second-grade classroom was a Commodore

PET. My classmates and I could tinker with it during free time. I

vividly remember loading a game called Tank Tracks from a

cassette, although now I cannot ﬁnd any evidence of a game by that

name. It had the player use the number pad to maneuver a tank

through an obstacle course. It was all presented in PETSCII character

graphics, and memory assures me that I had the best time in my class-

room. Besides playing games from the limited collection of cassettes,

we could also tinker with BASIC programming. Being able to make the

computer print your name a dozen times or output something vaguely

rude helped one climb the social ladder.

This experience in the early 1980s is my earliest memory of

working with a personal computer. My interest in the device led my

parents to regularly borrow a Commodore 64 from the local public

library for my brother and me to explore. A generous gift from our

grandparents gave us one of our own. The package included the

Commodore 64 User’s Guide (1982), which explained not only how to set

up the hardware but also the fundamentals of BASIC programming. I

THE THIEF OF FATE AND THE DEVIL WHISKEY

remember how, the week after that Christmas, my uncle came over to

explain to us how to format a ﬂoppy disk for our new 1541 disk drive

so that we could actually save our programs and load them again later.

The 1980s was the decade of the Commodore 64 (C64). This small

personal computer was released in 1982 and became the best-selling

single computer model of all time (Steil, 2011). Juul (2024) provides a

thorough history of the C64, focusing on how over its eleven-year

production and after, different populations have used the C64 to

realize what they imagined it to be. That is, its cultural impact evolved

as users imagined different uses for it. The C64 was, of course, a

popular platform for playing videogames; the audio and graphics

capabilities of the C64 allowed it to compete with the dedicated video

game consoles of its era. Although it was primarily a game-playing

machine to me and my friends, it is also crucial that the C64 booted

into a programming environment, like the PET and VIC-20 before it.

This systems-oriented introduction to computing impacted a gener-

ation of developers. Getting the C64 to do anything required typing

commands for the BASIC interpreter. The same user-interface allowed

one to load software, to enter source code from a book or a magazine,

or to write original programs. My own ﬁrst games were written in

BASIC using PETSCII graphics like Tank Tracks did. There was no artiﬁ-

cial barrier between using the computer to consume and using the

computer to create: it was all done with imperative commands. It is

worth reﬂecting on how much this has changed. Consider, for exam-

ple, that the most used contemporary computing device is the mobile

phone, which, like game consoles, are presented strictly as consumer

devices, with no affordances for creating new software. There is a qual-

itative difference between showing a screenshot of the Windows XP

Start menu, which will make a demographic segment of the audience

smile fondly on the memory of it, and showing a screenshot of a C64,

which will make an older segment positively wistful.

THE THIEF OF FATE

In the late 1980s, when I was not yet a teenager, I obtained a copy of

The Bard's Tale III: The Thief of Fate (1988) for the C64. Although it was

PAUL GESTWICKI

the third in a trilogy, it was the ﬁrst that I encountered. I had previ-

ously played several single-player adventure and role-playing games,

including C64 ports of Adventure (Crowther & Woods, 1977), Zork

(Lebling & Blank., 1977), and Ultima II (Garriott, 1982). There was

something special about this new game, however. Not only did it have

impressive graphics, an intriguing soundtrack, and a setting designed

to appeal to boyish imaginations: it was also the ﬁrst game I encoun-

tered with more than one player character—a bona ﬁde adventuring

party.

This captured my young imagination, engrossed as it was at the

time with the Dragonlance Chronicles (Weis & Hickman, 1984–1985), The

Chronicles of Prydain (Alexander, 1964–1968), and The Lord of the Rings

(Tolkien, 1954–1955). All of these stories feature groups of heroes

working together to vanquish evil. In BT3, not only could I create a

stalwart band of adventurers, but I could also model them after my

favorite ﬁctional characters. Caramon and Raistlin would be a Warrior

and a Magician, Fﬂewddur Fﬂam would be a Bard, and every party

had a dour and taciturn dwarf inspired by Gimli.

Figure 1: Creating a party in The Bard’s Tale III

The game design liberally drew from RPG tropes of the 1970s and

1980s. The setting was a medieval fantasy world complete with

knights, wizards, ancient treasure, secret doors, and traps aplenty.

THE THIEF OF FATE AND THE DEVIL WHISKEY

Characters had attributes and abilities reminiscent of Dungeons &

Dragons (Gygax & Arneson, 1974), gaining experience points to level

up by defeating enemies and accomplishing story goals. Every action

with a chance of failure was determined by a behind-the-scenes rolling

of digital dice.

Figure 2: Character details in The Bard’s Tale III

Party creation involved ﬁlling up to seven party slots with charac-

ters. Making a new character involved selecting a sex and race (human,

elf, dwarf, hobbit, half-elf, half-orc, or gnome), rolling their attributes

(strength, intelligence, dexterity, constitution, and luck), choosing a

class (warrior, paladin, hunter, monk, bard, rogue, conjurer, or magi-

cian), and then naming the character. Attributes were randomly gener-

ated, which meant that to get a strong character, one had to reroll many

times. Choosing the sex and race only took two keystrokes, and so I

would spend signiﬁcant time keying in the sex-race combination,

reviewing the attributes based on the kind of character I wanted, and

backing out to generate a new candidate with better stats. I can hear

the “click-clack-pause-click" loop of the C64 keyboard just by retelling

this story.

PAUL GESTWICKI

Figure 3: Exploring the wilderness after party creation in The

Bard’s Tale III

The world of BT3 was composed of square grids, an approach that

was common in contemporary “dungeon crawl” adventures. This was

certainly, in part, a technical limitation: square grids allow for easy and

fast integer computation, which was critical for period hardware. It

also matches the approach seen in many contemporary tabletop

games, such as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Gygax, 1978), which

divided space such that one square inch mapped to ten square feet in

the fantasy realm. In BT3, the party could move forward or backward

one square or turn ninety degrees, and this same system was used

whether the party was in the wilderness, in a town, or in a dungeon.

The player had a ﬁrst-person view of the world even though real-time

three-dimensional rendering for home computers was still a long way

off. Whether moving or turning, the viewport changed abruptly, the

C64 lacking the computational power to render the in-between views.

THE THIEF OF FATE AND THE DEVIL WHISKEY

Figure 4: Engaging in battle in The Bard’s Tale III

Grid-world explorations were punctuated by turn-based combat

and lots of it. The opposing units were described by their name, quan-

tity, and distance from the party, and an animated portrait of the

nearest monster was shown in the viewport. The animations, though

few in frames, added life to the otherwise textual descriptions. Combat

was divided into rounds, as in classic tabletop RPGs. Each round, the

player gave commands to each party member in sequence—attacking

with melee or ranged weapons, casting spells, singing bard songs,

using magic items from inventory, and employing a thief's abilities to

hide, sneak, and backstab. Once all the player’s commands were

entered, they were executed along with the enemy commands, the

order being randomized but modiﬁed by characters’ attributes. The

effect of each individual action was described in simple text that

scrolled through the text area, such as, “Lucian swings at a Hobgoblin,

and hits for 3 points of damage.” Once combat was completed, the

surviving characters shared experience points, gold, and other loot.

As far as I am aware, the role of the titular bard was unique among

CRPGs of the era. The bard could sing songs when exploring and in

combat. The C64 played the simple single-note melodies on a synthe-

sized instrument that matched what the bard had equipped: carry a

lyre, and the C64 sounded like a stringed instrument; wield a trumpet,

hear something brassy; equip drums, and the song would play out

PAUL GESTWICKI

with pitched noise, much to the amusement of a young player's ears.

There was a particular thrill to being a 12-year-old who had seen

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Gilliam & Jones, 1975) and recognized

it as the source of “Sir Robin's Tune”—the bard's song that allowed the

player to ﬂee any encounter, much like the movie’s cowardly Sir

Robin. My parties would sing this song even when it was not neces-

sary simply because I loved the movie.

The diegetic audio experience powered by the C64’s illustrious SID

chip was in some ways superior to the direction game audio took in

the coming years. It would not be long before games would start using

professionally recorded audio, ﬁrst played back on CD and then in

encoded formats like MP3. Although audio ﬁdelity increased as many

players came to think of videogames as being like interactive movies,

something playful was lost. It is akin to the transition from scripted

interactive sequences to pre-rendered cutscenes. While Final Fantasy

VII (1997) was a groundbreaking spectacle for a generation of gamers,

the cinematic player experience lacked the narrative robustness of

Chrono Trigger (1995) and its multiple endings.

Spellcasting in BT3 was accomplished by selecting a magic-user

and then typing in a four-character code for the spell. For example, one

of the ﬁrst spells a player had access to was Arc Fire, which could be

cast with the command “ARFI”. The spells were fully described in the

game’s manual, but in the game, they were only identiﬁed by these

four-letter codes. Although it’s been decades since I devoted time to

BT3, I remember typing “ARFI” as clearly as I remember using LOAD

"*",8,1 to load software from a ﬂoppy disk, and I think these experi-

ences are related. Giving the imperative ARFI to a spellcaster was not

such a different magic from telling a program to GOTO a particular

line of code. Creative imagination becomes reiﬁed through typed

commands in a coded language.

For me, playing BT3 was a social experience. I played with my

brother, my elder by two years. We mapped out every wilderness,

town, and dungeon of BT3 in a small, blue, hardcover book of graph

paper. Playing together, one steered the party from the keyboard while

the other drew and annotated the map. We developed our own vocab-

ulary —sadly, long forgotten—for describing the visible parts of the

THE THIEF OF FATE AND THE DEVIL WHISKEY

level so that the mapper could accurately record the level. Dungeons

were scattered with various traps that complicated our efforts. Some

areas were permanently dark, making it crucial to communicate about

how many steps were taken, what direction we believed the party was

facing, and where walls were observed. We marked such traps on our

maps along with other notable features such as riddles or boss ﬁghts.

We quickly discovered that traveling to new areas usually came

with a tremendous increase in difﬁculty. Farming experience points

and equipment was a practical necessity for survival. It was helpful,

then, that we also realized that random encounters were not entirely

random: there were certain map locations where encounters were more

likely than others. Once we had those marked on our map, we knew

we could trigger battles by hopping on and off that location. I remain

unsure of whether these spaces were intentionally designed this way

or if we had discovered a ﬂuke in the platform's limited capacity for

random number generation. Regardless, my brother and I knew that

while one of us should never explore new areas without the other, one

could always pop in to farm experience points.

My first experience with duplication glitches was with BT3. It

came from a desire for a rare magic item that, given the steep diffi-

culty scaling, captured our imagination like no other: the stoneblade.

This was a sword that petrified enemies upon striking them, essen-

tially defeating it in one hit. The stoneblade was hard to acquire, only

being available in some regions and with low probability. However,

my brother and I discovered that we could duplicate one of them

through an arcane series of manipulations. We never wrote this

down, and memory cannot reconstruct it, but it involved saving a

character to disk, loading characters from disk, and powering off the

computer at a moment when it asked for a change in disks. Shuffling

floppy disks allowed us to fabricate enough stoneblades for the

whole party, greatly reducing the tedium and danger of farming

experience points.

BT3 had none of the level scaling nor rubber-banding that one

might ﬁnd in more recent CRPGs. Wilderness and dungeons got

progressively harder in an “old-school” manner. Torches, potions, and

wineskins had to be carefully managed lest a party ﬁnd themselves in

PAUL GESTWICKI

an unrecoverable situation. I sometimes wonder if it's these early

CRPG experiences that some Old School Renaissance fans are seeking.

INTERLUDE

Playing videogames on the C64 inspired me to learn how to program. I

read several books on BASIC programming and began making simple

games of my own. Among those I remember are short text adventures,

PETSCII action games, and a turn-based professional wrestling simu-

lator with stick-ﬁgure animations. As I got into high school, I kept

playing videogames but spent less time making them. I entered college

without a declared major, but taking an introductory Computer

Science course reminded me of how much I enjoyed it. I fell back in

love with software development, this mysterious craft that is “only

slightly removed from pure thought-stuff" (Brooks, 1974).

While in college, an inspirational professor brought me into his

research group and encouraged me to apply to graduate school. This

led to my earning a master's and then a doctorate in Computer Science

and Engineering. During this time, I occasionally tinkered with video

game design and development when I needed a distraction from my

studies, but these were short-lived attempts that quickly ﬁzzled out. I

focused on my research while continuing to enjoy videogames.

DEVIL WHISKEY

In 2005, I completed my doctorate and became an Assistant Professor

of Computer Science at Ball State University. That same year, I also

bought a copy of Devil Whiskey (2003). This videogame’s development

title was “Bard's Legacy,” making it clear that it was designed to be a

Bard's Tale game for the new millennium. I cannot recall how I ﬁrst

heard about the project, but it was immediately clear from playing it

that it was a spiritual successor: a party of D&D-style characters,

exploring a world comprising square grids, encountering bands of

enemies, managing inventory, singing magical bardsongs, and inter-

acting primarily through the keyboard. The small palette and blocky

pixels of BT3 on the C64 were replaced with digitally painted portraits.

THE THIEF OF FATE AND THE DEVIL WHISKEY

Devil Whiskey retained stepwise grid traversal, but the view smoothly

transitioned between steps in a 3D-rendered world. Devil Whiskey a

pure nostalgia trip. It became a videogaming solace for me during the

stress of starting a new job and living in a new city.

Figure 5: Exploring the wilderness after party creation in The Devil

Whiskey

Unfortunately, not far into the game, I ran into a problem: a quest

was bugged. A character offered a quest to defeat a particular monster

on a deeper level of the dungeon. Upon doing so and returning, the

quest-giver gave the same quest again rather than acknowledging its

completion. I repeated the sequence a few times in hopes that I had

missed something, but the error was persistent and reproducible. I

posted the issue to the technical support forum.

PAUL GESTWICKI

Figure 6: Engaging in combat in The Devil Whiskey

A friendly forum denizen suggested that I simply go in and ﬁx the

code for that quest, pointing out where in the installation directory I

could ﬁnd it. The thought of ﬁxing the bug myself had never crossed

my mind. I followed the post's instructions, navigating to the “scripts”

directory. There, I found ﬁles like 003_barracks.py and cellarsPlot1.py

—the actual Python scripts that controlled these parts of the game. The

code was sensible, and there were ample comments explaining the

interactions of quests with global game state. I tweaked the necessary

ﬁles and took my party back into the dungeon, now able to ﬁnish the

quest in the designer's intended manner.

My academic study of computer science was enough for me to

know that there were no inherent differences between game program-

ming and any other kind, but I had not had such a personal encounter

with game code since typing in examples from BASIC textbooks. This

made me start thinking about game development in a new way.

At the time, I had been conducting research on design patterns for

object-oriented programming (Gamma et al., 1994), and I realized that

games could provide a good hook to attract students to work with me.

I proposed and taught a seminar on game engine programming in

summer 2006, and this led to my ﬁrst scholarly publication outside of

my dissertation work (Gestwicki, 2007). This was also the summer that

THE THIEF OF FATE AND THE DEVIL WHISKEY

I read A Theory of Fun for Game Design (Koster, 2004), which gave me a

vocabulary for explaining why I thought games and game design were

important. It also helped me understand the beauty of challenges of

game design qua game design, not just as an application of engineering

principles. It was shortly after this that I transitioned my scholarly

focus toward game design and development, which contributed

directly to my successful bids for tenure and promotion. My childhood

explorations of game programing had laid a good foundation for me,

but my transformation into a games scholar hung upon a simple

Python scripting error in The Devil Whiskey, an independent CRPG that

remains mostly unknown.

In fact, Devil Whiskey still lives. The current website at https://

www.devilwhiskey.info is a fascinating time capsule of mid-2000s

independent game development, and the site looks exactly as I

remember it. The “About” page acknowledges the inspiration taken

from Bard's Tale as well as the desire to create a clear separation of

intellectual property between the two games. The “FAQ” has been

untouched since before the game’s release. Part of that page provides a

layperson’s explanation of why using certain Open Source libraries did

not necessitate releasing the source code for Devil Whiskey. It mentions

that the developers nevertheless intended to release the code once the

development costs were recouped. The lack of project updates made

me suspect that it was not as commercially successful as anticipated.

Forums powered by phpBB are still accessible, and after years of

silence, I noticed a post in October 2024, indicating that Devil Whiskey is

not abandoned. It turns out that the rights to the game were acquired

from the original developers by Richard Whitwell, who also owns the

rights to indie CRPG classics Mordor (Allen, 1995) and Demise (2000).

An interview with Whitwell conﬁrmed that the game was always

intended to be friendly toward modders. Unfortunately, most of the

original source code is locked away in encrypted archive ﬁles whose

keys were lost before Whitwell even completed the acquisition. Even if

there were a Devil Whiskey renaissance, the original code is essentially

lost.

PAUL GESTWICKI

OTHER TALES FROM OTHER BARDS

The game called “The Bard’s Tale” that was released in 2004 is an action

RPG comedy that only shared the iconic title of the original trilogy. The

name was owned by InXile Entertainment, who appear to have used it

as nostalgia bait. The game had no other narrative nor systemic rela-

tionship to the earlier games, and I only mention it because of its name.

To borrow from Abraham Lincoln, this game was a dog's tail marketed

as its leg.

In 2015, InXile Games successfully crowdfunded the development

of Bard's Tale IV: Barrow's Deep (2018)—a legitimate successor to the

name, expanding on the story from the original trilogy. BT4 retains

some elements of the original trilogy, such as a core loop of exploration

and turn-based combat, while other parts are more modern, such as its

fully three-dimensional world. The game design follows newer

conventions of CRPGs, including party inventory, skill trees, crafting, a

quest log, and voice acting. The differences between the classic game

and the modern interpretation raise interesting game design questions

about the relationship between creative vision and technical constraint.

Did the original programmers wish for real-time 3D graphics, or was

their goal always to implement 10’ squares as in contemporary

tabletop RPGs?

BT4 is an enjoyable fantasy CRPG, and I especially appreciated its

use of music as a crucial element of human culture. However, despite

its references to locations and characters from the original trilogy, it did

not bring me back to the halcyon days the way that Devil Whiskey did.

This made me realize that it wasn’t the story nor the setting that made

a “Bard’s Tale” game for me: it was what Bateman (2017) calls player

practices. Devil Whiskey and the original Bard’s Tale trilogy share player

practices such that a player feels at home in either environment despite

narrative and systems differences. That is, it was allowing players to

create parties inspired by fantasy novels, explore simple maps, and

encounter random mobs. It was the physical experience of hammering

“AAAADDD” on the keyboard, commanding the ﬁrst four party

members to attack (“A”) while the back three defended (“D”), and

then watching the round's results scroll by in a text box. It was

THE THIEF OF FATE AND THE DEVIL WHISKEY

knowing spells by their four-letter codes. These practices connected

gameplay experiences that were decades apart.

The crowdfunding campaign for BT4 recognized that players, plat-

forms, and practices change over time. For an extra ﬁve dollars,

backers could be guaranteed of receiving a “Guilt Absolution Letter”

from InXile Entertainment CEO Brian Fargo (The Bard's Tale IV, 2015).

The letter formally forgave players who had pirated earlier games in

the series. To me, this lived up to its estimated value of being “price-

less.” Bard’s Tale III: The Thief of Fate led me on a path to being a games

scholar. I was happy to support InXile’s resurrection of the franchise

and to know that he forgave me for the indiscretions of youth. Now,

when I create games, I can choose to release them as free software

(Stallman, 1992) for anyone to play and study without having to worry

about printed codewheels or cracks from the demoscene (Juul, 2024).

REFERENCES

Alexander, L. (1964–1968). The Chronicles of Prydain. Holt, Rinehart and

Winston.

Allen, D. (1995). Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol [PC].

The Bard's Tale [Windows]. (2004). InXile Entertainment.

The Bard's Tale III: The Thief of Fate [Commodore 64]. (1988). Inter-

play Productions.

The Bard's Tale IV [Crowdfunding campaign]. (2015). https://

www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/the-bards-tale-iv.

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep [PC/Linux]. (2018). InXile Enter-

tainment.

Bateman, C. (2017). “No-one Plays Alone.” Transactions of the Digital

Games Research Association, 3(2).

Brooks, F. (1975). “The Joys (and Woes) of the Craft.”' In The Myth-

ical Man-Month. Addison-Wesley.

Chrono Trigger [Super Nintendo]. (1995). Square.

Commodore 64 User's Guide. (1982). Commodore Business Machines

and Howard W. Sams & Co.

Crowther, W. & Woods, D. (1977). Colossal Cave Adventure [PDP-10].

Demise: Rise of the Ku’tan [PC]. (2000). IPC Software.

PAUL GESTWICKI

Devil Whiskey [PC/Linux]. (2003). Shifting Suns Studios.

Final Fantasy VII [Playstation]. (1997). Square.

Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R., & Vlissides, J. (1994). Design

Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Addison-Wesley.

Gestwicki, P. V. (2007). “Computer games as motivation for design

patterns.” In Proceedings of the 38th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on

Computer Science Education. ACM.

Gygax, G. & Arneson, D. (1974). Dungeons & Dragons. TSR.

Gygax, G. (1978). Players Handbook. TSR.

Garriott, R. (1982). Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress [Com-

modore 64]. Sierra On-Line.

Gilliam, T. & Jones, T. (Directors). (1975). Monty Python and the Holy

Grail [Film]. Python (Monty) Pictures.

Juul, J. (2024). Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64

Computer. MIT Press.

Koster, R. (2004). A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Paraglyph Press.

Lebling, D. & Blank, M. (1983). Zork I: The Great Underground Empire

[Commodore 64]. Infocom.

Stallman, R. (1992). Free Software, Free Society. GNU Press.

Steil, M. (2011, February 1). “How many Commodore 64 computers

were really sold?” pagetable.com. https://www.pagetable.com/?

p=547.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954–1955). The Lord of the Rings. Allen & Unwin.

Weis, M. & Hickman, T. (1984–1985). Dragonlance Chronicles.

Random House.

A CALL TO DUTY AND THE

WELL-PLAYED GAME

IMAGINATIVE PLAY, AFFINITY GROUPS,

AND CREATIVE WRITING

STEPHEN R. MALLORY

INTRODUCTION

"If ever there was better evidence that the past mattered. It's right here."

- Admiral Jean-Luc Picard

I discovered a Star Trek-themed chat-based, nominal MUD in the fall of

1995. It became a game I would play weekly (if not more) for approxi-

mately twelve years. When I discovered this well-played game, I was a

struggling college student on academic probation. I was in a rough

space, and games had always been a source of solace. During that gap

semester, my days were spent working at a small family restaurant,

and my evenings were spent exploring a game on the newly launched

internet service called the Microsoft Network (MSN). This game, vTrek,

was an mIRC-based afﬁnity space that focused intensely on commu-

nity storytelling and roleplaying to create unique, Star Trek-themed

stories. This game became the center of my gaming world for over a

decade and whose creative impact still haunts me.

The unique niche vTrek ﬁlled, followed by its successor A Call To

Duty (ACTD), deﬁes the deﬁnition of a game currently discussed and

contested in the ﬁeld of Game Studies. ACTD's descent into obsoles-

STEPHEN R. MALLORY

For an organization-crafted description of the history of ACTD, see: https://startrek.

acalltoduty.com/history

cence and obscurity mirrors the growth and commercialization of the

internet and remains a curious example among many similar game

experiences that marked a speciﬁc period of internet history. ACTD

existed at the edge of the ﬁeld, utilizing aspects of play often maligned

or ignored in favor of games, texts, and materials that cleave closer to

market-facing systems. ACTD was a well-played game for me and

hundreds of others, and why it was a well-played game means

reviewing why the niche existed, what made it unique, and how its

inexorable connection to now obsolete technologies doomed it back

into the forgotten corners of the internet.

It is worth noting that ACTD dealt with, explicitly, creative engage-

ments around a ruthlessly exploited intellectual property. After all, the

players used copywritten materials as foundational content for the

play; it clearly violated the copyrights of numerous authors, artists,

and actors. While the game certainly did its share of afﬁrming copy-

right ownership to Paramount, akin to those deployed by Mod

communities working with licensed content (Johnson, 2009, p. 59),

ACTD began operation in a grey area. When it was launched in 1995,

ofﬁcially as Virtual Trek (or vTrek), on the Microsoft Network (MSN),

and came under legal scrutiny within twelve months. By 1996, MSN

signed an afﬁliation agreement with Paramount Digital Entertainment

(PDE), and the game became the centerpiece for a joint content devel-

opment agreement around Star Trek. From 1996 until 2000, ACTD was

nominally an ofﬁcial part of Star Trek’s online presence, with games

and content ofﬁcially supported by Paramount and Viacom, including

ﬁnancial and technological support and infrastructure through the

startrek.com web domaini.

The community of players that constituted ACTD represented a

unique experience amongst existing MUD/MOO/MUSH-based games

at the time. The communal, imaginative, text-based experience resists

explicit categorization, but its locus for creativity, expression, and inter-

personal development was created for Web 1.0, and if Web 2.0 began

around the year 2000, then was made obsolete in less than a decade.

A CALL TO DUTY AND THE WELL-PLAYED GAME

With its chat-based focus, and backed by website information aggre-

gate services that deﬁned Web 1.0, ACTD represented a style of game

that could only exist in the static, dial-up internet of the mid- to late-

1990s. As Web 2.0, and later 3.0, began to be supported by increasingly

powerful broadband signals and exponential computing power

increases, the textual nature of the game that meant so much to me

disappeared into the shadows of the internet.

INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATIONS

"But maybe, just maybe, Benny isn't the dream. We are. Maybe we're nothing

more than ﬁgments of his imagination. For all we know, at this very moment,

somewhere, far beyond all those distant stars, Benny Russell... is dreaming

of us."

- Captain Benjamin Sisko

What deﬁnes a game is often framed as a form of competition with

goals, rules, feedback, and voluntary participation (McGonigal, 2011,

pp. 19-22). The concept of games systemizes play to emphasize the

struggle against and within the affordances and constraints established

by the rules and mechanics, where "[p]laying a game is the voluntary

attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles" (Suits, 1978, p. 38).

Scholars use a variety of frameworks, exploring the affordances and

constraints either within material, code, or accessibility frameworks to

delineate what constitutes a game, how it is played, and what play is

in relationship to our lives (Sicart, 2017, pp. 1-18).

As a game, ACTD ﬁt a unique niche; a game with rules and

mechanics but in a much softer way than Live Action Roleplaying

(LARP). Game rules are statements or constraints that limit actions

players may take and set up potential actions that are meaningful in

the game world (Juul, 2005, pp. 55-57). These rules create ﬁnite state

machines that limit player interactivity, where inputs fall through the

state machine, and speciﬁc outcomes are determined based on those

inputs. This deﬁnition makes speciﬁc assumptions about the state of

the game, its mechanics, and representations that conform to digital or

analog/tabletop gaming, whose rules and mechanics are mediated

STEPHEN R. MALLORY

materially by content or digitization constructing the interactive expe-

rience. ACTD has rules that govern content, behavior, proper etiquette,

and the use of textual signiﬁers. To call it a ﬁnite state machine would

stretch such a term beyond any known limit. ACTD relied on a bare

structure of text-focused rules, with mechanics that are ultimately

controlled at the whim of the AGM and fellow players in constant

negotiation to achieve a community-focused aesthetic and emotional

experience.

Further, it is tempting to think of ACTD as a game mod. After all, it

can be considered a “continual stream of user-generated content”

(Johnson, 2009, p. 50) designed to keep Star Trek fresh. However, mods

“are not stand-alone systems, as they require the user to have an origi-

nally acquired or authorized copy of the unmodded game” (Scacchi,

2010), and can range from minor quality-of-life improvements, such as

user interface changes, to total conversions that allow players to create

entirely new games and game content on the existing technological

framework of the published gameplay system. As noted by Johnson

(Ibid), most mods disappear, their teams dissolve, and the creation is

never to be completed or litigated away by the copyright holders. A

precious few, such as Team Fortress or CounterStrike, are subsumed by

the holder of the original game copyright and turned into new

commercial content. This process reveals that mods are the extension

of fan labor within ad-hoc development teams, embodying an afﬁnity

space that blurs the line between professional and passionate amateur.

ACTD, by contrast, was an afﬁnity space that took a blurred line and

practically erased it. After all, ACTD was ofﬁcially (albiet brieﬂy) sanc-

tioned and supported by the copyright and intellectual property

holders of Star Trek as part of a larger digital presence and passive

advertising strategy to draw more page views and clicks to the

startrek.com website. While ACTD ﬁts within some of the qualities of

Bruns deﬁnition of produsage (Bruns, 2008), several elements of the

ACTD structure and process resist such broad classiﬁcationii. I would

As will be described later, ACTD required training new players to understand the

rules of the game, used a relatively rigid hierarchy of management, and the generated

content was not necessarily constantly revised and reissued, nor could it be universally

accessed and edited. The result was understood as something that anyone could beneﬁt

A CALL TO DUTY AND THE WELL-PLAYED GAME

The textual artifacts and gameplay experience surrounding ACTD was seemingly

never-ending, each session a discrete starting point but endlessly progressing.

These experiences existed in tension because the outcomes were uncertain and where

the participants would take the story was potentially inﬁnite.

While these games are recorded, the transcripts and provided materials after the fact

fail to capture the speed and potential for anxiety in play. The text is there, but the spirit

of imagination is gone entirely.

While the game has a nominal leader, participants constantly shift between a variety

of roles including researcher, audience, actor, or director.

While the game does have a nominal leader/director, authorship of the play experi-

ence is multiple and simultaneous. There are multiple, simultaneous authors.

The entire play experience may generate multiple discrete units of text, their size,

scale, and scope varies from week to week and participant to participant.

The ACTD experience demands interactivity and is mediated by keyboard and

screen.

argue that we were ultimately creating digimodern texts, the contents

of which are “made up to a varying degree by the reader or viewer or

textual consumer” (Kirby, 2009, p. 51). Every session and resulting

textual artifact exempliﬁed the qualities of onwardnessiii, haphazard-

nessiv, evanescencev, demanding reformulated and intermediated

textual rolesvi, social authorshipvii, textual ﬂuidityviii, and electronic-

digitalityix (Ibid 52-53). Modding a game results in a new product,

item, or system. A digimodern text blends the systematized play of

games with the production of an interactive, collaborative, ultimately

ephemeral text that pushes against the boundaries of classiﬁcation

within existing postmodern frameworks.

ACTD, while explicitly a game and explicitly a digimodern text, can

also be considered a mediated form of playable theater. Each session

was a “live performance that integrates meaningful audience agency,

where participants have some kind of perceivable and transformative

impact on the experience” (Pearce, 2021, p. VII). While not an act of

drama, player participants would embody and broadly act as their

chosen characters or characters in a thematic form of improvisational

theater with the other participants in the chatroom. ACTD can be

considered a game embodying emergent co-creation in a playful

performance (Harper, 2024) at its most fundamental levels. If we

from. Game instances were one-and-done, like the episodes of Star Trek, and optionally

knitted into a larger, game-speciﬁc story and narrative structure; each instance stood

alone once completed and was not revised or revisited later.

As will be described later, ACTD required training new players to understand the

rules of the game, used a relatively rigid hierarchy of management, and the generated

content was not necessarily constantly revised and reissued, nor could it be universally

accessed and edited. The result was understood as something that anyone could beneﬁt

from. Game instances were one-and-done, like the episodes of Star Trek, and optionally

knitted into a larger, game-speciﬁc story and narrative structure; each instance stood

alone once completed and was not revised or revisited later.

iii

vii

viii

STEPHEN R. MALLORY

understand that emergent games are still rule-based systems that

utilize player agency to reconﬁgure how the game unfolds (Juul, 2005),

and the participants co-creating how the story unfolds within the softly

constrained narrative framework of the game, ACTD cleaves closer to a

game where participants are continuously reconstructing the co-

constructed gameplay system and story as it unfolds, relying on all

participants to explore and modify new narrative points and story

outcomes (Harper, 2024, 43-44).

If ACTD was ultimately a systematized, playful, co-created perfor-

mance, the centrality of participant imagination must be considered.

The ﬁeld of Game Studies often sidelines the role of imagination in the

discourse. Adults do not use their imaginations when playing; they

attempt to struggle against the rules, using the mechanics to achieve a

goal in direct competition with another individual or against the game

embodied by the materials or computer code. Game Studies often

present games as texts, useful for case study analysis and critique

(Geertz, 1973), where games are viewed as a mode of competition,

illustration of complex socio-political or cultural markers, or narrative,

where participants struggle either against others or themselves against

the game, rather than an acceptable exploration of their imaginations.

As a result, the ﬁeld tends to delegitimize imaginary play because of its

continued association with children and early-childhood education

(Sutton-Smith, 1997, p. 132). ACTD exempliﬁes the rhetoric of play of

the imaginary (Sutton-Smith, 1997). As a well-played game, ACTD was

built around evoking collective imaginary situations, with rules laid

before the play activity and the outcomes resting both within the

participants' imaginations and the transcripts and associated materials

resulting from the activity.

The play deﬁnitions often cited in Game Studies reinforce this idea

of the play as competition or learning rather than imaginative explo-

ration and aesthetic meaning-making. The concept of the imaginative

reﬂects a childishness that does not include serious study by academics

or designers. Imagination is often recast as cascading representations

of participants within the game (Evans, 2012), or eliminated from the

deﬁnition itself. This work will rely on De Koven's deﬁnition of a

game, which deﬁnes them as:

A CALL TO DUTY AND THE WELL-PLAYED GAME

[block quote]"social ﬁctions, performances, like works of art, which

exist only as long as they are continuously created…[t]hey are not

intended to replace reality, but to suspend consequences. They are not

life. They are, if anything, bigger than life." (2013, p. XVIII)[block

quote]

This deﬁnition is unique within the zeitgeist of Game Studies

because it creates a ﬂatter and more inclusive deﬁnition that avoids the

exclusionary nature of existing discourses. If games are ultimately

social ﬁction, and play is an activity that reinforces that ﬁction, then

"the game we are playing is the script as we have chosen to enact it"

(Ibid). Bringing these above deﬁnitions together, the working deﬁni-

tion for this analysis is that a well-played game is a social ﬁction

enacted by totally engaged participants using a loose script to engage

in communally created imaginary events.

ACTD – THE PLAYFUL AFFINITY SPACE

"Space must have seemed a whole lot bigger back then. It's not surprising they

had to bend the rules a little. They were a little slower to invoke the Prime

Directive, and a little quicker to pull their phasers. Of course, the whole bunch

of them would be booted out of Starﬂeet today. But I have to admit, I would

have loved to ride shotgun at least once with a group of ofﬁcers like that."

- Captain Kathryn Janeway

Not to be confused with the massively popular AAA digital game

series with a similar name, ACTD is a text-based community improvi-

sation narrative construct set in the science ﬁction universe of Star Trek

following the events of the syndicated Television series Star Trek: The

Next Generation. Since its launch in 1995, hundreds of players have

participated either in weekly chat meetings, electronic bulletin-board-

styled forums, or through email threads, creating stories of science

ﬁction struggles inspired by the universe created by Gene Rodden-

berry with its hopeful blend of multiculturalism, futurism, and techno-

logical determinism.

In this case, the loose script was considered ofﬁcial Star Trek lore,

consisting of very vigorously policed bounds of what was considered

STEPHEN R. MALLORY

Films The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country would close out the Original

Series adventures. The ﬁlms Generations, First Contact, and Insurrection would continue

the adventures of the Next Generation crew following the series conclusion in 1994.

These series, the modern Star Trek of its day, were Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star

Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager

There are simply too many texts to list here; taken as a whole franchise, more than

850 Star Trek novelizations have been published since 1968.

acceptable (canon) and unacceptable. Film and television content

volume for Star Trek as a property was high throughout the 1990s and

into the early 2000s when I was most connected to ACTD. This four-

teen-year span, from 1987 to 2001, featured six major motion picturesx

and the complete run of three television seriesxi that proved to be the

creative backbone for the ACTD play universe. A long-standing

cultural constraint of ACTD was to limit information and thematic

content to information produced for and seen on the screen. Ancillary

books, such as the Star Trek Technical Manual (Sternbach & Okuda,

1991) and Deep Space Nine Technical Manual (Zimmerman, Sternbach, &

Drexler, 1998), were considered canon. However, works of ﬁctionxii,

Star Trek Tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), and wargaming

systems were considered off-limits. Content produced for the growing

number of digital games was also off-limits, regardless of their quan-

tity, depth, and connection to screen or ﬁlm. What was allowed for the

shared experiences and imaginary events were only those seen on

screen. This provided rigid guardrails for both constraints and affor-

dances of play in ACTD. Players could not necessarily interact with

signiﬁcant characters and events. They could use those events as back-

story or imaginary priming for their characters and adventures. For

example, players could have characters who served aboard the USS

Enterprise-D but could not contact Captain Jean-Luc Picard for a

chummy chat. This ensured that game activity would not necessarily

run afoul of the presented content. It made players feel more like they

were participating in something more signiﬁcant, indirectly connected

to the shared media events.

These affordances and constraints, determining what was and was

not valid for consideration in the imaginative play space of the game,

helped reinforce that ACTD was as much a game as an afﬁnity space.

xii

A CALL TO DUTY AND THE WELL-PLAYED GAME

I do not connect to mine anymore, but I still remember my number: 396104. I was an

early adopter.

Afﬁnity spaces are inhabited by groups of people who unite around a

unifying interest or engagement in and through an activity. In afﬁnity

spaces, “people are fully engaged in helping each other to learn, act,

and produce, regardless of their age, place of origin, formal credentials,

or level of expertise" (Gee, 2018). ACTD became a place where individ-

uals could come together and learn more about one of their favorite

science ﬁction media series. It was a place where individuals could

engage in regular social interactions, mediated by text and individual-

ized through the screen, that would “resource and mentor learners, old

and new, beginners and masters alike” (Gee & Hayes, 2010, p. 188). In

this case, the afﬁnity space is related far closer to a mutual, interactive,

fan ﬁction writing group, with the Star Trek franchise being “the thing

for which people who move around in the big space have a shared

interest or passion. It also beckons to anyone who enters any part of

the space and seeks to entice him or her to stay in the space” (Gee,

2017, p. 113). The afﬁnes in this group could act out the lives of textual

avatars in that universe, produce weekly improvisational group

performances, write detailed email-based collaborative stories, or

“engage in the activities that keep their shared afﬁnities alive " (p.114).

All this was created while embracing a particular ethos and learning to

use established internet connectivity protocols like mIRC, email, and

BBS systems while integrating cutting-edge technologies like platform-

agnostic instant messaging technologies like ICQxiii.

Regardless of their delivery format, all of the subgenres of play

within the ACTD afﬁnity space use similar frameworks regarding

arrangement, moderation, and text-based communicative pseudo-

languages to communicate actions, activities, or narrative branches.

Rather than delve into the intricacies of all three modes of play, with

chat, play-by-email (PBeM), and play-by-post (PbP), I will focus on the

mIRC-chat-based game, the games longest-running format. New

players would sign up and receive four weeks of training. This

involved brief training games with an assigned Assistant Game Master

(AGM), who would teach players the rules of the game and its textual

xiii

STEPHEN R. MALLORY

frameworks and enculturate participants into the practices of playing

the game with others. After these sessions, the AGM would recom-

mend more training or assign the player to an active weekly game

session. Players would then get to choose a game to join and would be

able to begin participating in the next weekly session. Each game had a

weekly day of the week and time of day to play the game, and it

would last an hour within a speciﬁc channel. Players could access the

game by joining and participating in two separate chat channels simul-

taneously. The primary channel, or game channel (GC), was, by cultur-

ally-enforced rule, unused until play was initiated. A second channel,

the Out-Of-Character Channel (OOC), was utilized for player social-

ization, discussion, and information and exposition dumps. The tran-

scripts for the GC would be saved, edited, emailed to all participants,

and posted to the ship's Bulletin Board System (BBS) for later down-

load. Before the beginning of the next week, players often took the

time to create a log, mimicking the practice ﬁrst illustrated by Captain

Kirk, where their player, through the lens of their character, would

creatively reﬂect on the activities of the previous week's game. Often,

these logs would be brief. Over time, they would evolve into pages of

text written as interstitial short stories, allowing participants to

develop deeper connections with the game, their characters, and their

peers in the playgroup.

An AGM moderated every chat game. The AGM was responsible

for creating and maintaining the vision and direction of the game by

developing the principal storyline, refereeing disputes between play-

ers, and giving opportunities or hooks for players to participate during

the play session. The crew, or player participants, would assume roles

and responsibilities akin to what could be seen during a Star Trek ﬁlm

or television episode. Experienced players often served as the Captain

(CO) and Executive Ofﬁcer (XO), with newer players becoming the

Chief Engineer, Science Ofﬁcer, Helm, Tactical, Operations, Medical

Ofﬁcer, and others, working together to crew a particular starship.

Taken together, the AGM and the crew would cooperatively coauthor

personalized episodes of their own Star Trek series, weaving together

adventures in the spirit of the famous monologue, boldly going where

no one has gone before.

A CALL TO DUTY AND THE WELL-PLAYED GAME

2nd Edition Dungeons and Dragons would be the most succinct example the

dynamic between player and referee and the power dynamics therein

Image 1, Excerpt from a ACTD Chat Game Transcript, 2009

All of this happened over an hour in the designated channels above

in Image 1, utilizing a variety of text-based iconography as a shorthand

for various actions. ACTD is not exactly a game in the

MUD/MOO/MUSH vein, with unique clients and preprogrammed,

turn-based activities. Instead, activities happen in real-time, leading to

a potentially chaotic torrent of text as players narrate their actions and

the AGM responds. Some of the iconography used in these spaces

included ACTION, written in all caps and used by AGMs to denote

signiﬁcant events during the play to which all players could respond.

AGMs and players would use brackets (<>) to speak as NPCs that

were considered fair use by all participants, as well as open/close pairs

of colons (:: ::) to denote a character's actions. In making decisions,

players would use double-curly brackets ({{ }}) to raise questions to the

AGM about the outcome of a player-initiated event.

ACTD, as a playful afﬁnity space, both exempliﬁes and resists the

notion of an elitist afﬁnity space (Duncan & Hayes, 2012, p. 11). ACTD

embodied a clear hierarchy that reﬂected many of the roleplaying

games of its timexiv , with a Game Master playing their role and the

Players playing theirs in co-creating a narrative and story experience

and demanding conformity to the textual norms of the game format.

However, the afﬁnity space fostered by the culture of ACTD resisted

xiv

STEPHEN R. MALLORY

the demands of knowledge production, emphasizing co-participation

and co-creation, and was tolerant of a relatively diverse and broad

deﬁnition of acceptable behavior. That said, while the creation of new

knowledge was not emphasized, welcoming community participation

was emphasized, and exclusionary behavior by participants in terms of

harassment was not tolerated. ACTD was a cooperative, playful

afﬁnity space that was a site “of potential discussion” (Duncan S. C.,

2024, p. 24), where the intricacies of Star Trek lore would be discussed,

explored, and argued over. Because the game existed within a partic-

ular set of content constraints, where only information presented

onscreen was considered valuable and available for coopting during

gameplay, much like arguing over the complexities of a published

digital game (Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2008), the community in ACTD

took to intensely debating and exploring speculative technology (aka

Treknology), ﬁlmed stories, dialog, and costumed creatures viewed on

screen or in ﬁlm. These debates would begin fostering elements of

negotiation and contestation because ACTD existed as a cooperative,

co-created, co-played, co-engaged virtual space, mediated, and

presented strictly in text; the usually ﬁrm line between the game

designer and the game player was virtually nil, and any contestation at

that level would ultimately lead to participants not playing the game.

The case described within this paper is heavily situated in a speciﬁc

moment of history, and much of the community interactivity and

frameworks therein have moved on into far more contentious spaces

and atmospheres (Duncan S. C., 2024, pp. 30-31). Framing this moment

helps explain the unique nature of the afﬁnity space that existed in this

instance.

The ACTD afﬁnity space existed in a liminal period of internet

history when the internet was less of the consolidated space of today.

The internet in this period was ﬁlled with local internet service

providers (LISPs) connecting to the broader internet. Dial-up connec-

tion was the norm. In 1994, widespread adoption of broadband

internet was six years away as ADSL was looming on the horizon.

Companies like Microsoft, America Online, and others were content

aggregates, each vying for subscription fees on top of the LISP fees.

Games like Neverwinter Nights (Beyond Software, 1991) were big attrac-

A CALL TO DUTY AND THE WELL-PLAYED GAME

https://www.acalltoduty.com/

tions, even if they required additional fees on top of everything else

spent to access the internet. Due to bandwidth considerations, text was

the dominant means of interaction when a 56k BAUD modem was the

standard for internet connectivity. Whether in chatrooms, instant

messengers, or internet bulletin boards, the internet was constrained

by the computers of the time, with comparatively ﬁnite storage,

memory, and especially transmission bandwidth when measured

against today's machines. These constraints led to participants

consuming a diet of static images, low-resolution gifs, and copious

amounts of text. ACTD exempliﬁed this attempt by a major organiza-

tion, Paramount, to leverage the limitations of existing internet connec-

tivity to drive and keep individuals connected to the internet and,

more speciﬁcally, their speciﬁc website.

All of this would change within the next decade. The launch of

broadband internet would sound the death knell for the initial text-

based internet. Within ﬁve years, Web 1.0, dominated by telephony

modems, would begin to evolve into the broadband-based Web 2.0.

This evolution would lead text-based games like ACTD to wither, and

the novelty of the imagination would be squashed by streaming music

and video. Today, the Call of Dutyxv website reﬂects this withering; a

roster of two dozen participants still haunts a publicly linked discord

server, struggling to maintain a site riddled with dead hyperlinks. The

once thriving, playful community that existed here twenty years ago

has all but disappeared.

ACTD was and is a much-diminished afﬁnity space engaged in

constant communication via email, chat, or bulletin boards, and it was

a well-played game. It was a literal social ﬁction, instantiated not

through code or mediated by an interactive graphical interface but

through text streams. These streams were ﬁlled with signs demanding

attention and interpolation, giving rise to imaginative play and

demanding total participation of the players. The loose script, guided

by the AGM and generated weekly by the players, evokes communally

created imaginary events that keep the plot moving forward. These

individually created and yet communally experienced imaginary

STEPHEN R. MALLORY

events provide a uniﬁed, playful experience. This game, developed

around this shared community of genre and content, was built, main-

tained, and constrained by the internet in that technological and

cultural moment. The rise of Web 2.0 and the immediacy that broad-

band provided, in both passive and interactive content, doomed the

community to be just another footnote of a footnote in early internet

gaming history, an evolutionary dead-end pruned from the

MUD/MOO family tree.

ACTD – THE WELL-PLAYED GAME

"What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived"

- Admiral Jean-Luc Picard

The call for this analysis asked the critic to center on a game that

inspired them to become more deeply involved with games in some

way. This meant a game could be a source of comfort and inspiration

for future careers in professional game design, academia, or both. The

key descriptor is that the game must be "well-played." Further, what

deﬁned a well-played game was left intentionally broad, including

analog and digital games, AR or mixed reality, and LARPing as accept-

able games for study. These were all game genres that cleave much

closer to the game studies ﬁeld-expected deﬁnitions and concepts of

rules, mechanics, and systematized play. ACTD, as noted above, is not

that kind of game – and it may even be a stretch to call it a game in the

formal sense.

This game compelled me creatively for over a decade, and its inﬂu-

ence reverberates through my heart and mind. When I need to be

creative, my imagination turns back to this game above all others.

Star Trek has been an important imaginative science ﬁction fran-

chise in my life. Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (Sallin, 1982) was one of

the ﬁrst ﬁlms I remember. I watched the ﬁrst episode of Star Trek: The

Next Generation, "Encounter at Farpoint" (Fontana & Roddenberry,

1987) on a small black and white television. My brother passed down

his passion for science ﬁction to me when he moved out to go to

college, leaving me gorgeous texts like the Star Trek Star Fleet Technical

A CALL TO DUTY AND THE WELL-PLAYED GAME

Arguably, a Season 3 was created as a love letter for the fans of Star Trek through the

1980s and 1990s

Manual (Joseph, 1975) and the exquisitely illustrated Star Trek Space-

ﬂight Chronology (Goldstein & Goldstein, 1980). Pouring over these

texts primed me for adventures in the Star Trek future, seeking out

new life and new civilizations, boldly going in the face of threats from

nefarious Klingons and devious Romulans. The books my brother left

behind when he moved halfway across the country to attend univer-

sity afforded me that chance. I imagined serving on a ﬁve-year mission

aboard a Constitution-Class starship, cataloging gaseous anomalies

across the Alpha Quadrant, and serving with an equitable crew; my

ultimate dream and escape from the world around me.

When I found ACTD, I found my people: a collection of individuals

that spanned interests from general Star Trek fans, former high school

actors and performers, current university students, and even strug-

gling writers and academics. Sitting here now, I can think of a handful

of players who are now PhDs, researching in academia. The afﬁnity

group was ﬁlled with people like me, who methodically poured over

what we saw on screen for deeper, coherent meanings that built the

verisimilitude of the narrative. We are the stereotypical fans for whom

season 3 of Star Trek: Picardxvi was created.

Image 2. Hyperlink collection of ACTD Chat Games from the 5th Fleet

(Circa 2000)

My ACTD engagement ran deep. Over my ﬁrst year, I moved up

from a simple player to the Captain of a new ship, the USS Orion.

Within another six months, I was made the AGM of the Orion. I would

xvi

STEPHEN R. MALLORY

USS Orion, USS Quinirus, USS Pharaoh, USS Claymore

play on or run multiple ships over the yearsxvii, including managing an

entire "ﬂeet" or subgroup within the afﬁnity group with upwards of

sixty players (see Image 2 above). I would help launch the play-by-

email game and run one of those games for a year. I would run several

game-wide storylines, where every chat game would focus on creating

and exploring a broader narrative and contributing their spin on the

outcome. I also led the team that formalized and developed most of the

technical speciﬁcations, crafting a formalized deep lore about each Star

Trek starship technology used in the game. I ﬁnd the most comfort in

how I helped informally change how the players generated the

personal logs for the game.

Logs, when I began playing, were always written from the charac-

ter's perspective. Within the ﬁrst year, these impersonal summations

became far more involved and directly related to characterizations.

Over the years, these logs evolved, becoming more vehicles for

exploring my creative writing abilities and ultimately informing my

love of writing. At a certain point, academics must embrace writing,

ﬁnding their voice through text to create engaging narratives to entice

and attract readers. I am not saying that these logs were well written.

They are often ﬁlled with overblown expressions of pathos. What these

logs did was help me ﬁnd my creative voice and help prepare me for

the discipline of writing engaging works.

Image 3. Screenshot showing an excerpt from an Ofﬁcer's log (Circa

1997)

xvii

A CALL TO DUTY AND THE WELL-PLAYED GAME

Image 3 is a capture of a log written in 1997. Yes, it has errors,

which are included, but the format is what is important. These logs

were focused on a formality lifted from the screen and placed into

words. From the odd use of fonts to the stilted language, it tries to ﬁt

an assumed structure that mirrors the monologues in television and

ﬁlm. The form was more important than the function. The writing

poorly mimics the spoken word. There are hints of characterization,

plenty of formatting errors, and incomplete sentences, but the result is

not interesting. After all, it is structured for those who know what

happened in the game, not as a means of communicating that game-

play experience for public consumption.

Image 4. Screenshot showing an excerpt from an Ofﬁcer's log (Circa

2003)

Image 4 above reﬂects a fundamental shift from the frameworks

established six years prior. The typos remain, but the formal titles, the

ﬁnery, and the structure that serve as a weak scaffold for events that

have explicitly happened in the previous game are gone. In its place is

an attempt at creating an engaging written response. Here, the function

has shifted from merely providing a written replay of the previous

session to one where exploration of narrative and characterization

beyond the play session has become the norm. Instead of recapping

what has happened before, it sets the stage for something happening

STEPHEN R. MALLORY

between game sessions, serving as a creative bridge for readers to

understand better the motivations of that character previously and

moving forward.

The afﬁnity group that was ACTD was, therefore, as much an

afﬁnity group for imaginative play as it was for writing. My desire to

express myself textually, building ephemeral connections between

ﬁctional characters in the far future, was a way of exploring myself.

The characters I inhabited became ways to pull off the carefully

curated masks I had maintained and examine aspects of my identity.

Over the years, I cultivated a collection of characters, developing intri-

cate backstories tied into Star Trek lore, each letting me embrace, narra-

tively, aspects of myself that I had learned to block out, hide from, or

ignore. Through these explorations, ACTD became my well-played game

because I could be myself while joining a community bound by hope.

Star Trek has always had an optimistic vision of the future, and ACTD

allowed me to ﬁnd hope through my characters and use the shared

play experience to understand better what that meant by playing char-

acters more conﬁdent, more assertive, bolder, or more emotionally

aware and communicative than I was in that time. This exploration

allowed me to realize my conﬁdence and assertiveness, developing a

healthier understanding of my emotions.

By 2007, just before the Great Recession, my time with ACTD ended.

By then, 16 years had passed, and I was one of the last of the original

AGMs still involved with the game. Between chat and play-by-email

games, administration, and project time, I estimate that I put in about

ten hours of play and labor per week into the game, sometimes more if

my friends engaged in more spontaneous, free-form play in empty chat

rooms. Taken together, that is almost 7300 hours playing and adminis-

tering the game, and even that number feels conservative. By the

summer of 2007, the playful culture and the creative boundaries I had

explored were shifting; a new generation of AGMs and GMs began

leading the community with new ideas. My understanding of that

culture was lagging, and my willingness to engage with what it had

become was minimal. Where there was once the opportunity to explore

or even challenge slightly the existing understanding of Star Trek and

A CALL TO DUTY AND THE WELL-PLAYED GAME

the series' understanding and definition of hope, now the focus was on

simplification, streamlining, and adhering far more rigorously to a more

stringent interpretation of the Star Trek universe. That felt like a creative

death sentence; I had played the game and wanted something more.

So, I left the game and closed the door on that part of my life. That

is not to say I cut ties entirely with everything therein, but I moved on

from the game and became another footnote in the game's history. In

that time, I developed a circle of friends, comrades, and loved ones. We

continued to dabble, here and there, playing the game the way we

enjoyed via email. We had all grown up together, and despite our

collective love for imaginative play, the stress of the real world and the

responsibilities of our lives took precedence. The relationships forged

in those chatrooms, bulletin boards, and email strings – to this day –

have not been replicated. I am proud that some of them still exist and

are stronger than ever.

ACTD represented a particularly curious moment in internet

history, one whose conditions straddled the end of the dial-up internet

and ushered in the broadband internet. The technologies that afforded

these creative spaces have disappeared, subsumed by other frag-

mented platforms lacking the ﬁrst web's agnosticism. IRC-based chat

clients still exist, but their immediacy has been replaced by mobile

platform chat and text messaging. Chatrooms have uniquely splin-

tered, appearing in game clients, software platforms like Discord, and

group chats through mobile phones, and the bulletin boards exist more

publicly, appearing as forums in places like Reddit, Internet

Comments, and the various Chans.

ACTD also represented a particularly curious moment in my

history. A variety of games have always been sticky for me. Using

Steam as a measurement device, I have games where I have spent

countless hours playing a variety of games, from Hearts of Iron IV

(5663.4 hours played) and Stellaris (2391.4 hours played) to Civilization

IV (550.4 hours played), but those are still 3000+ hours short of what I

the number of hours I gave to ACTD. Games have forever been a part

of my life; I grew up in a home with parents who were early adopters

who were among the ﬁrst in the neighborhood to purchase an Atari

STEPHEN R. MALLORY

Pac Man and Pitfall! being particularly memorable

My brother often traded games with peers at school; my formative titles were Lode

Runner, Ultima, Choplifter, Karateka, and Zork

VCS/2600xviii and an Apple IIexix. The ﬁrst draft of this paper focused

on the countless editions of Dungeons and Dragons I have played

(which also explains my TTRPG rulebook addiction). However, the

ACTD game experience did more than give me a playful outlet for a

quick dopamine hit and satisfaction from engaging in a small amount

of ﬂow. ACTD gave me access to imaginative play eschewed by the

market and material demands of the game industry. It taught me conﬁ-

dence in my creative writing ability, allowing me to develop my

distinctive textual voice. Most of all, ACTD gave me a community

when I needed it most. It brought me in contact with friends I still

cherish and communicate with daily. More than anything, ACTD gave

me the conﬁdence to pull off the masks I had been wearing. As a well-

played game, it fostered a decades-long afﬁnity group that generated

playful, creative engagements that evoked shared imaginative experi-

ences, touching something essential in our understanding of play.

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Virtual Worlds. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 530-543.

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Space Nine Technical Manual. New York: Pocket Books.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This paper would not be possible without a unique cohort of individ-

uals with whom I played ACTD and whose creative company was

unmatched for over a decade: Tiffany Knoell Ph.D., Mark Tucker,

Robert Siwiak, Adam Edwards, James Young, Jamie Sanders, Andrew

Dalrymple, Renee Rehn, Maryanne Greska, and many many others

who came and went.

We should do it again sometime.

FALLOUT: LONDON

A WELCOME RETURN TO TRADITIONAL

GAME DEVELOPMENT VALUES

TERRY GREER

INTRO

n December 28th 2024, Mark Warren, a Senior Staff Writer

for vg247.com, a website established in 2008 for discussing

all things videogames, wrote an article entitled “Sure,

gaming in 2024 had some killer underrated gems, but it was really the

year of the mod” (Warren 2024a).

The online article is a short light overview of the year in which he

reﬂects on the past year and considers the best games of the year. This

year, however, he has little to say about mainstream and AAA (triple

A) games, largely down to the dire state of the current industry.

Instead, he contents himself with identifying a few interesting indie

games, noting that some of the best experiences of the past year have

tended to be game ‘mods’, and that this year those mods took “...a big

step forward”. The step forward to which he refers is that mods are

(again) becoming increasingly mainstream, often supported by the

original game’s developer itself, and that some are so detailed and

ambitious that they are effectively complete brand-new games.

In his article Warren particularly singles out for praise a mod of

Fallout 4 known as Fallout: London (Team FOLON 2024)

TERRY GREER

Having played it extensively I consider it to be arguably one of the

most important game mods ever created, for reasons that include

vision, organisation, and sheer scope. Other reasons hark back to why

many people become game developers or decide to study games in the

ﬁrst place, while some have echoes from the very dawn of the industry

itself.

WHAT ARE MODS

A ‘Mod’ is a term used to describe fan-made content for games that can

be compiled into the ﬁnal game to mod (modify) the experience. Mods

are not new; they have been around since almost the dawn of the game

industry.

When I ﬁrst entered the game industry in the late 1980s, many

video games were often the result of single individuals, or small teams,

and their skills often had to be hugely cross-discipline to create

anything at all. In the early days of game development, the third-party

game engines that we think of today (such as Unreal or Unity) simply

didn’t exist and instead game developers would reuse sections of code

from previous games and often license additional ‘middleware’ code

for specialized functions such as “Havok for physics, Miles Sound

System for controlling audio or Bink for playing video codecs” (Partha

2012). These gradually morphed into early approaches to reusable

‘engines’ such as SCUMM, used by Lucas Arts for their graphical

adventures (Bevan 2013). SCUMM stood for ‘Script Creation Utility for

Manic Mansion’ which was created for Manic Mansion and continually

expanded thereafter with each new game release, to allow for more

complex actions. This makes it one of the earliest identiﬁable game

engines that were used.

Market forces (and improving hardware capacity and speed)

inevitably led to team sizes rapidly expanding, with team members

becoming more specialized in their skillsets in pursuit of larger and

grander visions. It also led to most game companies developing, like

Lucas Arts, an internal ‘engine team’ to maintain that reusable portion

of a game that helped speed up production, and effectively to create

their own reusable core ‘engine’.

FALLOUT: LONDON

Using middleware as a model, many companies decided that main-

taining this code was expensive, and perhaps they could license this

internal game tech as something that could similarly be reusable by

other companies. While licensing a game engine could be expensive, it

did reduce the amount of work required to maintain the bulk of a

game’s code base and allowed the licensing company to concentrate

instead on adding new features and creating actual game content

(models, artwork, animations, levels and other assets).

It was about this time (1996) that Unreal started to carve out its

dominance. When I was head of Game Design at Microprose UK we

licensed the original Unreal Engine for XCom Alliance (Microprose n.d.)

before the ﬁrst Unreal game was released (Greer 2018) and, at that

time, negotiation of a license would involve huge sums of money. I

don’t know what the ﬁnal agreement was, and how it broke down into

upfront costs and royalties, but it certainly cost hundreds of thousands

of dollars, and I’ve since heard anecdotal reports of over the ﬁnal price

tag being one million dollars.

These reusable game engines had to be easy to learn and be usable

by non-programmers. They also had to be well documented, otherwise

any proﬁt earned by licensing their game engine would be lost through

additional technical support and the risk of alienating their licensors.

The side effect of this was that this meant they were also easy for

non-developers (i.e. players). Players could actually look at a game’s

installed ﬁles and investigate properties and assets. This was some-

thing that hadn’t really been available much before. Soon there were

editors that allowed modifying and customisation of games. Indeed,

the early Unreal games, and any game that used Unreal as it’s engine,

actually shipped with the Unreal editor itself as part of the install.

Anyone could just go into the install ﬁle on their PC, ﬁnd the editor

executable and run it, allowing them to create new levels and mod the

game they had just bought.

Companies like Epic actively wanted players to continue using

their engine as much as possible. It gave them a form of ‘market share’,

and simultaneously vastly increased the pool of people who under-

stood the engine. For the ﬁrst time it became common for job appli-

cants for game development positions to be able to demonstrate their

TERRY GREER

skills using a third party engine that a company might use. The more

the pool of developers knew how to use a game engine, the more likely

that engine was to be licensed in the ﬁrst place.

This feedback loop created an active mod scene that revolutionised

the way players thought about game development and led to the ﬁrst

golden age of mods and modding.

The appeal of mods was, and still is, largely down to the fact that

those unable to create a game from scratch could still quickly learn

how to make changes to a game in order to affect the overall experi-

ence in some distinctive way.

This democratisation of game development was no small event.

Without modders and modding the game industry would be a very

different place today.

Image 1: Minor Mods include graphic overhauls such as this

Quake skin.

Although there’s no agreed clear sliding scale or deﬁnitions for

what constitutes a mod, the most frequent forms are normally consid-

ered to be roughly as follows:

Minor/cosmetic mods – such as modifying a character skin

(Fig 1) in Quake (Id Software 1996) or upgrading materials

with higher-resolution textures.

FALLOUT: LONDON

Functional mods – e.g. adding a feature that changes gameplay

in some way. This could be as simple as a new weapon, or

something more complex such as a completely new play mode.

Level mods – new themed game levels which include

potentially new environments or experiences. Game levels

are in many ways a manifestation of either all, or some

subset, of the overall game’s mechanics. It’s hard to build a

game level (unless purely aesthetically) without having all a

game’s relevant mechanics playable. Theming a level to a

speciﬁc mix of mechanics works well as a way of showing a

level’s uniqueness either in narrative, navigation or

gameplay. (Note that game levels are also often

differentiated using unique cosmetic additions.)

Total conversion mods – the largest mods. They tend to be

comprehensive projects that include all the previously-

mentioned minor mod types. This added complexity can

sometimes lead to them being considered whole new games.

A good, and well-known, example of this is the original

Counter-Strike (Calvin 2019), which was originally a mod of

Half-Life (Fig 2) made by Minh Le and Jess Cliffe.

Image 2: Counter-Strike started out as a fan-made mod of Half-Life.

Modding has, since its earliest beginnings, been a clear route into

game industry employment, along with being a useful way of demon-

strating complex and hugely relevant technical skills. For example,

TERRY GREER

Minh Le and Jess Cliffe were both later employed at Valve largely on

the back of their Counter-Strike mod (Valve 2000). Valve have done this

repeatedly: for example, Kim Swift (Swift 2007), a graduate of the

DigiPen Institute of Technology, plus many individuals from her

project team, were hired to convert the work done on their team project

Narbacular Drop into the iconic game Portal (Valve 2007).

Another good example of a modder gaining employment from

their work is Kris Takahashi, who was most recently a full-time

designer on Starﬁeld. Kris started off by modding Morrowind (Bethesda

Game Studios 2002). As he says in a biograph on Bethesda’s website: “I

spent a lot of time looking into mods, started making my own, and eventually

got a little too ambitious trying to redesign all of Morrowind.” (Bethesda.net

2024). Eventually Kris moved onto modding Fallout, which led to

Bethesda employing him full-time.

This pattern is common. Modders gain experience with a compa-

ny’s game engine (such as Bethesda’s Creation Kit) and, being free from

the pressure of full-time work, can push their mods in interesting and

unexpected directions. They then become well-known in the modding

scene, and the best get approached directly and offered a position or

are recognized for their skills if they simply apply to the company (in

the absence of a speciﬁc job role advert).

In the same way, offers have also ﬂooded in for some of those who

worked on Fallout: London (which I’ll cover in more detail later). But

ﬁrst, what is this game?

WHAT IS FALLOUT: LONDON?

Fallout: London (FL) is a huge DLC-sized total-conversion mod for

Fallout 4 (Swift 2024).

This type of mod is sometimes known as a ‘replacement mod’, as,

unlike other minor mods, installing it overwrites and replaces the main

program and much of the original data, making it incompatible with

the standard game and the save game. For example, if the player ever

wants to revert to the original Fallout 4 game, they will have to delete

both the FL mod, and the original game ﬁrst then reinstall the original

game from scratch.

FALLOUT: LONDON

Image 3: Fallout: London is a ground-breaking game mod based on

Fallout 4 and is the ﬁrst Fallout game to be set outside north America.

Fallout: London is the brainchild of ‘Team FOLON’. This was set up

by Dean Carter (Director) and Callum J Quick (Chief operating Ofﬁ-

cer), with a disparate group of amateurs and moonlighting profes-

sionals (consisting at times of almost 100 developers, and a similar

number of voice actors) who spent ﬁve years on realising their initial

ambition.

Throughout, Team FOLON kept the interest alive through a regular

series of progress videos (Team FOLON:YouTube 2024a), and status

updates, going all the way back to 2019 (Team FOLON:YouTube

2024b).

The team members worked remotely on this mammoth project,

synchronising and organising it via Discord. The very ﬁrst work shown

on Discord was dated 3 August 2018, and the game was ﬁnally released

on 25 July 2024.

The sheer scale and ambition of the project is truly staggering, and

it is the largest, most detailed and, I think, important game mod of

recent years.

Although Bethesda support third-party modding of their games

(Nunneley-Jackson 2012), albeit with some code and multiplayer

exceptions in games such as Fallout76 (Dorn 2024), its status as an

unofﬁcial game means it can’t be sold because of copyright. It is,

however, available free to download.

Installing FL to Steam means you need to undo the next gen

updates that Bethesda forced on players just before FL was due to be

TERRY GREER

released. These ‘updates’ pushed the FL mod’s release back. Bethesda’s

update also broke a great number of well-established mods and all

these problems proved impossible for team FOLON to work around

(Zwiezen 2024). This ‘surprise next gen update’ certainly affected FL’s

release date and almost certainly the number of early bugs experi-

enced. For a while they tried to work round it – but too much was

broken and, in the end, Team FOLON gave up and required that the

update was ‘wound back’ before FL was installed.

However, while FL can be installed under Steam, it’s much easier to

install it via Good Old Games (GOG). Team FOLON and GOG worked

closely together, and GOG helped support and host the mod and its

release. By using GOG’s heavily-discounted Fallout 4 Game Of The Year

(GOTY) edition, it becomes a simple matter to install the mod without

having to wind back anything.

On FL’s release it became the fastest ever redeemed mod on GOG

after being downloaded over 500,000 times in the ﬁrst 24 hours (Lyes

2024). It’s also now reached well over a million downloads from GOG,

making it the most popular mod ever released (Pureza 2024).

The term mod doesn’t do FL justice as the size and amount of

content is comparable to a complete game in the Fallout Franchise: it

has been likened to the size of Fallout 4 and its DLC (a term that refers

to ofﬁcial additional Downloadable Content for a game) Far Harbour

combined.

So, apart from size, why is it so important?

The Fallout games are large open-world action RPGs set in a post-

apocalyptic world.

The ﬁrst few games were isometric exploration games: Fallout 1&2

(Interplay 1997/8) were set in New California; Fallout Tactics (Micro Forte

2001) is set in the American Midwest; Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios

2008) the ﬁrst of the 3D games, was set in the Capital Wasteland

around and in Washington DC; Fallout New Vegas was set in the Mojave

wasteland and what was left of Las Vegas; Fallout 4 (Bethesda Game

Studios 2015), was set in the ‘Commonwealth’, in and around the ruins

of Boston and the east coast; while the most recent multiplayer Fallout

76 (Bethesda Game Studios 2018) is set in Appalachia and what’s left of

West Virginia.

FALLOUT: LONDON

Todd Howard, director and executive producer at Bethesda Game

Studios, who is particularly responsible for the Fallout, Elder Scrolls

and Starﬁeld franchises, said, in a recent interview with Greg Millar on

Kinda Funny Gamescast, that Fallout, with its ’50s retro futurism, was

inextricably linked to US popular culture, and he couldn’t see how it

could work in any other setting (Parijat 2024).

He might think that, but Fallout: London shows how wrong he is.

PLAYING FALLOUT: LONDON

Unlike all previous Fallout Games, which were set in the US, FL is set

in the UK, and at a time placing it somewhere between Fallout 3 and 4.

What is apparent from the very start is that Todd Howard’s belief

that Fallout can’t exist outside of the ’60s US cultural bubble, is utterly

false.

Image 4: Right from the start familiar elements such as London

Underground or the brick-built streets and architecture create a very

different feel to any other Fallout Game.

The retro ’50s/’60s UK setting, while culturally different, is just as

rich in symbolism, just as relevant and just as crazily appropriate as

the focus on Americana in the original game.

Rather than showing the Cold War from an America perspective,

when playing FL, we are immediately presented with the use of

imagery and audio from the 1950s ‘Protect and Survive’ UK govern-

ment videos (Zarity 2018). This is all proof that America isn’t alone in

its experience of that evocative time, which held so much threat and

TERRY GREER

promise. The UK had the added frisson of being a country that had

recently experienced war ﬁrst-hand, being bombed during the Second

World War. Most developed countries (especially those that were

involved heavily in the war and its aftermath) take that same period

(from the end of WW2 onwards) as a golden age of optimism for the

future: today that has been coloured by a rising cynicism, making it

just as ripe for nostalgic parody.

The wartime kitsch associated with the Fallout franchise, along

with the fear of nuclear holocaust, memories of the revitalisation of

economies and the embracing of science after WW2 are echoed simi-

larly in all western nations. The United States does not have a

monopoly on this.

Playing FL for the ﬁrst time is a compelling, interesting and

endearing mix of exploration, revelation, frustration and joy.

After the usual character creation step, you wake up (not knowing

who or where you are) in a glass restraining pod, where you are

assessed by a couple of scientists (voiced by former Doctor Whos

Sylvester Macoy and Colin Baker. This really helps set the stage and

makes you feel that this is something special and quintessentially

British. Suddenly the facility is raided and the scientists killed, but the

glass is damaged, allowing you to punch your way out and escape the

complex.

As with all Fallout games this initial experience allows you to

familiarise yourself with the controls, and to meet one of the new

enemy types – the RadShrew, a tiny ball of venomous viciousness that

is both tough and annoying.

As you explore, you get nicknamed ‘The Wayfarer’ by the shadowy

Ms Smythe (who you will repeatedly encounter) before escaping the

Shard (your starting location) via London Bridge station and an under-

ground train. The train then crashes leaving you stranded alone,

injured and suffering amnesia, a true stranger in a very strange land.

Whole new plot and setting – Many of the traditional US-based

Fallout elements, such as super mutants and the ubiquitous vault-tech

sites, aren’t present in Fallout: London, but, to compensate, lots of new

quirkily-British mutated threats are introduced, including badgers

(vicious and huge), foxes, Wombles (effectively FL’s version of Death-

FALLOUT: LONDON

claws) which are ﬁrst encountered near Wimbledon, RadShrews,

leeches, killer post boxes and walking naval mines.

But it is the encounters with the various factions created for Fallout:

London that stand out and make the most impact, and there are many

of these (Tang 2024).

Image 5: It’s clear that this will be a very different experience and that

attention to detail is very high. Your ﬁrst meeting with the Vagabonds

shows just how different this experience will be.

New factions – There are over two dozen factions and variants

throughout the game, which is astounding. They are well-designed

and unique, and ﬁt with the setting. These factions include the Camelot

Knights (effectively medieval cosplayers trying to kickstart a new age

based on chivalry), and the Tommies (more or less WW2 era soldiers

that draw upon more recent nostalgia). There are also several crime

gangs, the main two being the Vagabonds (a Peaky Blinders inspired

faction) and their nemesis The Isle of Dogs Syndicate. But they’re not

alone.

What still survives in the West End of London is controlled by the

Gentry and they, in turn, are threatened by the Fifth Column (totalitarian

fascists). There are also the shadowy Angels, a sort of technological

shadow organisation that seems to be calling many of the shots across

London, reminiscent of the Institute in Fallout 4.

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Image 6: Greenwich is home to the Jack Tars a bizarre faction that live in

land-locked boats.

Image 7: The Jack Tars dress in period navel costume and use insanely

powerful muskets with a 10 second reload!

One of my favourite factions is the Jack Tars. These dress like 18th-

century nautical militia and live in land-locked ships including the

Cutty Sark in Greenwich: they use insanely powerful ﬂintlocks that

take over 10 seconds to reload!

Other new factions include: the Thames Folk (humans mutated by

radiation into having gills and becoming amphibians); the Cultists,

who worship Cthulhu toys; and another of my favorites, the Beefeaters.

Your first encounter with these vicious cannibals, who control the

Tower of London and Tower Bridge, is hugely memorable. Much

later, after clearing them out and picking through the remains of the

Tower of London, you can find one of their prized possessions, The

Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch itself, hidden in a turret room. The

range of factions and quests involving them, and the ways they

FALLOUT: LONDON

interact with other factions, is impressive. It’s fresh, fun and totally

bonkers but, within the framing of the Fallout franchise, makes total

sense.

Post-apocalyptic London – The map of Fallout: London is immense,

so large that it’s broken down into several subloads and distinct areas.

The ability to explore a Fallout-themed London is, of course, one of the

main attractions of the game, and here the attention to detail is again

mind-blowing for a mod team.

Some areas are a totally trashed and radioactive wasteland (such as

the area around the Millenium Dome and Eastwards). Other areas,

while badly damaged, have recovering and seemingly-vibrant commu-

nities (e.g. Camden Locks or St Pauls). A few locations, such as the

West End, from Trafalgar Square down through Westminster to Buck-

ingham Palace, are almost unscathed and even feature a partially

working underground system, complete with escalators. Each London

area feels distinct and home to very speciﬁc communities and factions.

The overall feel is one of society that is just ‘Keeping Calm and

Carrying On’, which makes this Fallout world even more uniquely

British.

Being largely an urban environment, FL it is structured denser to

other Fallout games, and is more linear in construction.

Rather than being largely fully open from the outset, this time the

overall map is gradually revealed and unlocked via player actions and

quests. Initially these distinct routes give pacing and structure and

represent a refreshing return to harder linear RPG games.

While you can explore almost anywhere if you really put your

mind to it, unlike Fallout 3 or 4 or New Vegas, the FL map often has deﬁ-

nite routes for connecting different areas, and an overall pacing that

gradually unlocks the map as questlines are encountered or solved.

This means that, rather than the more open sandbox exploration we’ve

got used to in Fallout games, you often ﬁnd that the map is more

‘node-based’ and this to some extent controls the rollout of new

locations.

Ammo, weapons and armour are also somewhat rationed, and it

takes longer for the player to develop a strategy and build up a reason-

able inventory. However, this isn’t a ﬂaw as it makes the overall experi-

TERRY GREER

ence far more like a traditional RPG and refreshingly different: you feel

that you have earned everything you ﬁnd.

It also feels appropriate given the far higher density of the map

and, strangely, seems to encourage real and careful exploration. This is

especially true in the earlier stages of the game when opening up the

game too fast could have been confusing, and it allows you to get to

know the myriad of factions at a comfortable pace.

Along with the main quests there are also, inevitably, a lot of fairly

mundane ‘fetch quests’. There are, however, also some truly

outstanding one-off encounters and quests that come out of nowhere

and which leave a long-lasting impression. One of my favorite encoun-

ters is the Peruvian Artifact Quest that takes place in the British

Museum, and which I accidentally joined and activated whilst explor-

ing. The museum, while run down, still has a lot of valuable historical

artifacts all guarded by an insane AI hell-bent on disposing of all ‘loot-

ers’. It’s superbly written and hugely funny.

The AI system is called TERRY (Techno Electronic Robotic Reposi-

tory of Yore) which I also found hilarious. Fallout: London is full of

similar original and well-created content.

Image 8: Churchill – an indestructible Bulldog companion and a real

‘good boy’.

As for companions, rather than Dogmeat you can get an interesting

range, my favorite being Churchill, an indestructible Bulldog that I got

from a Tommy early in the game. There are several more great char-

acter alternatives that I won’t reveal to spoil the surprise. Dialogue and

FALLOUT: LONDON

voice acting for these is funny, extensive and generally very good

indeed.

Insane degree of customization — Everything has had a cosmetic

make-over, starting with the Fallout staple the ‘Pipboy’ (which in Fall-

out: London becomes the Attaboy). There’s a complete change to the

perk system and animations, including some weird perks such as

‘sleepwalking’ that can reset your position almost anywhere on the

map whenever you take a long rest.

Even incidental assets such as telephones, toys, canned goods, food,

comics, drinks and all collectables have been redesigned with period

Britain in mind: beer mats can be collected to gain perks, for example,

and underground tickets replace bottlecaps as the main currency. There

are also hours of additional audio including original parodies of ’60s

music hits (such as ‘Nuclear Submarine’) and a couple of fun radio

channels to listen to. Everything has changed – and it feels glorious.

The game is a visual delight. It rewards exploration with novelty at

every turn and feels British to the core while simultaneously feeling

100% Fallout. This is a total make-over that has managed what seemed

impossible.

Depending on your individual playstyle, and how sidetracked you

get with optional quests, it could take anywhere from 25 to well over

100 hours to complete.

Given the fact that this works, and works so well, it’s clear that

many other cultures could be equally interesting if given a similar, and

reverent, Fallout make-over.

In fairness, my initial impression of Fallout: London was mixed. It

was simultaneously an astounding piece of work, a monumental

achievement and also a hot-mess of bugs that initially rendered the

game almost unplayable. One of the ﬁrst reviews I saw of the mod

(From the PC Gamer site) recognized that same failing, labelling their

review “Fallout: London is a truly impressive modding achievement that

mostly hits the mark, but it's barely playable right now” (Wolens 2024).

But, like me, the reviewer could still see the gold within and, over-

all, the review was positive and looked forward to when the main bugs

were ﬁxed. This same pattern was present in every review I looked at.

So I persevered and took advantage of a mod called Buffout 4

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(Nexus Mods 2024a) that seemed to help prevent most of the problems

and crashes and allowed me to play the game – and I was instantly

hooked.

Since then, there have been several major updates that have

resulted in the game becoming far more stable and crashing far more

infrequently. Bethesda games are renowned for crashing, so much so

that crashes are now down to almost Bethesda’s traditional standard

rate (and probably also, in many cases, down to Bethesda’s original

code).

Image 9: Tower Bridge – London is recreated in enough detail that if you

know it you can ﬁnd your way around easily.

Image 10: Just exploring and ﬁnding out how well London’s

landmarks have survived (such as the cannibal infested tower of

London) is enormous fun.

The experience has become something quite remarkable. Most

mods are small affairs, perhaps adding a new skin, a new quest and

FALLOUT: LONDON

level design or a companion: even when extensive they rarely add

more than an hour or two of gameplay.

Sure, there were a fair few problems if I really looked. Some

dialogue wasn’t polished, some voice-over work could have been

improved and several times I really got annoyed at the level design

which made some things almost impossible to ﬁnd. Loading times

when moving between inside and outside locations, or different parts

of the map were often terrible, and there were many early quest-stop-

ping bugs and crashes that sometimes required the console to address

and ﬁx. But these issues never ruined the experience for long and I

found myself consistently revelling in what was around the corner and

exploring just for the sake of it. I lived in the real London for several

years and I was impressed by how easy it was to navigate. Overall, the

map felt intuitive and even if routes were blocked, I still knew where I

was and where I was going. I just had to use my knowledge of London

to ﬁnd alternative routes.

The voicework, dialogue and quests were often superb, equally as

bizarre and haunting as anything created by Bethesda. Some I will

remember fondly for years (though I don’t want to give out too many

spoilers). There are plenty of playthroughs to enjoy that will walk you

through a scene if you’d rather not have the hassle of installing and

playing, but this is one mod that everyone should experience, if only to

marvel at the sheer scope of what was achieved, and especially if you

love Fallout.

The very Britishness that oozed out of everything felt very different

to any other Fallout game and I felt totally at home. I have loved it

more than any other fallout experience since that very ﬁrst 3D excur-

sion into the Fallout world in Fallout 3 – suddenly the world of Fallout

feels brand new again.

RECEPTION

But I’m not alone in believing FL is something special. In fact, IGN

(Imagine Gaming Network) actually reviewed FL despite never having

reviewed a mod before saying:

“Editor’s Note: Yes, we’ve reviewed a mod! It’s true that this isn’t some-

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thing IGN normally does, but seeing as Fallout: London is a project on a scale

that rivals a full game, we’ve made an exception.”

The review goes onto say:

“When you consider it’s a completely free mod rather than an ofﬁcial

game, Fallout: London is extremely impressive. It’s a massive RPG worthy of

the Fallout moniker, and the way it uses its titular city to shake up the series

US-centric formula is extremely effective and refreshingly novel … going off

the beaten path to adventure with companions is as fun here as it is in any

modern open-world Bethesda game. There is a lot of fun to be had in Ol’

Blighty.” (Koreis 2024)

If you look at any review of Fallout: London you’re likely to see a

universal appreciation of the work that has gone into it and the fun

that people have had playing it. I’ve found it interesting to watch

numerous playthroughs from a wide range of countries (especially

from those who live in the US). While UK players are naturally

enthralled by having a Fallout game set in the UK, even players from

the US have also singled out the unique London setting and ﬂavour as

major plus points, and universally (apart from the bugs) it’s gone

down well. I even came across a YouTube video where weapon experts

from the Tower of London discussed the weapons created just for this

mod (Ferguson 2024).

In fact, one of the most often repeated observations was we should

stop calling it a mod.

By all measures this is a full game.

It may have started as a mod, but it is now a complete and ground-

breaking game in its own right: a game crafted with Bethesda’s

Creation Kit that is, in many ways, indistinguishable from a standard

Fallout game and a monumental achievement which deserves full

recognition and respect.

FALLOUT: LONDON

Image 11: Exploration is often richly rewarded. For example, this

is one of 16 Tardis ‘Easter eggs’ (in different degrees of disrepair)

scattered across the entire map in a Dr Who quest line. Find them

all to claim a special energy pistol – the ‘Dardek’.

WHY IS THE FALLOUT: LONDON MOD IMPORTANT?

While there is a clear guiding hand visible throughout (controlled by

Dean Carter and Callum J Quick) the player gets the impression that

every team member was given carte-blanche to carve out their own

little corners of the game to work on. That this was a labour of love by

all involved is obvious.

FL is an unofﬁcial mod. Modders traditionally can’t gain any mone-

tary reward for undertaking game mods.

So what were the real motivations for creating mods such as Fallout:

London?

In an interview with Dean Carter, for the website VG247 in August

2024, Mark Warren asked about the organization of Team FOLON, and

what led members to spend so much time on a project such as this

(Warren 2024b).

That interview is very illuminating. One contributing factor was

certainly the Pandemic. The UK Covid lockdown led to members of

the project team having a lot more time on their hands than they had

originally expected (effectively giving them a great deal of free time)

and allowing the project to advance far faster than would normally

have happened. The unexpected opportunity of the Covid lockdown to

the mod’s development also underlines why Fallout: London might just

remain unique. However, this extra time also allowed Team FOLON to

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plan better, to “ask tough questions” and get the team into “…the same

mindset as professionals”.

Key to this organization was ﬁnding out what each team member

wanted to get from the project, and Carter found that there were basi-

cally a couple of different reasons that team members signed up:

Some just wanted to do it as a hobby, working weekends

and having fun with like-minded people. Nothing wrong

with this, and it’s a good way to develop skills.

Some wanted to get a job in the industry, and saw this as a

way of creating useful portfolio pieces to advertise their

skills. Team FOLON becoming more professional and

dealing with tight deadlines helped equip anyone thinking

of entering the game industry with appropriate experience

as to what would be expected. A mod is always a good

portfolio piece.

Using a mod as a portfolio piece is a well-established pathway to

getting noticed. Prior to game development being taught at university

graduate (or higher) level, and prior to the explosion in academic

interest in video games, the ability (in the absence of prior employ-

ment) to demonstrate modding skills was a signiﬁcant mark in an

applicant’s favor.

Even if someone was in employment, modding allowed for the

demonstration of additional skills, and allowed people to work on

projects, genres and in roles that they might not yet have attained, or

which they aspired to. Basically, mods are a great way of adding to a

portfolio, and of gaining attention from the major publishers of the

games being modded, even if no current vacancies are advertised.

For whatever reason, a portfolio piece or simply the pleasure and

satisfaction from completing work, and the feedback obtained from

players are the same reasons why most game developers started out in

the ﬁrst place.

Modders can, however, sacriﬁce a lot. As Carter says later in the

same interview:

FALLOUT: LONDON

“The problem with inspiration is it might seem like a good idea, but you

might not realise how much like this has to take over your life to do. If I

had worked the hours I've worked in a job now, I don't know, I would

probably be in a much bigger house right now. But no, I haven't been

working, I've been working in the creation kit for free, for no money, my

savings are f**king obliterated, excuse my swearing, like they are gone.

“People don’t realise the sacriﬁce that goes into things like this and

that's the biggest thing, is you can be inspired, but understand the

sacriﬁce. The biggest bit of advice is do your research on how long and

how many man hours combined this takes and if you can't do that,

then just watch other people do it, I would say.”

The sacriﬁce that Carter talks of is immense. Fallout: London had (at

times) close to 100 people working on it, and the overall development

time was close to ﬁve years.

None of this work was paid for. Team FOLON is an eclectic mix

that includes game students, retired developers, moonlighting profes-

sionals and those that want to gain a foothold in the industry. That this

‘herd of cats’ could be organized into a team capable of pulling off a

game of this magnitude is astounding. That it could be so well received

and so enjoyable is equally impressive.

It’s worth mentioning that Bethesda has in the past attempted to

create a category of ‘paid’ mods, where the creators of those mods

would get paid for their work.

They ﬁrst tried this in 2015 with Skyrim, aiming to allow validated

content to be sold via Steam. But the community hated it on two fronts

(Chalk 2015).

Firstly – vocal members of the community objected to the fact that

the mod developer would only receive 25% of the revenue (with the

rest being split between Steam and Bethesda).

Secondly – a similar vocal number maintained that mods should

always be free!

The framework for paid mods was quickly pulled and failed almost

immediately, which I consider a huge shame. In regard to the ﬁrst

point, while not overly generous, it could so easily have been updated

TERRY GREER

over time once the principle had been established. The second point,

however, is more problematic and shows up the warped entitlement of

some players: if mod developers can’t monetize ﬁve years of work in

some way, then nothing similar will ever be made.

Bethesda ‘Creation Club’ on Steam has since introduced the idea of

paid mods again (through this is a rather feeble back door without

clear guidelines as to what monetary value actually would accrue). So

far these are for ‘authorized’ and simple changes, and not huge total

conversions such as Fallout: London. In some ways this may open the

door for negotiated special cases, and there are some potential avenues

that show promise (Pearce 2017).

What is clear is that if we want mods like FL then some way of

ﬁnancially rewarding a team responsible for work like this has to be

found and implemented. After all, it’s worth pointing out that compa-

nies (including Bethesda) that support modding can often gain a

considerable monetary beneﬁt from a game mod, even if the modders

themselves don’t. A mod can drive players to buy the original game

just to play it. I did this, for example, when setting up Fallout: London: I

couldn’t face the time and effort required to uninstall and wind back

my existing Steam copy of Fallout 4, so I bought another heavily

discounted GOTY edition via GOG.

Both Bethesda and GOG beneﬁted ﬁnancially from that, but not

Team Folon.

However, mods like Fallout: London are immense and, without some

ongoing ﬁnancial support, mods of similar scale and ambition are less

likely in future. Another Fallout mod Fallout: Nuevo Mexico, (based on

modding Fallout: NewVegas), has recently been cancelled. One of the

modders involved referred to having "...poured thousands of hours

into it, late nights, early mornings, and everything in between." But

that “... the workload was enormous, and the costs ahead, both ﬁnan-

cial and personal, are too great. Continuing forward simply isn't

sustainable for me and everyone involved.” (Nightingale 2025).

It needs to be stressed that developers gain hugely from having an

active modding scene. It prolongs a game’s life in the marketplace and

maintains an IP’s proﬁle between ofﬁcial releases and sequels. If devel-

opers want an active modding scene it behoves them to create bound-

FALLOUT: LONDON

aries for what is allowed and what not, and to provide clear guidelines

and ﬁnancial scales as to what recompence modders can expect for

creating content and to where copyright will reside.

Bethesda obviously needs to maintain and defend its own copy-

right, otherwise it could lose it. Equally, modders have to accept they

are creating derivative works and that their copyright is always going

to be severely limited – or will simply be blocked. I fear under current

large complex mods that could lead to large complex copyright

disputes, without clear guidelines up front.

Modders are often given a great deal of freedom to make what they

want, but that freedom is granted only by agreeing to provide the mod

free of charge to others.

But this is a complex question: there is no easy solution, and even

companies that that do loosen their hold over their IP such as Valve

with Team Fortress (Bailey 2025), Epic with Old Unreal code (Doran

2024), or EA with Red Alert (Wolens 2024b) currently only allow free

distribution of any derivative work.

The complexities of copyright with regard to modding are

immense and other creative industries have had similar problems. For

example, Star Trek has a long history of fan-made content that origi-

nally, for similar reasons to Bethesda, was very lax on specifying

exactly what fans could and couldn’t do. This led to the infamous

‘Return to Axanar’ case where a fan team was raising over $100,000

dollars to make a Star Trek fan film via crowdsourcing. (Gardner

2017). The resulting court case led to a fixed (some would say dracon-

ian) set of rules and restrictions about what could and could not be

made (CBS & Paramount 2016). Again, central to the settlement and

rules was the fact that fans would not make any financial profit from

their work.

It will be interesting to see if a solution to this can be found.

Even without ﬁnancial recompense, however, working on a mod

creates a powerful calling card for a developer, and can often be the

only way of proving their skills. In the absence of a formal portfolio of

professional work, job offers can occur.

Several job offers have come from Fallout: London already (Dinsdale

TERRY GREER

2024), some as far back as 2021, and Carter himself was offered a job on

Fallout76 in 2022 but turned it down in order to see FL completed.

I’m sure that as the team’s work on this mod gradually becomes

better known, the number of the team that gained entry to professional

game development will continue to rise.

Finally, and incredibly, it’s worth pointing out that there are

currently over 500 mods created for Fallout: London itself! (Nexus Mods

2024b). While these are almost all small and graphical, some have been

downloaded many thousands of times. To have this number of mods

of a mod is another amazing achievement. If there’s something

someone thinks should be different, anyone can just wade in, without

permission, and create a ‘ﬁx’, that can then be (optionally) installed by

those that might feel the same.

This democratisation of development is an important part of what

it means to be involved with the mod scene.

CONCLUSION

Games started out as small affairs with a handful of individuals (or

even only one) crafting the experiences that forged the game industry.

Over time the development of game engines allowed for the

democratisation of game development, so that anyone could create

content and variations on a game without needing the skills and time

to develop a game from scratch.

Game mods grew out of that time and in many ways Fallout: London

is a time machine that looks back towards those game industry origins

and to a time where the pleasure of simply creating a game was the

main reward. To a time when the joy of becoming involved with a fran-

chise was paramount, simply so that you can have your own creative

fun with it and not worry about any monetary recompense for your

time.

In today’s market, the chances are that developers of all disciplines

will not work on a franchise they are attached to. Mods offer a way of

fending off the mundane work you do whilst often giving the freedom

to do something remarkable to a franchise you love, even if it’s not an

ofﬁcial addition or ‘canon’.

FALLOUT: LONDON

Mods like Fallout: London are important because they remind us of

why we entered game development or why we study and play games.

Fallout: London is not what an ofﬁcial sequel would be, nor what any

intended extension of the IP would be.

Surprisingly, it has been carried out on a shoestring budget using

self-motivated developers of varying skills, and has ended up as a

hugely appealing product that is exactly what players have wanted.

I’d like to add my congratulations to everyone on team FOLON for

their sheer professionalism, invention and dedication to completing

(and maintaining) the project they started ﬁve years ago.

Fallout: London has been the most fun playing Fallout I’ve experi-

enced since Fallout 3. It is testament to the spirit that forged the game

industry, and I deeply wish I’d had time to get involved when I ﬁrst

heard of it, just to have been part of this outstanding game. However,

I’m also paradoxically pleased that I came to it fresh and had the privi-

lege of experiencing it completely in its ﬁnished glory.

Given the sheer amount of work carried out over the Covid lock-

down, which is unlikely to ever occur again, I can’t see another mod as

huge and all-encompassing ever being created. But it’s here now, and I

think it is something that anyone that has enjoyed a Fallout game

should play, just to see what is possible given creativity, dedication,

organisation and time.

I also eagerly look forward to whatever Team FOLON do next.

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TERRY GREER

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ALAN WAKE 2

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF ITS COMBAT

MIKE PORETTA

ideo games are unique as a representational medium. This

uniqueness is not due to the “non-trivial effort” required to

traverse a video game (Aarseth, 1997, p. 1), which is also

demanded by certain works of literature or the third season of Twin

Peaks. Video games are unique because of the special relation achieved

between the player and the meaning of the game-text. No effort can

eliminate the difference between the reader of a novel (the interpretant

of the text) and what is described on the page (its signiﬁed content).

Players, meanwhile, are required (even by a low-effort video game) to

adopt intentional coordinates within, and exercise agency over, a

virtual space. The distinction between the player and the object repre-

sented by play is obviated as a condition of playing. In a game,

Baudrillard’s hyperreality is realized: the “contradiction between the

real and the signiﬁed” (2017, p. 95) is effaced as player and representa-

tion meld into a “contiguous whole” (2017, p. 95).

Games achieve the contiguity of playing subject with the virtual

world using procedural representation. The author of the game-text,

says Murray, “writes rules for the interactor’s involvement, the condi-

tions under which things will happen in response to his actions, and

the properties of objects and potential objects in the virtual world.”

MIKE PORETTA

These rules express the “repertoire of possible performances” available

to the player in the person of his character[s], the properties of the

virtual environment, its inhabitants and their interrelations. Arrange-

ments of rules “embody [the] complex, contingent behaviors” (Murray,

2017, p. 88) of represented things and thereby convey their “inner

states” (Murray, 2017, p. 278). They enable the player to act in person,

and undergo the experiences, of his in-game persona. These arrange-

ments have grown ever more complicated as computer technology has

advanced into the 21st century.

The player can perform a “theoretically calculable and practically

containable number” of actions, as dictated by (the author(s) of) the

rules governing the virtual world (Bosman & Wieringen, 2023, p.81).

Speciﬁc behaviors are “selectively included” by a game designer in the

spectrum of actions available to the player in order “to produce a

desired expressive end” (Bogost, 2010, p. 45). This selection of possible

or playable behavior, which we will refer to as an “SPA” in this paper,

demarcates the player’s agency in the game and determines how the

virtual world responds to his agency (Murray, 2017, p. 187).

However, distinct selections of playable behavior are not equal in

relation to the same representational goal. Certain behaviors can be

tangential, distracting from the meaning they are intended to convey,

or even contradicting this meaning entirely. Jacques Maritain, a 20th

century Thomist philosopher whose aesthetic philosophy has not yet

(to my knowledge) been applied to the analysis of video games, said

the ﬁnest works exhibit “due proportion or consonance” between their

formal (or signiﬁed) and material (or signifying) elements (2016, pp.

25, 33). A proportionate SPA, used to express the game world, enables

the player to exercise agency in a manner beﬁtting his adopted iden-

tity. An inadequate SPA obstructs the content of the representation,

disenabling the player's action in the person of his character.

Control (2019), conceptualized and written by Sam Lake, exhibits

proportion between its formal and material parts. Lake’s Lynchian

gaze opens brutalist ofﬁce environments and 3D action gameplay to

mythical ontology and the forces of Arthurian legend. The player is a

contemporary surrealist mythic sovereign, ﬁghting to restore Camelot,

and it feels that way during play. Alan Wake 2, Remedy and Lake’s

ALAN WAKE 2

2023 follow up to Control, contrarily, does not exhibit this consonance;

the player is forced to approach Lake’s concept through distracting

and tangential survival-horror mechanics. The disparity between its

signiﬁed virtual world and signifying SPA is more pronounced for its

counterbalancing revolutionary facets, and especially when compared

to its predecessor.

Control was an early inspiration behind the critical framework

employed in this paper. Alan Wake 2 conﬁrms, to my mind, the neces-

sity of pairing even the most meticulously crafted virtual world with

suitable procedural expression. Below, I will assess the proportion

between intelligible content and expressive matter from the vantage of

Maritain’s aesthetics. I will incorporate insights from literary theorist

William K. Wimsatt, who originated the notion of the “intentional

fallacy”, to arrive at an outline of aesthetic proportion. I will touch on

this proportion as it appears in Control, before moving on to describe

its absence in Alan Wake 2.

CAN WE ASCERTAIN WHAT A GAME “IS” OR OUGHT

TO BE?

Our discussion presumes the irreducibility of a game-text or artwork

to the conscious whims of its author and players. For gameplay to be

suitable or unsuitable to a game, the game must be understood as an

extramental, public thing with autonomous meaning, whose elements

comprise an integral whole. If this is denied, the text becomes open to

dual varieties of interpretive relativism, which erect authorial intent

and reader (player) affect as the ultimate interpretive values. Literary

theorist William K. Wimsatt pioneered a discussion of these relativisms

in his famous discussion of the “intentional” and “affective” fallacies,

ﬁrst in The Intentional Fallacy, a paper with Beardsley in 1946, then in

his own book, The Verbal Icon, in 1954. Wimsatt offers one of the earliest

statements of anti-intentionalism in literary theory, with Beardsley

expanding on anti-intentionalism in Aesthetics: Problems in the Philos-

ophy of Criticism a few years later. I ﬁnd Wimsatt’s critique of intention-

alism comports well, and is complimented by Maritain’s ontology and

aesthetics, as I hope the reader will appreciate.

100

MIKE PORETTA

In the ﬁrst place, the maker of the artwork is not the infallible guar-

antor of this meaning. The author conceives the work and fashions it

according to his conception. But this concept is not an arbitrary and

plastic non-entity. A game, it is true, emerges like a novel or painting

“from a head, not a hat.” But, Wimsatt observes, “to insist on the

designing intellect as a cause of a poem is not to grant the design or

intention as a standard by which the critic is to judge the worth of the

[work]” (2002, p.4). Wimsatt calls this “confusion of personal with

poetic studies” the “intentional fallacy,” which sees the artwork

reduced to the psychology of its author, who becomes the infallible

arbiter of its meaning (2002, p. 10). Bosman and Wieringen have

recently invoked the intentional fallacy (without mentioning Wimsatt)

in the context of game studies (2023, p.79). This biographical mode crit-

icism is fallacious because the work (and its meaning), as an original

being, is irreducible to its author as a child to its parent, a notion we

will return to shortly. Let’s note for now that Remedy's enthusiasm for,

or choice to include this combat does not automatically indicate its

suitability to the game.

In the second place, a game is not equivalent to its reception and

social consequences. If the reduction of a work to authorial intent

“ends in biography and relativism,” a “confusion between the [work]

and its results” ends instead in “impressionism and relativism.” Here

there is an attempt to derive the standard of criticism from the psycho-

logical impact of the text on its recipients. Wimsatt deems this favor

for, and separation of, reader impression from intrinsic textual

meaning the “affective fallacy” (2002, p.10). It is possible for an ill-

conceived work to be enjoyed and praised, while the best might be

neglected. In the case at hand, video game critics have found Alan

Wake 2’s combat “enjoyable”, but the pleasure that this combat

induces, and the copies of the game sold, are no measure of the suit-

ability of the combat to express the form of the work. A critical focus

on the text’s reception neglects its intrinsic constitution.

The assertion that Control exhibits proportion between its formal

and expressive parts is not the claim that its author and audience think

so. Rather, the text’s own intelligible content, its Lynchian opening of

brutalist ofﬁce spaces and action gameplay to mythic cosmology and

ALAN WAKE 2

101

Arthurian legend, is well expressed by the rules of being and action

available to the player in the person of Jessie. As I hurtle through the

air, shattering masonry with a thought and wielding her sacred

weapon against interdimensional entities, I am the Mythic Sovereign of

the World Tree, the Director of the Oldest house, guided from birth by

an entity beyond the veil to vanquish cosmic evil.

Likewise, in assessing the disproportion between Alan Wake 2’s

SPA and representational elements, we cannot rely on the motives or

goals of its designers. Nor can we rely on our enjoyment of the combat

or critical acclaim it has received. Instead, the constitutive (“intrinsic”)

and public meaning of the work is at stake; what we can know of it as

an independent entity, with its own essence and intelligible content.

This content is intelligible apart from its author, through its material

expression in the ﬁnished work (Wimsatt, 2002, p. 10).

THE WORK IS A NEW BEING

This characterization of artworks as “independent entities” with public

meaning is still incomplete. In what sense are they so? What and where

is the “public meaning” of a text? Any answer to this question will

resort to an ontological framework, which Wimsatt is not concerned

with providing. Maritain is happy to pick up the slack.

Even before achieving material expression, when the work is only a

concept, dependent for its “proper existence” on the artist’s act of intel-

lection (Maritain, 1995, p. 132), its “intelligible content” or formal

causality is irreducible to the subjectivity of the author. Though this

content is artifactual, it is not as “artifact” that it is born in thought

(Guagliardo, 1994, p. 378); it is rather as some “objective or specifying

formal cause having its own essential structure” (Minerd, 2020, p. 131).

The work is about something other than the artist whose mind is its

existential basis, a distinct locus of meaning with interior processes

capable of reshaping the extramental world.

So, in terms of its intelligible content or formal causality, the work

is, in the words of Maritain, a “new creature"(2016, p. 63): a “grandson

of God" (2016, p. 229). It is an original being (2005, p. 155, 170), extant,

even in the mind, not as an abstract formula but, like a child in the

102

MIKE PORETTA

womb, as a “singular and concrete” thing (2005, p. 131). The work

exhibits what Tolkien called an “inner consistency" or logic all its own

(2014, p.77). This inner logic does not “consist in conformity to an ideal

and unchanging type" (Maritain, 2016, p. 30). It is “not the logic of

knowledge and demonstration,” where the known thing is abstracted

from its own “proper existence and reduced to the mere condition of

object” (1995, p.7). This is precluded by the work’s individual and

substantial character. The logic of an artwork is instead “the working

logic of every-day, the logic of the structure of living things, the inti-

mate geometry of nature… like the logic of the orogeny of the Alps or

the anatomy of man" (2016, p.53).

To illustrate, I have characterized [the intelligible content of]

Control (2019) as a Lynchian opening of trite, brutalist spaces and

action gameplay to the structures of mythic cosmology and the

Arthurian legend. The protagonist, Jessie Fayden, enters the Oldest

House, headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, in search of her

brother Dylan. She has been guided there by a supernatural entity,

Polaris, who has been in contact with her since childhood. She ﬁnds

that the Oldest House is not the unremarkable ofﬁce building its exte-

rior suggests. It is, rather, a constantly shifting interdimensional space

at the heart of reality, and the Bureau charged with its protection is in

disarray, beset by a hostile entity not unlike Polaris. After picking up

the Service Weapon of the previous Director, she receives a vision from

the mysterious Board, yet another interdimensional entity, which

summons her to the Astral Plane and appears to her mind as an

inverted black pyramid. She undergoes a trial before being chosen as

the new Director of the Oldest House. She is tasked by the Board with

expunging the Hiss, which, she learns, has a connection to her lost

brother.

The mythic cosmological resemblances and evocations of Arthurian

legend are prevalent throughout. The Oldest House is explicitly char-

acterized as the axis mundi or world tree in multiple in-game docu-

ments and recordings.i Jessie, the player learns, has been destined

“The Oldest House has revealed much to me during my months in the Foundation,

but many questions remain. Primarily, the tree etchings bewilder me. What is their

ALAN WAKE 2

103

since her childhood encounter with Polaris to wield a sacred weapon,

take her place over Camelot and, as Arthur in his ﬁrst war (Malory,

1970, pp. 31–44), to reunify her kingdom against forces of not merely

political but cosmic chaos. Even the Hiss, an interdimensional “reso-

nance entity” and “ear worm” which threatens to infest the Oldest

House, seems plainly inspired by the chaos-beasts of world European

mythologies, even the otherworldly Questing Beast which Arthur

encounters, with “noise in its belly like unto the questing of thirty

couple hounds” (1970, p. 46). This ontology and these archetypal

narrative tropes are, in Control, individuated and concretized by all

the particularities required to construct a setting, narrative and cast of

characters. In Control, a Lynchian sensibility surgically opens

mundane brutalist environments, explored in the ﬂesh by millennials

like the author, to the transcendent forces of ancient literature and

mythology. This is, to my estimation, the distilled inner logic or intelli-

gible content of Control.

As an organic totality subsuming these variegated elements, the

meaning of the work exceeds its inspirations. The stories of Arthur and

Jessie, or the depictions of the world tree in Scandinavian myth and

Control, are like two individuals, call them Peter and Paul. Both Peter

and Paul are human beings; they exhibit a shared quiddity or intelligi-

bility (Maritain, 2005, p. 150). But they are distinct concrete individu-

als, who embody the intelligibility they share in and through qualities

peculiar to them as individuals: all their tangible, material aspects which

afford them existence in space and time, as more than mere abstrac-

tions (2005, p. 151-153). Peter is tall, Paul is short, Paul is fast, Peter

slow, and so on. Just as the individual characters of the work distin-

guish it from other works with parallel meanings, the same work

equally exceeds the author who caused it. As a distinct individual

thing, its content does not duplicate the subjectivity of its author. It is

about something else: it encompasses both a literary tradition stretching

signiﬁcance? If the House has changed shape over its lifetime as I've theorized, then was

a tree its ﬁrst form?” ON THE HISTORY OF THE OLDEST HOUSE in-game

collectible https://control.fandom.com/wiki/History_of_the_Oldest_House

“The Oldest House has revealed much to me during my months in the Foundation,

but many questions remain. Primarily, the tree etchings bewilder me. What is their

signiﬁcance? If the House has changed shape over its lifetime as I've theorized, then was

a tree its ﬁrst form?” ON THE HISTORY OF THE OLDEST HOUSE in-game

collectible https://control.fandom.com/wiki/History_of_the_Oldest_House

104

MIKE PORETTA

back into history and a unique concreteness, an irreducible particu-

larity (distinct from its author as much as inspirations).

In this, we can appreciate why Wimsatt is correct to identify

psychology-based criticism as fallacious. For its status as a new crea-

ture, the work’s capaciousness of meaning must, in principle, be

irreducible to the personality, even conscious awareness, of its author.

It is an individual, subjective thing, and no one knows subjects as

subjects. We know other subjects, even those we conceive into exis-

tence, mediately, insofar as one of their intelligible aspects is rendered

present to us by expressive means (Maritain, 2014, p. 56): the tangible

elements of an artwork or the touch of a loved one. The artistic concep-

tion can only be comprehended, by readers as much as its own author,

under these conditions of imperfection, partiality, and “objectivity”

(Maritain, 2014, p. 58), not according to the fullness of its own subjec-

tive constitution. We catch glimpses of this conception, in the case of a

video game, as signiﬁed by its procedures and audio-visual assets: its

ﬁctional world, narrative and characters. The artist himself approaches

the essence of his creature, if not through sensible matter as external

readers, then through its subject matter and properties; he does not

comprehend it in its singularity. A similar situation obtains between

parents and their biological, instead of conceptual, children. While

paternity entails a degree of similarity and resemblance, it does not

imply (in fact excludes) identity between parent and child. Nor does it

imply the parent's epistemic access to the constitution of their progeny,

any more than Peter can know the mind of Paul in virtue of sharing the

same human nature.

This means that the “signiﬁcance of the work is larger and more

diversiﬁed” in the world and minds of readers than in its own maker

or any interpreter can ascertain (Maritain, 2021, p. 282). It further

means authors can misjudge the aptness of expressive means in rela-

tion to what they are trying to express. Like all concrete things with

independent constitutions, we know the artwork, but shall never

exhaust it or get through knowing it (Maritain, 2014, p. 56). A great

work is an inexhaustible locus of meaning with “a life of its own,” no

more reducible to authorial than reader intention. It is capable of being

admired, detested, forgotten and rediscovered in turn throughout

ALAN WAKE 2

105

history, with new facets of its meaning continuing to surface (Maritain,

2021, p. 282).

PROCEDURAL EXPRESSION

So, the work possesses an individual constitution all its own. It follows

that the standard to be followed in expressing this constitution cannot

be an abstract rule, audience approval nor authorial “intent.” It is, says

Maritain, the constitution itself: the “law of [the work’s] own being,

independently of anything else." (Maritain, 2016, p. 131). We will

return to this notion below. First note that the work must achieve

expression, since its inner constitution, as subjective and individual,

cannot be accessed by readers from within its own bosom. Nor, given

embodied human cognition, can it be transmitted as an immaterial

form to other minds from the artist’s own. Instead, readers must attain

the intelligible content of the work in and through signifying material

elements. In addition to conceiving the work, the artist must elect

“instruments or vehicles” for its extramental expression, as called for

by the constitution of the work (Maritain, 2021 p. 248; 2016 p. 57).

In a video game, these expressive elements are procedural. As a

painter conveys a scene using pigment on a canvas, and a writer words

on a page, the game’s author conveys the form of the work using rules

of existence and action within the virtual world of his game. These

rules dictate the existence, properties and interrelations of virtual

objects (Murray, 2017, p. 187). In them, the author inscribes the

essences, physical properties and behaviors of simulated beings: x is a

human being, six feet tall in virtual space, who wears a blue shirt, can

jump, roll and pick up objects. It is the role of the procedural author to

determine the bounds of the player’s causal agency, establish “the

conditions under which things will happen” in response to the player

action, the [other] beings in the virtual world, their properties and their

interrelations (Murray, 2017, p. 187).

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MIKE PORETTA

THE WORK CALLS FOR DETERMINATE EXPRESSIVE

MEANS

Precisely because it is a type of being all its own, the artistic conception

is not indifferent to means of expression. As a radically individual

thing, certain expressive means will suit it, and others will not. There

are, says Maritain, strictly determined “rules” for realizing the work in

matter, dictated by its own constitution (Maritain, 2016, pp. ix, 135).

These rules are radically particular and have “no absolute signiﬁ-

cance.” They differ according to the work from which they derive and

can be understood only in relation to its perfection. If it pleases a

futurist “to paint a lady with one eye, or a quarter of an eye, nobody

denies him the right: all one can require is that the quarter eye is all the

lady needs in this case,” as dictated by the individual constitution of

the work (Maritain, 2016, p. 29). The beauty of the body “consists in

the proportion of its limbs, colors etc. and so the beauty of one differs

from the beauty of another” (Maritain, 2016, p. 181). “Proportions good

in a man are not good in a child. Figures constructed according to the

Greek or Egyptian Canon are perfectly proportioned in their kind: but

Rouault's yokes are also as perfectly proportioned" (Maritain, 2016,

p.29). There is not a universally best or alike way for different works to

be proportioned; over and above the singular artistic type or essence

“to which a particular work belongs, there is always an inﬁnity of

ways in which something else can be beautiful” (Maritain, 2016, p. 46).

Instead, certain expressive means are best suited to a given artistic

conception precisely insofar as it is radically individual, with a

different constitution from everything else.

THE SPECTRUM OF PLAYABLE ACTION

In a video game, this means that a determinate selection of behaviors will

be required for the player to act in the person of his character. The

included behaviors, as dictated by the rules governing the virtual

world, constitute a spectrum of playable or possible action (SPA). This

spectrum is always bounded. The player can only enact a limited

repertoire of actions, and mode of virtual existence, as determined by

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“Among the activities of the moral virtues political and military actions stand out

preeminent both in nobility (they are most honorable) and in greatness (they concern the

greatest good, i.e., the common good)” says Aquinas in his Commentary on book X of

the Ethics, section 2102.

the procedural author (Murray, 2017, p. 187). Every playable action is

“selectively included” in order “to produce a desired expressive end”

(Bogost, 2010, p. 45). In-game agency, as Bosman and Wieringen note,

is “very much conﬁned by what the [author] allows the player to do”;

he has a “theoretically calculable and practically containable number”

of ways to act in the virtual world. Even in an “extremely free”

sandbox game which “seems to suggest absolute player freedom, the

practicality of the medium prescribes absolute freedom is impossible”

for the player. Only “relative freedom exists within the limits of avail-

able technology and – more importantly – within the authorial control”

of the designer (2023, p. 81).

In the case of Control, certain actions [in a virtual space] beﬁt the

Mythic Sovereign of the World Tree. Arthur, we are told, waged many

wars in order to consolidate his rule, and “did so marvelously in arms

that all men had wonder” (Malory, 1970, p. 33). The ﬁgure of the

mythic sovereign calls, in a broad and general sense, for a magniﬁcent

exercise of martial feats. There is a coercive aspect to legitimate author-

ity, according to Aristotle and Aquinas, Maritain's main sources;

further, martial glory is intrinsically relative to the common good and

is the means by which the sovereign imposes orderii. The ﬁne-grained

individuating characteristics of Control help specify this further; these

martial feats are framed according to the aesthetic and technological

capacities of the time in which the game is set. Here this involves the

dream-like bending of matter and physical reality and expression of

the mythic sword as a morphing, jet-black pistol of otherworldly

design. Jessie moves through the air like a superhero, her control and

behavior reminiscent of myriad third person action games of the past

decade, yet recontextualized and sensical in relation to the virtual

world.

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THE POSSIBILITY OF DISPROPORTION

The inner logic of any work calls for determinate ways of being real-

ized, ways “controlled by nothing other than itself and brooking no

liberties" (Maritain, 2016, p. 135). It cannot be amorphously related to

potential expressive materials. The possibility of disproportion

between concept and the means of its expression is inevitable.

Contrary to the determinate ways called for by the inner logic of the

work, expressive means become intermediaries to its communication

which “distort and mutilate its message” (Maritain, 2016, p. 121).

What suits one work cannot as such suit the next since the rule of

suitability is radically singular in each case. There are good propor-

tions for a grown person and good proportions for a child, with no

conﬂict between term, but a man with the proportions of a child has a

body disproportionate to his form. For someone seeking to paint a

man, such disproportion, in the ﬁnal analysis, signiﬁes a failure of the

work as art. The “whole formal element of art is the regulation [the

artist’s conception] imposes on matter" (Maritain, 2016, p. 40). Dispro-

portionate expressive means are a failure by the artist to ensure this

regulation. The work becomes burdened by matter which fails to

express its constitution (and can have the opposite effect).

The way an expressive SPA can be disproportionate in video games

is well-articulated by Janet Murray, in her 2016 update to Hamlet on the

Holodeck. Games, she opines, are unique for affording players “power

over enticing and plastic materials” (Murray, 2017, p. 188): agency

within the representation. The discharge of this agency takes for

granted that representational and ludic-procedural elements of a

game-text are “well matched;” the actions a player enacts should be

adequate to convey his adopted role in the virtual world (2017, p. 188).

When player action in the virtual world is “motivated by some-

thing in the story, by an anticipation of some story event or action, and

when the response awards that anticipation in some appropriate way,

then the player experiences dramatic agency… [which] should be the

goal of design for interactive narrative”. The opposite of “dramatic

agency is the boredom of a cut scene that interrupts gameplay, or the

exasperation of not being offered an action you think your character would

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naturally want to perform” (Murray, 2017, p. 189). In this case, the rules

of existence and action that the player obeys are inadequate to the

content of the representation. A hypothetical protagonist is the chosen

messiah, sent by the gods to save his empire from a scourge from

beyond the stars. Yet, between each major story event, the player must

fetch jugs of milk for anonymous villagers and collect scrap in the

wilderness to progress. The author of the game-text has, in these cases,

failed to ensure the repertoire of possible performances available to the

player, and the “conditions under which things will happen in

response to [his] actions” are adequate to the “virtual world of narra-

tive possibilities” they represent (Murray, 2017, p.187). The “ludo-

narrative dissonance” identiﬁed in Bioshock (2007) by Clint Hocking,

is a classic, real-world example of this disproportion; Bioshock, he

details, encourages the use of people as things in its gameplay (by

rewarding the player for harvesting Little Sisters for resources), but

denigrates this same use in its narrative (by indicting the very ideology

behind this behavior and Rapture at large) (Schreiner, 2007).

That the player of Control spends most of his time (in the person of

Jessie) engaged in stupendous martial feats, bending physical reality

and hunting cosmic evils, then, is suitable. The propriety of the subject

matter, its ramiﬁcations or appeal are not salient to this assessment;

what matters is the way the rules of existence and action which convey

the world and subject matter are ﬁtting and proportionate expressions

of what they convey. They are things the character would do according

to her role and individual identity within the virtual world.

So, without wading too deep into Maritain's aesthetics (and ontol-

ogy), we can borrow from him (and Wimsatt) a common-sensical

account of proportionality in artistic creation (which the intentional

and affective fallacies vitiate). If there is art, something made, then the

work is an original being different from its creator. If this new being is

a “singular and concrete thing," with a constitution all its own, it is not

amorphously related to matter and entails suitable means of expres-

sion. Proportionate expressive means enable a clear grasp of the

meaning of the work, as in the case of control. Expression of an artistic

concept by unsuitable and obstructive means yields, instead, a work

marred by disproportion. In the ﬁnal analysis, this disproportion

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amounts to a failure of the artistic concept to sufﬁciently regulate the

matter on which it is imposed. Below, we will explore how Alan Wake

2 exhibits this disproportion to the same extent Control does the

opposite.

ALAN WAKE 2: SUPERNATURAL DETECTIVE MYSTERY

FORM

Alan Wake 2 begins with the arrival of FBI agent Saga Anderson in the

picturesque midwestern town of Bright Falls. She has been sent to

investigate a series of ritual murders by a local cult. Examining a crime

scene, Saga discovers manuscript pages from a horror novel which

describe her own investigation, arrival in town and misery yet to

come. It becomes apparent that these pages were composed by the

titular Alan Wake, a famous author vanished a decade prior, who has,

it turns out, been trapped in an alternate dimension behind Bright Falls

(the “Dark Place”). Within the Dark Place, his stories have attained the

power to reshape reality. Saga’s arrival in town appears to have been

caused by Alan. To save herself and her family, she decides to help

Alan ﬁnish his story, liberate himself from the Dark Place and defeat

his doppelganger (who lurks there).

This might be the closest we will come to “Twin Peaks: The Game”

and the Lynchian inﬂuences are pervasive. Bright Falls has been inten-

tionally designed to invoke Twin Peaks, complete with a retro diner, a

local cop duo, coffee-obsessed FBI agents, alternate dimensions and

nefarious doppelgangers. This is a high compliment. In its early hours,

Alan Wake 2 shines as a game about uncovering supernatural

mysteries in a quaint rural setting. Add to this an idiosyncratic protag-

onist who talks to herself and exhibits a supernatural proclivity for

solving cases and the stage is set for an exploration of the same themes

which Twin Peaks popularized. Radical otherness erupts into the

familiar and comforting conﬁnes of suburban regularity, while a detec-

tive, the cipher of rational subjectivity, appears to suffer its destabi-

lizing and transformative ramiﬁcations.

These themes are borne out with clarity as Saga explores down-

town Bright Falls, the surrounding woods, amusement park and

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111

nursing home. The domestic familiarity of the setting is ruptured by

the looming Dark Place: space and time warp, local cult murders

exhibit a bizarre ritual logic and Alan's manuscript pages, predicting

Saga's actions before she performs them, also foretell violence and

calamity.

The virtual actions devised to represent the exploration of Bright

Falls, as well as the investigation of murders, are a success. Remedy

employs a camera angle and control scheme most reminiscent of

Capcom's Resident Evil 2 (2019) and 3 (2020) remakes. The protagonist

is responsive to inputs but not inhumanly agile, can perform an

evasive maneuver, shoulder a gun, and contextually interact with the

environment. This is not a character action game with airborne

combos, nor even Dark Souls with a somersault button. The impres-

sion is conveyed by core mechanics that the player inhabits a human

being with normal physical limitations.

But these limitations are only physical. The player's modest interac-

tions with the physical world are complemented by Saga's supernat-

ural proclivity for solving murders. Alan Wake 2’s most revolutionary

translation of its core themes into playable action is Saga's “mind

place." At any time, the player can enter this room in Saga's imagina-

tion, where she maintains a visual depiction of the case on a white

board, complete with connective tissues of yarn and polaroid

photographs. To progress through the game, information discovered in

the world, pictures, names and descriptions must be deposited in

logical sequence on the case board. This unlocks the route forward in

the game's semi-open world, a clever and thematically appropriate

replacement for the key-searching central to survival-horror gameplay

Remedy appropriated here.

Saga is not simply a meticulous (and imaginative) detective. When

she ﬁnds herself at a loss for clues and cannot progress a case by

normal means, she can “proﬁle" suspects in the mind place to, as if by

inspiration, attain what she needs. This telekinetic capacity to access

hidden information propelled Saga through the ranks of the FBI and

earned her the admiration of her peers. The player comes to suspect

this ability is ultimately rooted in Saga's role in Alan's story.

Playing detective and visiting the mind place to plot out clues, one

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MIKE PORETTA

is struck by the proportionality of these elements. In these segments, the

complex of rules for virtual action and existence, the ludic, procedural

matter of the game, is exceedingly suited to the characters, narrative

and world it conveys. Sleuthing and contemplation are actions we

“naturally think our character would want to perform” as per Murray.

Here gameplay mechanics do advance storytelling, as Lake hoped for.

This is a game about otherness suffusing regularity, about the interpen-

etration of different layers of reality; its central playable conceit is the

transition between the imagination, the physical world and their

causal interaction. This coherence is bolstered by Remedy's frequent

transition between representational mediums. Gameplay is punctuated

by live action segments performed by the same actors who lend their

countenance to in-game characters, while an original musical track

concludes each chapter. We can ascertain, as part of its “public mean-

ing,” its inner constitution as signiﬁed by its material components, that

Alan Wake 2 is a supernatural detective story with metaphysical

themes. Accordingly, exploration and investigation, as playable

actions, succeed at expressing this public meaning. We do not access

the game’s meaning in spite of them; contrarily, by these components

of the SPA allow us to perform or exact this meaning.

COMBAT: DISPROPORTIONATE TO DETECTIVE-

MYSTERY FORM

Unfortunately, Alan Wake 2 does not only feature exploration and

detective work as its exclusive playable elements. There is also combat.

Out sleuthing Bright Falls for clues, Saga will be attacked by towns-

people possessed by the Dark Place. She can respond with her

handgun as she lumbers around the battleﬁeld in what amounts to a

near replica of combat from the Resident Evil remakes. Remedy's inno-

vation (returned from the ﬁrst title) is Saga's ﬂashlight, which she must

use to burn away the darkness encasing her pursuers before they can

be fatally shot.

In the ﬁrst place, this combat is, to my estimation, materially deﬁ-

cient. While aping the gunplay of the Resident Evil remakes, Alan

Wake 2 feels unintentionally burdensome to play. Saga controls like a

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113

drunk with her pistol raised, her evasive maneuver looks comical and,

worst of all, the enemies she ﬁghts are totally bland in visual and

conceptual respects. Resident Evil featured a bestiary of towering

genetic monstrosities, from titans and mind-worms to zombiﬁed

sharks. Here the player faces smoky, darkness-shrouded versions of

forgettable townspeople. After suffering these enemies, who swear and

pepper Saga with projectiles as she attempts to progress her investiga-

tion, the player will return shortly after to ﬁnd they have respawned.

This ensures that hardly minutes pass without the supreme tedium of

Alan Wake 2’s combat derailing Saga’s investigation. Segments later in

the game where Alan himself becomes playable retain the essentials of

the combat, with the exception that Saga’s semi-automatic handgun is

swapped for Alan’s revolver.

Even if it were competent, this combat brutally interrupts the

contemplative and psychedelic orientation of the core loop. It is, to put

it plainly, disproportionate: a glaring instance of expressive means

which mutilate the concept they are intended to express. Playable

actions in combat are not actions we think our character would

perform, as the person she is and discharging her role in the universe.

An example will help illustrate this point. As Chapter 3 (Return:

Local Girl) opens, Saga tries to call her family after a manuscript page

suggests they have been harmed, but she cannot reach them. Towns-

people she does not recognize say they have known her for years and

offer her condolences for the death of her daughter, who she believes is

still alive. Has Alan’s story already come true? Did the story cause the

murders she came to investigate? Is Saga’s family the price of his

escape from the Dark Place? Based on scant bits of info, Saga sets out

to ﬁnd Alan in a run-down trailer park on the outskirts of bright falls,

hoping to uncover an entrance to the Dark Place. She is greeted by the

management, who refer to her as a years-long tenant and direct her to

“her” trailer. Confused and frightened, she assembles what leads she

can about the ritual she will need to perform to enter the Dark Place

and seek resolution with Alan. Saga’s narrative authority begins to

break down as the player suspects she is delusional.

Night falls as Saga departs from the trailer. Suddenly, she is beset

by raving, smoky townspeople. The case, Dark Place and the themes of

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MIKE PORETTA

the game fade as combat sequences commence. Saga’s family and

Alan’s story are banished from thought as the player wrestles with

generic and tank-like third person shooting controls. After an hour or

so spent navigating the enemy-choked map and preparing the ritual,

Saga attempts to perform it, only for the player to discover that

Chapter 3 concludes with a “boss battle.” Saga is forced into a gunﬁght

with a duo of Bright Falls deputies who had greeted her earlier in the

game.

Here the avant-garde façade of Alan Wake 2, with its multi-media

experimentation, metaphysical themes and Twin Peaks references, falls

away completely. The player must destroy luminous globes of “dark-

ness” spotting the boss arena before being able to damage the

possessed deputies. These combat sequences are supremely generic

and discordant with the in-game universe, a glaring example of what

Wark calls gamiﬁcation: the transformation “of what would otherwise

be an aesthetic moment into something functional and contrary to

indifferent contemplation” (Wark 5). These combat sequences are

material elements broken free from Alan Wake 2’s form, dangling like

loose skin. They might have appeared in any game in the last 30 years.

They have nothing to do with the themes and characters they are

assigned to convey. Instead, they obstruct the apprehension of these

themes and characters, for the purpose, apparently, of meeting popular

expectations concerning the structure and pacing of a game. Yes, it will

have guns. Certainly, there will be boss battles with toy-like puzzles

involved! No, it won’t just be walking about and sticking clues to an

imaginary wall.

The manifestly obstructive nature of disproportionate procedural

matter is evinced here. No doubt Alan Wake 2’s combat is plodding,

distracting, and unpleasant. Its chief deﬁciency, however, is in its

betrayal of the game’s subject matter. Like an alien excerpt inserted

into another author’s book, combat in general, and the ﬁght with

Thorton and Mulligan in particular, stand out as discordant with the

totality to which they belong. This combat is not about the eruption of

radical otherness into familiarity. Nor is it about mystery, detectives or

the supernatural. Instead, it demands the enactment of generic same-

ness, the performance of actions which have nothing to do with Saga

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115

or Bright Falls; in fact, the “break the glowing orbs” boss mechanic also

appeared the same year in Hogwarts Legacy’s Pensieve Guardian and

Remnant 2’s Labyrinth Sentinel. The Contrast to control, where

playable behaviors are consonant with the person and nature of the

protagonist, is stark. While the player engages in three-dimensional

movement, spell casting and gunplay in Control, he enacts his role in

the virtual world as the mythic sovereign of the world tree, clad in

divine arms and freed from the laws of the physical world. In Alan

Wake 2’s combat, he disengages from the themes and meaning of the

game-text and inserts himself into a superﬁcial and disconnected

sequence of mechanical actions with little or representative

signiﬁcance.

CONCLUSION

So, the relation of Alan Wake 2’s combat to the world, events, and

broader artistic concept it is intended to represent is disproportionate.

Its formative concept and themes, centered on the invasion of the

everyday by radical otherness, are betrayed when Remedy resorts to

the most gamiﬁed and discordant playable behaviors in their commu-

nication. This disproportion amounts, in the ﬁnal analysis, to a failure

on the part of the artistic form to sufﬁciently regulate its matter:

procedural components of the game escape the logic of its supernat-

ural mystery form, sprouting like foreign growths to obscure percep-

tion of the same. Against Control, Alan Wake 2 amounts to a regression

in the expression of ideas using play.

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Baudrillard, J. (2017). *Symbolic exchange and death* (I. H. Grant,

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Bogost, I. (2010). *Persuasive games: The expressive power of

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Maritain, J. (1995). *Degrees of knowledge* (R. McInerny, Ed.).

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Maritain, J. (2016). *Art & scholasticism* (B. Barbour, Ed.). Cluny

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publicseminar.org/2013/11/a-ludic-century/

THE SCAR OF SKY

ATMOSPHERE AND CARICATURE

XIANG KEXIN

INTRODUCTION

uan-Yuan Sword ( 轩辕剑) (Domo Studio, 1990–2020) is a

landmark Chinese historical fantasy RPG series developed by

the Taiwanese game studio Softstar Entertainment. Among its

many entries, The Scar of Sky (天之痕) (2000) stands out as the ﬂagship

title. Set during the Sui dynasty (581–618 CE), a turbulent time

between the fall of the Chen dynasty and the rise of the Tang, the game

follows Jingchou Chen, the last prince of the fallen Chen. Despite his

peaceful nature, fate thrusts him into a quest to ﬁnd ten legendary

relics to restore his nation. However, it isn’t until the game’s ﬁnal

moments that he realizes that these artifacts don’t grant anyone the

power to rule the world. Instead, they must be used to repair a rift in

the sky, a gateway that allows demons from a dark planet to descend

upon the Eastern lands…

I ﬁrst played The Scar of Sky as a 7-year-old girl who hated going

to school. My dad, ever the kind one, would let me skip school every

now and then. One day, he brought home the game’s installation CD

and invited me to watch him play. Before I knew it, I was playing it

myself. It’s one of my earliest memories of getting into a big PC game,

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XIANG KEXIN

As Holopainen and Stain (2015) point out, “some objects, environments, and activi-

ties prompt play more than others; there are recurrent characteristics and structures in

playfulness.” But when they dig into the concept of caricature in playful contexts, they

mostly focus on playful activities. However, the caricatured features they identify,

including “incomplete,” “exaggerated,” “awkward,” “repetitive,” “abstracted/formal-

ized/compressed,” “elaborated,” “transposed to a different context,” and “expectations

manipulated” could arguably apply to playful objects and environments as well, not just

the activities.

and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve replayed it since. In some

way, the game has become a kind of spiritual refuge for me – a place I

turn to whenever life feels overwhelming, childhood long gone, and

family far away. As a game scholar now, I sometimes ask myself why I

love the game so much. What is it about the game that keeps me going

back to it and enjoying even just wandering around in its virtual

fantasy world?

My intuitive answer is: the atmosphere.

But that raises a couple of follow-up questions: How does The Scar

of Sky create this atmosphere? What exactly is this atmosphere, or how

to properly describe it?

In this essay, I’ll address these questions through my experiences in

the game’s “Celestial Mountain Island” ( 仙⼭岛) area. (Game)

atmosphere, however, is something we all instantly resonate with, yet

struggle to put into words. To get a clearer grip on it, I’ll follow Böhme

(2016, 2021)’s well-established deﬁnition and understand it as spatially

extended affects – or, in simpler terms, a shared emotional impression

of a space as shaped by its various elements. To be as concise and clear

as possible, I’ll focus on two kinds of spatial elements that have a big

impact on my emotional experiences of the Island: cultural landscapes

and player/character activities. These elements are pretty standard in

historical RPGs. But what’s really fascinating in The Scar of Sky is how

they’re abstracted, exaggerated, repeated, formalized, etc., giving the

game environment a unique feel that’s hard to ignore. For Holopainen

and Stain (2015), these “caricatured” features are more effective at

shaping a playful context compared to ordinary onesi. From my

personal experience with The Scar of Sky, I’d add that these features

shape such contexts just by creating a proper affective atmosphere for

the gameplay.

THE SCAR OF SKY

119

The Three Sacred Mountains are Penglai (蓬莱), Fangzhang (⽅丈), and Yingzhou (瀛

洲), places often depicted as islands in the Eastern Sea, where elixirs grow and celestials

dwell. Legends say that those who reach these sacred lands and drink the medicine

brewed from the elixirs will also be granted immortality.

The Classic of Mountains and Seas is a fantastical geographical book from ancient

China. It describes various landscapes and cultural customs of ancient China and its

neighboring territories with accounts of gods, mythical creatures, legendary ﬁgures, and

supernatural events.

CARICATURES OF CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

In The Scar of Sky, the Celestial Mountain Island stands out as a place

with rich cultural signiﬁcance. Modelled after the “Three Sacred

Mountains”(三仙⼭)ii from the Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shan Hai

Jing, ⼭海经) (see Birrell, 2002)iii, the Island is an integral part of the

game world where celestials reside. Also, it has strong ties to the

broader Xuan-Yuan Sword universe. The heroes of Xuan-Yuan Sword II,

Ran He and Sheng Guyue, turn out to be the very celestials living

there.

I (Jingchou) approach the Island’s ferry dock on a whaleback.

Before this, I had been wandering in the war-torn human world, where

the game environments were largely rendered in a 2.5D, quasi-realistic

style. And then everything cools down. Suddenly, I am surrounded by

these highly abstracted, ink-wash backgrounds (Image 1). The ink wash

technique is known as “xieyi” ( 写意 ) in Chinese art. It captures the

essence of a scene or object with just a few expressive, symbolic brush-

strokes, rather than obsessing over realistic details. When applied to

the Island’s rugged mountainscape, the expressive brushwork immedi-

ately communicates its cool, mysterious, and ethereal vibe – perhaps a

more effective way of bringing this otherworldly space to life than any

3D high-def graphics could.

If I had to pick one spot on the Island where the use of

the xieyi technique truly stands out, it must be Mount Xiwangmu (西

王母峰) (Image 2). This mountain is said to be a sacred site governed

by Xiwangmu, a majestic goddess who sits at the top of the Daoist

pantheon. True to this background, the mountain scenes are mostly

depicted in a single ink wash (with variations in intensity), giving off a

harsh, solemn feel. But then, there are those splashes of crimson scat-

iii

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tered around, representing peach blossoms – really striking against the

grayish background. The pops of color do more than just look good. In

a very subtle way, they also tune how I feel about the place, bringing a

bit of warmth and hope just when everything else starts to feel too

heavy. And, well, when I’m in a more cautious, reﬂective mood, those

crimson reds start to feel a little ominous – like a warning that some-

thing bloody is just around the corner (which, as it turns out, is true by

the end of the level).

Image 1: Island’s ferry dock

Image 2: The Entrance to Mount Xiwangmu

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I’m also deeply impressed by the exaggeratedly huge – and thus often

incompletely shown – images within the ink-painted backgrounds. Take

the Island map, for example – there is this massive silhouette of a ﬁsh

tail, so much bigger than anything else on the map that it dominates

the northeast corner (Image 3). This is actually a representation of the

mythical sea creature, Kun (鲲), from the Daoist text Zhuangzi (庄⼦)

(see Zhuang, 2013). In the game, Kun’s belly is home to a mermaid

tribe, and it is the mermaid queen who helps Jingchou escape from the

belly of the ﬁsh and ﬁnd the Island. Therefore, I actually had no idea

how big Kun was while I was in the mermaid tribe, until I step out and

see the island map – and even then, I only catch a glimpse of its tail!

A similar spot, “Jianmu” (建⽊), lies to the west of the Island (Image

4). It represents a colossal tree that stretches from the earth to the sky in

the Classic of Mountains and Seas. In the world of The Scar of Sky, this

tree marks the resting place of “Pangu” (盘古), a central ﬁgure in the

Chinese creation myth, who famously uses an axe to separate the sky

and earth. The last task on the Island is just to borrow the axe from

Pangu. However, it’s not until I reach the tree’s crown and step onto

what feels like a gigantic face that I ﬁnally realize – the massive tree

trunk? That’s Pangu’s body (Image 3).

I could easily recall how intrigued I was the ﬁrst time I saw the ﬁsh

tail and treetop face. These monstrously huge body parts were like

strange little “thrills” to me as a kid, stretching my imagination of the

Island way beyond what the screen could show. It wasn’t until I took a

classic literature course at university that I ﬁnally had a word for what

they made me feel: the sublime – that sense of awe and almost discom-

fort we get when faced with something vast, mysterious, and over-

whelming in nature (Longinus, 2006). In traditional Chinese literature,

mythical ﬁgures like Pangu and Kun are indeed often described as

symbols of great natural forces. But here, interestingly, their sense of

sublime doesn’t come through words but through the visual designs in

a video game.

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Image 3: The silhouette of Kun (at the northeast corner)

Image 4: Pangu’s face at the treetop

But saying the Island is just a cold, distant celestial realm domi-

nated by towering deities doesn’t capture the full picture. In fact, my

experience there feels more like a peaceful, profound escape, and that’s

probably what I enjoy about its atmosphere. I’ll explain this in more

detail in the following sections. For now, just consider another location

on the Island that provides a meaningful counterbalance to its solem-

nity: “Skyward Village” ( 天外村). In various ancient Chinese myths,

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123

such celestial islands are often depicted as completely cut off from the

mortal world, with no sign of human life. However, in The Scar of Sky,

there is this Village where elements of an ancient Chinese village are

transposed into the celestial realm (Image 5). Here, spirits and celestials

live, chat, run businesses, ﬁsh, and even date. To match this vibe,

everything in the Village – from the buildings to the plants – is even

portrayed using the delicate “gongbi” ( ⼯笔 ) ink painting style that

features ﬁner details and a richer color palette than “xieyi.” This

creates a lively bustle at the center of the Island, a home-like space for

players to pause and rest. Walking through it, everything feels stable

and familiar again, a rare sensation in a world that’s otherwise unpre-

dictable! Beneath it all, it’s just a simple realization of the “human”

qualities of celestial beings and perhaps the Island itself.

Image 5: Skyward Village

What’s even more interesting is that, in one playthrough, I

happened to stumble upon a well at the corner of the Village and get

transported to this hidden scene of DOMO studio – a modern-day

ofﬁce with a hint of cyberpunk, decked with computers and posters

from the earlier Xuan-Yuan Sword games (Image 6). Ran and Guyue

secretly refer to the game developers in the studio as “forebears” (⽼祖

宗) and ask for their permission before making big decisions, like

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whether to help with Jingchou’s ques and thus inﬂuence the story of

The Scar of Sky. This creates an interesting “embedded transposition”:

there is a modern-style studio tucked inside an ancient village, which

itself is part of a celestial realm. I had been really curious about the

studio’s presence in the game world before realizing it was an “Easter

egg” typical of the Xuan-Yuan Sword games. And I even spent hours

(and consulted several walkthroughs) trying to complete the task set

by Zhenghong Cai, the game’s lead designer at the studio: tracking

down the scattered members of the DOMO team across the game

world. Ultimately, this adds a whole new layer of intriguing mystery to

the Island – a mind-bending multiverse!

Image 6: DOMO studio

CARICATURES OF PLAYER/CHARACTER ACTIVITIES

The episode on Celestial Mountain Island is my favorite part of the

story of The Scar of Sky. It starts with Jingchou Chen arriving at the

Island with two companions: Xiaoxue Yu, a delicate maiden with ethe-

real white hair, later revealed to be the living incarnation of a

legendary relic known as “Nvwa Stone” (⼥娲⽯); and Yuer Tuoba, a

pampered princess from the northern Xianbei tribe. They hope to ﬁnd

immortals living on the Island who can save Jingchou’s dying master

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125

back in the human world. But here’s the twist– Yuer, once a beauty, is

now disﬁgured and seriously ill. Jingchou and Xiaoxue must care for

her while navigating the mysterious Island.

A prominent caricatured feature of player/character actions on the

Island is repetition. This is especially the case as they make their way

along the Island’s outer mountain path. Due to Yuer’s grave injuries,

Jingchou and Xiaoxue have to make three camping stops. At their last

stop, the two decide to venture into the Herbal Valley overnight to

gather ingredients for a medicine to treat Yuer’s lingering fever. This

task turns out to be repetitive as well. Players need to collect seven

herbs in the valley by clicking on seven glowing spots scattered

around the Valley. After they return to camp, they ﬁnd out that the ﬁrst

batch brewed in a regular pot doesn’t help Yuer’s condition. So, Jing-

chou decides to brew the herbs again, this time using the “Shennong

Cauldron” ( 神农⿍), a legendary relic known for reﬁning medicinal

herbs. That means players have to go back to the valley and collect the

seven herbs again. But even after all that, the second brew still doesn’t

work. In a moment of desperation, Xiaoxue cuts a piece of ﬂesh from

her arm and adds it to the Cauldron, following an (albeit wild) ancient

Chinese superstition that human ﬂesh can cure any illness. Little does

she know, though, that her ﬂesh does carry the magical healing power,

not because of the superstition but because she is the Nvwa Stone. The

third brew thus cures Yuer’s fever.

It is surprising to recognize that this highly repetitive goal structure

– three stops, two herb-collecting tasks, and three rounds of brewing

medicine – does give me a complex emotional experience. Throughout

this, I often feel a mix of boredom, confusion, and exhaustion, but also

tension. As I play as Jingchou, the more effort I put into saving Yuer,

the more I become invested in her survival. But with each task

completed to no real effect, that tension and frustration only build up.

In the end, these mixed emotions really stick with me when I think

about that scene. Like, even after all these years, every time I ﬂip

through my game album, the screenshots of that mountain path still

stand out to me so vividly and emotionally that no other scenes could

compare.

I also can’t seem to shake off the image of Xiaoxue cutting into her

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XIANG KEXIN

own arm whenever I think about the mountain path. This self-harming

behaviour feels quite exaggerated – something I wouldn’t expect

Xiaoxue to do based on my real-life experience, yet there it is. It does,

however, have some dramatic effects echoing the popular cognitive

concept of “embodied simulation” (Wojciehowski & Gallese, 2011).

Actions like this often make me feel as if I’m pulled right into the char-

acter’s body, experiencing their intense actions (e.g. cutting off arm

ﬂesh), emotions (e.g. anxiety and desperation), and sensations (e.g. the

sharp sting of pain) in a way that’s subtle but direct. In the meantime, I

also get a more visceral sense of the space around me, like, even

though the game doesn’t actually add that, the tent scene always

seems to be ﬁltered through a “blood-red lens” every time I think

about it.

A parallel event takes place on Mount Xiwangmu, where Jingchou

and Xiaoxue attempt to pick the “pantao” ( 蟠桃 ), a magical peach

grown by Xiwangmu on the mountain that has the power to restore

Yuer’s appearance. Just as Xiaoxue plucks the fruit from the tree, a

deity named Xingtian appears and threatens to cut off two arms from

them as punishment for taking the pantao without permission. The

characters then need to ﬁght Xingtian, the ﬁnal boss of this level,

whose attack power and health are exaggerated to an almost unbeat-

able level. (I tried multiple times and, honestly, I only managed to

defeat him by exploiting a bug. But it doesn’t really matter – no matter

what I do, the story still plays out as if the characters lose.) Left with no

other choice, Jingchou and Xiaoxue decide to split the penalty equally,

with each of them losing one arm. Being a gentleman, Jingchou steps

forward before Xiaoxue, extending his arm to Xingtian…

Image 7: Xiaoxue cuts herself in the tent (left: game scene; right:

my mental image)

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127

If Xingtian were to swing his axe and sever Jingchou’s arm, Mount

Xiwangmu would indeed become a place of my nightmarish gore. Yet,

at the ﬁnal moment, Ran appears where Xingtian once stood.

According to Ran, Xiwangmu does allow mortals to harvest the

pantao, but those who wish to do so must ﬁrst face Xingtian’s test to

prove their willingness to sacriﬁce for each other and take the responsi-

bility of picking it. Obviously, Jingchou and Xiaoxue have passed the

trial. This introduces another caricature element in the narrative:

manipulation of expectations. The brutally exaggerated and repetitive

elements of character behavior actually heighten my anticipation of

whether they will survive the trials, and if so, how? When the resolu-

tion ﬁnally comes, all that built-up pain, anxiety, and exhaustion lead

to a powerful sense of relief, which in turn opens up a whole new way

of experiencing the game space.

The episode ends with an idealistic note. Guyue and Ran ﬁnally

agree to rescue Jingchou’s master, and with Yuer back on her feet, she

joins Jingchou and Xiaoxue on their journey. As the three ride a whale

toward Jianmu in the glow of dusk, we have one of the most stunning

moments in The Scar of Sky. To express her deep gratitude to Jingchou

and Xiaoxue, Yuer decides to play her pipa as a vow to become their

lifelong friend; Jingchou plays his ﬂute in return. Xiaoxue then combs

her white hair as a gesture of her commitment to this unbreakable

friendship (Image 8). A few seconds later, the screen fades to black, and

Jingchou’s only monologue in the entire game emerges: “I’ll never

forget... Yuer playing the pipa on the blue sea, and Xiaoxue combing

her silver hair under the setting sun – it was the most beautiful

moment of my life.” (Image 9)

I could go on about all the elements that build the atmosphere – the

music, the setting, the dialogue... But at the heart of it should be the

formalized way in which the characters interact with each other. In

ancient China, vow-making is often a ritualistic act. As each of the

characters carries it out in a form of practice that squarely reﬂects their

own identity, strong, sincere emotions come through. Then Jingchou’s

monologue pops up, neatly concluding the entire scene and suggesting

a subtle shift in perspective – from what’s happening in real-time to

how Jingchou remembers it, all cleaned up and polished in his mind.

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This further reinforces the impression that everything is so carefully

orchestrated here, and that this is the exact highlight moment

deserving your attention, calling you to pause and really invest

emotionally. In a bigger picture, this isn’t just the highlight of Jing-

chou’s life. It becomes one of the most signiﬁcant views of the Island as

well. Here, the close-knit circle of the three, rather than the vast seas

and towering whaleback, takes the spotlight, sending their energy out

to affect (how we players perceive) the world around them.

Image 8: Time together on the whaleback

Image 9: Jingchou’s monologue (English translation): “I’ll never

forget... Yuer playing the pipa on the blue sea, and Xiaoxue

combing her silver hair under the setting sun – It was the most

beautiful moment of my life.”

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129

AND… HOW THEY CONVERGE INTO AN

ATMOSPHERE?

So far, I’ve shared quite a bit about my personal experiences with the

Island. By “personal experience,” I should say that, in this article, it’s

indeed less about how I interact with the game environment, and more

about how I feel about it. I guess this is because I’m the kind of player

who’s more interested in appreciating and analyzing the aesthetics of a

virtual environment (if it’s really worth it) rather than exploring it

right away. And that’s probably why I’d say atmosphere is one of the

main things I love about The Scar of Sky.

Meanwhile, I should also mention that there are still plenty of other

spatial elements of Celestial Mountain Island that contribute to the

atmosphere there (e.g. the background music, enemies, and the digi-

tally generated 3D fog), but I haven’t had the chance to cover them all.

But by zooming in on the cultural landscapes and the player-character

activities on this Island – and how their features are distorted, ampli-

ﬁed, and thus caricatured – I think it’s enough for me to outline a

general structure of my emotional impressions of the Island.

Basically, the structure has two layers: At ﬁrst, it feels like a vast,

cold celestial realm, distant from the human world. But as you explore

more and show your good intentions, you begin to uncover its softer,

more humane core.

I could use this as my description of the Island’s overall

atmosphere and wrap up the discussion here. However, this is still a

bit vague and doesn’t fully explain what I like about it. Moreover, as I

replayed the game several times for the essay, I’ve realized the need

and potential to reﬁne the answer further, to capture something deeper

and more concrete than just the affective experiences – something that

forms the foundation of the atmosphere there.

This realization came from a particular scene of the Island episode.

In the quiet of the mountain night, Guyue recites poetry to the

moon, lamenting the chaos of the human world that contrasts with the

peace of the celestial realm (Image 10). Xiaoxue then rushes in. Before

this, Guyue has repeatedly refused their pleas to save Yuer, insisting

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XIANG KEXIN

that immortals should not interfere with human affairs. But tonight,

with Yuer’s life hanging by a thread, Xiaoxue confronts him alone.

This is a special climax of the episode. It marks the ﬁrst and only

time in the game when the perspective shifts from Jingchou to

Xiaoxue. But instead of being an avatar for players to control, Xiaoxue

acts independently – almost as if her drive to save Yuer has grown so

intense that she doesn’t allow me, the player, to direct her actions.

However, Guyue warns her, “If I save Yuer, she might steal the heart of

the one you love.” Xiaoxue ﬂushes, realizing that Guyue already

knows about her feelings for Jingchou. Yet, she insists: “I like Yuer too.

I can’t let her die.” Ran then appears, carrying Jingchou – who had

collapsed in the mountains while gathering herbs for Yuer. Moved by

their selﬂess devotion to their friend, Guyue ﬁnally agrees and delivers

the most iconic line in The Scar of Sky: “The love of humans is stronger

than the way of heaven (⼈间有情，更胜天道).” (Image 11)

Image 10: Guyue’s poem (English translation): Beyond the world,

a tranquil space, Far away from the turmoil of the human race.

My laments drift with the breeze, My gaze upon the cloudy seas.

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131

Image 11: The iconic line from Guyue (English Translation): “The

love of humans is stronger than the way of heaven.”

This is a rather romanticized take on human resilience in the face of

(celestials that represent) nature – not just Guyue’s personal perspec-

tive, but also The Scar of Sky’s core tenet. When I see it, all my mixed

emotions about the Island ﬁnd a center of gravity, and I can ﬁnally

make sense of the atmosphere there.

To make this clearer, let me get a bit academic for a moment and

bring in the concept of “yijing” (意境) from Chinese Daoist aesthetics.

In fact, when I play the game and try to get its vibe, yijing comes to my

mind more than fenwei ( 氛围), the direct Chinese translation of

atmosphere. In many ways, yijing is indeed similar to atmosphere. The

“yi” part is about emotions, while “jing” usually refers to a scene or

context. So, yijing describes a scene that stirs deep emotions. But “yi”

also involves ideas and attitudes; and, in its ideal form, “jing” isn’t just

a limited scene but gestures towards a whole, endless universe. That’s

why yijing feels somewhat deeper than atmosphere – it’s not just about

feelings, but also about an underlying idea that holds those feelings

together. And this idea is often about a thoughtful take on (certain

aspects of) universal human experience – something the artwork can’t

fully express, but only hints at.

As suggested above, The Scar of Sky is a game that draws a lot

from Daoist philosophy and mythology, so it’s no surprise that its

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atmosphere is steeped in Daoist aesthetics too. Then I can explain why

I love the feeling of simply wandering through this game space:

beyond all the emotions the Island brings up, there’s always this

deeper message that celebrates genuine connections between humans,

something that stands in stark contrast to the cold order of fate and

nature. Even this message itself carries a touch of caricature, as it over-

plays how much human sensibility can shape things despite the bigger,

uncontrollable forces out there and may thus go against the basic

Daoist thinking that encourages people to follow the rule of nature.

Yet, at the end of the day, this is just the very essence of the Island’s

atmosphere – homey, forgiving, empowering. This is just something

that The Scar of Sky spoke to me, strongly, even when I was just a little

girl, tired of school days and longing for a place where my imagination

could run wild, and my heart could ﬁnd some peace.

This is what makes the game my digital retreat.

REFERENCES

Birrell, A. (Trans.). (2000). The Classic of Mountains and Seas. Penguin.

Böhme, G. (2021). Atmosphere. Online Encyclopedia Philosophy of

Nature, (1).

Böhme, G., & Thibaud, J. P. (2016). The Aesthetics of Atmospheres.

Routledge.

DOMO Studio. (2000). Xuan-Yuan Sword: The Scar of Sky [Video

game]. Softstar Entertainment.

DOMO Studio. (1990-2020). Xuan-Yuan Sword series [Video game].

Softstar Entertainment.

Holopainen, J. & Stain, M. (2015). Dissecting playfulness for prac-

tical design. In S. P. Walz & S. Deterding (Ed.), The Gameful World:

Approaches, Issues, Applications (pp. 419-438). The MIT Press.

Longinus. (2006). On the Sublime (H. L. Havell, Trans.). Macmillan

& Co. https://www.gutenberg.org/ﬁles/17957/17957-h/17957-h.htm

Wojciehowski, H., & Gallese, V. (2011). How Stories Make Us Feel:

Toward an Embodied Narratology. California Italian Studies, 2(1).

Ye, L. (1998). Shuo yijing [On Yijing]. Wenyi yanjiu, 1, 17-22.

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Zhuang, Z. (2013). The complete works of Zhuangzi (B. Watson,

Trans.). Columbia University Press.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The more I experience in life, the more I realize how difﬁcult it is to

stay true to one’s passions — or even to oneself. Thankfully, I believe I

am slowly ﬁnding my way. I would like to express my gratitude to my

supervisor, Prof. Jussi Holopainen, for encouraging my interest in

game studies. His guidance has been invaluable in shaping this paper.

WELL, HERE WE ARE AGAIN

RECONSTRUCTING THE SCIENCE OF

WELL-PLAYED IN PORTAL 2

DANIIL KOVALENKO

INTRODUCTION

hen I shared the “For the Love of Games” call for paper

with my best friend, she said that it made no sense. She

argued that there is no point in discussing why certain

people love certain games, as it would be identical to certain people

liking the color red and not liking purple. And yet, common sense and

personal experiences suggest that some games are just better and more

likable than others. And some games become iconic, deeply inﬂu-

encing not only players, but other game creators and industry in

general.

In this paper, I discuss one such game - Portal 2 (Valve, 2011). This

game is one of profound personal value, as it opened the world of

games, game design and internet fandom culture to me. Even though I

will be touching upon the original Portal, my focus will be mostly on

Portal 2 as I believe this game shaped the whole series and mass

perception of it.

Building on previous research and journalist publications, and

sharing my genuine love for the series, I will argue that Portal 2 is an

exceptional game from all the three perspectives of well-played. Firstly,

WELL, HERE WE ARE AGAIN

135

its balanced approach to design and narrative creates the feeling of

achievement and ‘well played!’ in players. Secondly, Portal 2 is

connected not only to other games, media and art, but also to the

fundamental story archetypes that promote players’ resonance with

the game’s plot and characters. Thirdly, Portal 2 is an example of fair

development politics, with developers caring deeply for both the

product and the community, and community reciprocating this

approach.

DISCOVERING PORTAL

Before I begin my analysis, I should outline my own relation to the

Portal game series to shed light on my position and on why the game

is so signiﬁcant to me. To do that, I need to start with a different game

series, Half-Life.

I was born into a family of Half-Life fans. As a child I used to watch

my father play Half-Life 2 (Valve, 2004) and both Episodes, witnessing

the story of the franchise as it unfolded. The Half-Life series inspired

many things in my life. My dad and I used to do occasional mini-larps

set in City 17, as my hometown in Russia resembled it strikingly. I

wrote fan-ﬁction and made fan movies with my school friends. I even

made some online friends, thanks to the Half-Life content I posted on

the Internet. I could elaborate more on the series, and maybe it would

have been more relevant given the 20th anniversary recently celebrated

by Half-Life 2. However, the focus of this work is on Portal.

In 2007, Valve released the Orange Box, which was a revolutionary

format for the games industry. The edition contained ﬁve games. Half-

Life 2 and HL2 Episode One (Valve, 2006), that have been released

before, and then three new titles: Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Portal and

Team Fortress 2 (Valve, 2007). Each of them was destined to become

iconic in its own way. It took some time for the Orange Box to come to

Russia. By the time we bought it in around 2009, my father had already

played Episode 2. So Portal was of most interest to me in the bundle. It

was likely my ﬁrst experience of playing a ‘grown-up’ game all by

myself. Before that, I only played simple puzzles and online ﬂash

games, or watched my dad play Half-Life 2, occasionally trying it

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DANIIL KOVALENKO

myself with godmode on. Symbolically enough, Portal introduced me

to the world of PC gaming.

I have to admit, I did not like Portal at all. And I never beat it until

years later. I was 9 years old, and the puzzles were too complicated for

me. I was dead stuck on the companion cube level, until I quit the

game. The localization left a lot to be desired, too. GLaDOS’ voice was

strikingly different from the original, it was so robotic and edgy that it

made my ears bleed. Names, wordplay and puns were translated

incorrectly, distorting the original meaning of things. And on top of

that, everything in the game, not only GLaDOS, but turrets and

personality cores, spoke with her terrible voice. It was confusing at

best and unplayable at worst, so I quit and came back to the series only

years later.

Portal 2 was strikingly different for me. The aesthetic upgrade was

more than evident, the localization greatly improved, and the game

received a professional Russian voiceover. As I was older, I was ﬁnally

able to enjoy the puzzles myself. I remember how excited I was after

the ﬁrst few levels, rambling to my dad about how Wheatley is helping

us ﬁght GLaDOS, the malevolent AI.

Portal 2 quickly became my favorite game and a real obsession. If

my calculations are correct, I replayed the whole game or a major part

of it about thirteen times over the next few years. It also captivated the

minds of my friend group – we were watching fan videos and making

ours, writing fanﬁction and role-playing as test subjects. We were

extremely excited to learn that the Half-Life and Portal series happen

in the same universe, as it gave so much more space for creativity.

Once I spent next to all my teenage savings on a Miniature Replica

Portal Gun and a plush Companion Cube from the ofﬁcial Valve store.

It did not ship to Russia, so I had to also go extra lengths to get them to

my hometown. They are still among my most prized possessions that I

keep on display in my room, even after moving several times.

For all the impact that Portal 2 had on me and my life, I never

thought why I liked it that much. I did not really care, as long as I

enjoyed it. Therefore I do my current analysis not as a player, but as a

game designer and researcher, and it brings a lot of excitement and a

second breath to my love of Portal 2. Having played the game many

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137

times, I did not conduct a separate playthrough for this analysis.

Instead, I engaged myself with the academic, game journalist and fan

works on Portal 2, hoping that my close reading will build bridges

between different analysis aspects that have been highlighted previ-

ously by other authors and content makers. In the next sections, I look

at Portal 2 from the three ‘well-played’ perspectives, that align with

different parts of the game experience: game mechanics, story and

characters, and developer and community practices.

WELL PLAYED! HOW PORTAL 2 CREATES THE

FEELING OF ACCOMPLISHMENT

Portal 2 is, no doubt, a great game and hence it is very hard to analyze.

Academic discussion often revolves around criticism and suggestions

for improvement, but in the case of Portal 2 there is not much to

improve. Therefore, this part of the analysis might look like stating the

obvious, but sometimes obvious things must be said to foster a

profound understanding of the matter.

In Portal 2, the only tool players have permanently is a portal gun.

It can create two portals connected to each other, regardless of the

distance. But the level design makes the game rather complex. New

mechanics are introduced every now and then to provide diverse chal-

lenges to the player. Levels’ aesthetics also change as players explore

different parts of the Aperture Science laboratories. A signiﬁcant part

of the game happens outside of test chambers as players roam around

abandoned facilities that can be traversed only through solving more

portal puzzles. Level intermissions are story-heavy and introduce

game plot, most of the character dialogue and backstory. This structure

perfectly maintains player agency and engagement, creating the state

of ﬂow. But to understand it better, some individual features need to be

discussed.

The ﬁrst solution is common for both Half-Life and Portal series,

and it concerns difﬁculty progression. Both series offer new mechanics

after certain periods of time, while also deepening the interactions

with the old ones, which can be seen as a hybrid model of difﬁculty

progression (Adams, Dormans, 2012). In Portal 2, this is reﬂected in

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DANIIL KOVALENKO

increasing complexity of spatial puzzles throughout the game, accom-

panied by introducing new features. The ﬁrst game levels only feature

buttons and cubes, then lasers are introduced with special reﬂective

cubes, then turrets, then each of the gels etc. The ﬁnal levels of the

game can contain all the elements from previous levels, intertwined

into complex spatial puzzles. This way of introducing mechanics

ensures two things. Firstly, it is an efﬁcient formula of creating and

maintaining player ﬂow : introducing new challenges that build on

previous ones allows to create the balance of difﬁculty and player skill

that is essential for stimulating this state (Jin, S. A. A. 2012). Secondly,

not leaving old mechanics out creates a feeling of progress in players,

reminding them of their past accomplishments.

I argue that the level-intermission-level structure also contributes to

player ﬂow. On one hand, story intermissions serve as a space for

relaxing, as puzzles in-between levels are rather simple. On the other

hand, it still provides a mental challenge of a different kind, i.e.

listening to characters and understanding the story. So, if a formula of

a successful level is 80% puzzles and 20% listening to a ‘narrator’s’

comments, in the level intermissions it is vice versa. This shifting of

player’s attention while still maintaining a mechanically consistent

experience is optimal for giving the feeling of agency while also

providing players with a space for mental rest.

Another feature of level intermissions in Portal is that they are

humorous in nature. As Grewell, McAllister, and Ruggill (2015) argued

in their paper, narrative ridicule is an essential mechanic in the Portal

game series. The comments of the ‘narrators’, such as GLaDOS

jokingly insult the player, aiming at their abilities, personality or even

self-worth. On one hand, they set the tone for the challenge and

increase player engagement; on the other hand, they make puzzle

completion more rewarding through a humorous release: you’ve beat

the challenge, you’ve proved your worth! Therefore the comments in

the game intermissions are not only fun, but also serve a crucial game

design purpose.

Apart from the general structure of the game and its balance, the

content of the levels is also of interest. Firstly, the puzzles themselves

were intentionally created to stimulate player insight, the ‘aha!’-expe-

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139

rience. From the earliest developer comments, we know that this was

a consistent design policy (Stuart, 2010). I believe it effectively

mirrors the general attitude of the game itself that values player fun

more than abstract intellectual puzzle complexity. The ‘aha!’-

moment, when you are able to put the puzzle pieces together and

beat the level in no time, is precisely when the game tells you: “Well-

played!”.

Secondly, the selection of mechanics deserves a closer lookt. There

were supposed to be more mechanics in the ﬁnal game, for example

reﬂective and adhesive gels (Valve Cut Content Wiki, n.d.). However

they were removed, and each removal had good reasoning. Adhesive

gel, for example, gave players motion sickness, and reﬂective gel was

too similar to reﬂective cubes. Some mechanics were re-worked: the

High Energy Pellet from Portal was changed to lasers in Portal 2. The

pellets were a time-based mechanic requiring both patience and agility

from players - something I, for example, did not have when I ﬁrst

played the game. Removing them alleviated such skill pressure. And

how delighted I was to see the hated pellet dispenser be replaced by a

laser!

So far, I have been putting emphasis on the structured part of the

game experience, the challenges that players overcome. However it is

not the only way to see the game. According to Caillois (1961), we can

distinguish between Ludus, the structured, rule-based and goal-

oriented gameplay, and Paidia - the fun, spontaneous, creative play.

One might expect that Portal 2, as a puzzle game, would focus exclu-

sively on Ludus, occasionally ﬂavoring it with some playful narrative

lines. However it has plenty of space for Paidia as well.

Puzzle levels in the game are not only spaces with linear progres-

sion. They provide vast sandbox opportunities, limited only by the

game’s physics. Can I create an inﬁnite laser if I adjust two portals just

right? How long can I fall down in a portal loop? What happens if I

throw myself into a screen broadcasting Wheatley? The game encour-

ages playful exploration. Early levels are ﬁlled with irrelevant puzzle

pieces, secret passages and just garbage lying around, all at their play-

ers’ disposal. And smashing Wheatley’s screens will be rewarded with

always new sarcastic voice lines. Those small things ignite the explo-

140

DANIIL KOVALENKO

ration drive and playfulness, bringing a whole other way of

enjoyment.

Summarizing, from the game design point of view, Portal 2 is a

very carefully balanced game in all ways: Ludus and Paidia, chal-

lenging puzzles and relaxing intermissions, intellectual complexity and

ridicule. Those smaller balances all contribute to the optimal player

experiences of agency, competency and ﬂow, creating a sense of accom-

plishment and ‘well-played!’.

WELL PLAYED! HOW PORTAL 2 CONNECTS TO A

BROADER CULTURAL CONTEXT

In the second part of this reading, I will look at Portal 2 through

another ‘well-played’ lens to see how it connects to a broader cultural

context. Game mechanics were quite innovative for the time, so I will

focus mostly on the narrative aspect.

The ﬁrst and the most obvious connection of Portal 2 to the Half-

Life series, as the games build explicit bridges to each other. In the end

of HL2 Episode 2, we see the recordings of Borealis, with the logo of

Aperture Science on it. In Portal, GLaDOS makes comments about the

world outside, most probably talking about the Combine alien inva-

sion from Half-Life. “Things have changed since the last time you left the

building. What's going on out there will make you wish you were back in

here”, she says. "All I know is I'm the only thing standing between us and

them. Well, I was." Portal 2 deepens the connections between the two

games by introducing us to the history of Aperture Science. From Cave

Johnson we learn about his competition with Black Mesa for inﬂuence

and funding. But more importantly - and I remember being excited

beyond limit by that - in Portal 2, players can ﬁnd an abandoned dock

for the legendary Borealis, thus physically linking the game universes.

As for references to other contemporary culture pieces, most of them

were cut out from Portal 2 during the development. For example, game

script writers hated Garfield comics, so they created a comic where a cat

named Dorfeldt eats his owner’s lasagna and dies of neurotoxin

poisoning (DidYouKnowGaming, 2022). The only hint to that in the game

WELL, HERE WE ARE AGAIN

141

is the ‘I hate Mondays’ mug found in one of the Aperture Science offices.

The famous Space Core was originally an Aquarium Core, referencing

the Oregon Coast Aquarium commercial (ibid; DIYMaxim, 2008). Except

for these few, Portal games do not incorporate pop-culture elements.

Instead, they are famous for making their own: cake is a lie, the Space

Core, ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemon grenades!’ All these

received much appreciation and became an integral part of mass culture.

Aside from contemporary culture, Portal 2 has a lot of connections

to mythological stories. The game makes explicit references to the

myth of Prometheus, which have been actively discussed in the

community (Joe_McNeilly, 2011). For example, the defective Oracle

Turret says “Prometheus was punished by the gods for giving the gift of

knowledge to man. He was cast to the bowels of the Earth and pecked by

birds”, foreshadowing players’ descent in the old Aperture facilities.

Then GLaDOS, like Prometheus himself, gets pecked by a bird after

being turned into a potato and thrown to the bowels of Aperture

Science. There has been a lot of speculation about what that could

mean: how GLaDOS, like Prometheus, brought the gift of knowledge,

i.e. science, to mankind, and was punished after that (nobody25864,

2011). However this comparison has always been far-fetched to my

taste.

Joe_McNeilly (2011), in the article ‘Gender, myth, and capitalism: An

academic view of Portal 2’ elaborates deeper on the game’s mythological

symbolism. They suggest that the bird as a symbol can also refer to

Norse mythology and Odin’s ravens Hugin and Munin (whose names

mean thought and will), symbolizing the duality of GLaDOS herself.

And the moon, in its connection to portals, symbolizes the feminine in

its transitional qualities and its struggle against masculine - as moon

rocks deadly poison Cave Johnson.

This proves Portal 2’s profound embeddedness in modern culture,

mythology and archetypes. Together with amazing humor, that I have

to leave behind the scope of the analysis, this already makes the game

story iconic. However, I would like to go further and argue that the

story in Portal 2 has a deeper potential to resonate with other cultural

pieces through universal story archetypes. But before that, a funda-

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DANIIL KOVALENKO

mental question needs to be answered. Who is the true protagonist of

Portal 2?

Portal has quite a straightforward plot. It is a story of a test subject

trying to escape the laboratory operated by a murderous and charis-

matic AI. Portal 2, however, tricks players, creating an elaborate illu-

sion of narrative agency. The story develops by the means of the

player's actions, but neither the protagonist, nor the player, make deci-

sions or change the story. The plot of Portal is set in motion by Chell

trying to escape death in a test chamber. The plot of Portal 2 is moved

by Wheatley, ﬁrst as a guide, then as a villain. Chell is the only human

in the lab, thus her help is needed to manually interfere with the facil-

ity. But the course of the story is determined by other characters and

their dynamics. So even though Chell is the game protagonist, she is

not a story protagonist.

I argue that changing the perspective on the protagonist unravels

the story’s true potential. And the perspective needs to be changed to

GLaDOS. One could surely call this view arbitrary, but the criterion I

use to make such a claim is that the story makes most sense from this

perspective.

Let’s look at the plot summary from Chell’s point of view. She

awakes from slumber and tries to escape Aperture Science with a

really stupid companion, Wheatley, who accidentally revives GLaDOS,

her nemesis. Chell confronts GLaDOS, and puts Wheatley in charge

only to be betrayed by him and thrown down to the old facilities.

There she tries to escape, eventually ﬁnding GLaDOS turned into a

potato, and takes her back up. Confronting Wheatley and saving the

laboratory from destruction under his poor management, she restores

GLaDOS back in charge and is ﬁnally let go by her. This story presen-

tation reveals several ﬂaws, the main being that Chell does not grow

throughout the story. In Portal, she makes her way from a nameless

test subject to a free spirit ﬁghting for her life. But in Portal 2, she stays

pretty much the same. The reason for such a dynamic is that Chell’s

role is secondary.

Instead, Portal 2 is the story of GLaDOS, and it is her journey and

transformation that resonate with players. To prove that, I shall refer to

the Hero’s Journey framework (Campbell, 2008). Even though it has

WELL, HERE WE ARE AGAIN

143

been relegated to a check-list for creating a coherent story, Campbell’s

original argument was that monomyth is a fundamental and universal

way of structuring a story of human transformation. Therefore,

proving that a story follows the structure of a monomyth is not only a

way to say that it is a good story. Being structured as a monomyth is a

way to directly connect to millions of other narratives deeply rooted in

many cultures.

The story starts when GLaDOS gets awakened by Wheatley, calling

her to adventure and change. She refuses the call and goes back to her

regular life of conducting tests and rebuilding the lab. She then tries to

kill Chell, but discovers that she has been deprived of her murder

instruments: neurotoxin and turrets. Quite unusual, but I consider it

another call to adventure, the world-changer that cannot be ignored.

She loses the ﬁght and gets turned into a potato, losing her powers.

This symbolizes her rebirth and the start of the journey. She ventures

down to the old Aperture facilities and meets Chell, who is now the

only person who can help her, the Goddess providing guidance (con-

sider the aforementioned portal-moon-feminine symbolism). GLaDOS

then discovers Caroline, her old self ﬁlling her with doubts, and

confronts the Father ﬁgure - Cave Johnson, by whose will she literally

came to life.

This aspect of the story is particularly dramatic. GLaDOS not only

confronts her ‘Father’, but she learns that her existence was something

she did not volunteer for. “Now she'll argue. She'll say she can't. She's

modest like that. But you make her. Hell, put her in my computer. I don't

care." says Cave Johnson. Surprisingly, this has not been spoken much

about, but GLaDOS’s story is one of violence perpetrated against her.

Caroline was sacriﬁced against her will to become GLaDOS. Therefore,

GLaDOS making this discovery means confronting her past and her

trauma, but also her true, untraumatized self in Caroline.

Having accepted this boon of knowledge, she then comes back to

her ordinary word of upper Aperture Science levels. She defeats

Wheatley with the help of Chell, gets restored in power, crossing the

symbolic threshold and ending her adventure. The ﬁnal scene of the

game also deserves attention. From the perspective of Hero’s Journey,

GLaDOS should have accepted the boon, i.e. Caroline, and changed

144

DANIIL KOVALENKO

her ways. However she chooses to permanently delete Caroline, as if

nullifying her journey. This certainly subverts player’s expectations.

But it can also be seen as a powerful metaphor of letting go of the past,

killing a part of yourself to achieve freedom. We, as humans, cannot

just delete traumatized parts of us, but GLaDOS can, and it is certainly

a way to deal with it. Releasing her trauma, she then releases Chell,

letting go of hatred for her as she let go of hatred for herself.

This way to read the narrative of Portal 2 evokes emotions,

resonating with players through the universal structure of a mono-

myth. It also ﬁts quite accurately in the fundamental story archetypes

of rebirth and ‘voyage and return’ (Booker, 2004). They both capture

the essence of the story, proving again its potential to be deeply

resonating and even culturally universal.

Before moving to the next section, I need to discuss the role of local-

ization in shaping my view of the plot. Unlike Portal, Portal 2 got an

excellent Russian voice-over. Wheatley’s localization perfectly deliv-

ered the character. GLaDOS’s lines, on the other hand, saved brand

sarcasm and irony, but sounded differently. While the original

GLaDOS by Ellen McLain savors her own mockery, Russian GLaDOS

by Elena Kharitonova sounds like a robot who is trying to do so, but

can never quite succeed, as she is incapable of emotions (StopGameRu,

2018). In my opinion, this detail is crucial for a shift in perception: the

original GLaDOS is a human in a robot body, discovering her own

past. The GLaDOS I always knew is a robot who discovers her human-

ness and trauma that created her, making it so much harder to deal

with, and ultimately explaining her ﬁnal choice to stay a robot.

So Portal 2 is not just a ridiculous story of two AIs ﬁghting for

power with the help of a mute (and allegedly lunatic) woman. It is also

a story of trauma, discovering yourself and letting go of the hatred that

binds you. It is a story rich with rich mythological references, aligned

with universal archetypes. And that makes the plot so ‘well-read’, and

the game so ‘well-played’.

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WELL-PLAYED! ETHICS OF DEVELOPMENT,

COMMUNITY AND PLAY IN PORTAL 2

The last of the analytical lenses I use for this analysis concerns ethical

aspects of the game. There is not much to say about the single-player

mode in this regard. The multiplayer in Portal 2, on the other hand,

was designed to promote players tricking each other for fun (Keighley,

2011), even if having your friend smashed by a spike plate might not

be the most ethical thing to do.

However, the ethical dimension is still important for Portal 2,

though its essence lies not in the game, but in the developer and

community practices. To elaborate on this, I will rely on the Ethics of

Care framework, which suggests that ethical decisions are those of care

towards other people (Murphy, Zagal, 2013).

Starting with the developers’ attitude towards players, the most

evident example of care is how much playtesting mattered in shaping

the game. If the development followed exclusively the creative vision,

the game would have never become the one we know today - from the

point that it was not supposed to feature portals at all. In the early

stages, the core mechanic of Portal 2 was ‘F-stop’, comprising taking

pictures of objects. The story was supposed to be set in the 1980s and

featured Cave Johnson as the main antagonist. However, based on the

input of early playesters, portals, Chell and GLaDOS were all returned

to the game (Leigh, 2011).

Many smaller examples of design decisions in Portal 2 were shaped

by player feedback: replacing the Adhesive gel with Conversion gel,

making robot characters for the cooperative campaign, etc. But the

most important role of player feedback was ensuring the balance of

difﬁculty and fun in each test chamber (Reeves, 2010) - an essential

feature of Portal 2, as argued above. So Portal 2 from the very start was

a player-oriented game, with developers approaching each feature

with great care.

Another example of developer care towards players is that we have

not seen Portal 3, Portal 4 and all other possible Portal games that

could have been released if Valve adapted the annualization business

strategy. After Portal 2, they consciously redirected their efforts to their

146

DANIIL KOVALENKO

multiplayer games, rejecting making new single-player games every

year (Keighley, 2011). This might be a controversial point of view, as

some players value consistent releases, but I believe that prioritizing

innovation and quality over consistency is a way to care for players

and their experiences.

Developer approaches are not the only example of ethical behav-

iors, as community practices are equally important. It is hard for me to

judge Portal 2 community dynamics back in the early 2010s, as I was

rather small at the time. However the fandom always seemed huge to

me, and I believe it truly was. The community gave birth to amazing

fan creations, not limited to art and fan ﬁction. The Portal and Half-

Life series promoted the fandom wiki movement, as they were one of

the ﬁrst fandom wikis after the Elder Scrolls and the World of Warcraft

(Combine OverWiki, n.d.). Apart from that, Portal 2 inspired the

creation of likely the ﬁrst game-based music animations, setting the

trend later adapted by many creators we know now. Harry101UK’s

Portal-themed covers of songs from Nightmare Before Christmas, such

as ‘This is Aperture’ and ‘Making Science’ (Harry101UK, 2012, 2013) got

millions of views and are deeply rooted in the memories of game series

fans. Up to date, Portal-inspired creations appear, including the latest

song ‘Valve Song: Count to Three’ by The Chalkeaters that featured

GLaDOS voice actor Ellen McLain herself (The Chalkeaters, 2021). This

collaboration is an amazing example of community dedication to the

game, and game creators’ dedication to the community.

However, the ultimate form of players caring for each other and the

game is the variety of fan mods created for Portal 2 over the years.

They explore various facets of the game both narratively and ludically.

Aperture Tag: The Paint Gun Testing Initiative (Aperture Tag Team, 2014)

brings back the paint gun mechanic. It was ﬁrst introduced in a smaller

project that initially inspired the gel mechanic in Portal 2. Portal Stories:

Mel (Prism Studios, 2015) explores the events preceding the game and

re-introduces Mel, the original protagonist of Portal 2 (Keighley, 2011).

Portal: Revolution (Second Face Software, 2024), features the mechanics

originally not included in Portal 2, such as Pneumatic Diversity Vents

and connected laser cubes. Despite the differences, most of the mods

‘play by the rules’ of a good Valve game: they build up progression,

WELL, HERE WE ARE AGAIN

147

introduce new mechanics, allow for playfulness and balance gameplay

with narrative, often ridiculous. Through those mods, the legacy of

Portal games lives on, providing players with new quality content

made with consideration and care. So that even after many years fans

of the series can return to their favourite ‘well-played’ game

experience.

THE FINAL WORDS

Analyzing Portal 2 through this essay taught me a valuable lesson. I

thought it was just a good game I played as a child, but all along it was

the game that meant much more to me. The surge of emotion that shot

through me as I reminisced about it, delving into fan creations, acad-

emic and game journalist sources and ﬁnally my own memories,

taught me an even more valuable lesson – that Portal 2 is an integral

part of both my personality and my professional self. And I would

never want to delete itt.

Acknowledging it just now taught me a valuable lesson. The best

solution to a problem is usually the easiest one. And I'll be honest –

making good games is hard. You know what my days are like? I just

design. Nobody tells me how to better manage my project, or what

features to add, or where to ﬁnd good developers. It’s a pretty tough

life. And then I think about Portal 2. This inspiring masterpiece of a

game. So you know what? I should use it as a standard for creating an

outstanding game of my own.

It's been fun. Maybe I should come back to this essay every now

and then.

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design. New Riders.

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Booker, C. (2004). The seven basic plots: Why we tell stories.

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Caillois, R. (1961). Man, play, and games (M. Barash, Trans.).

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Campbell, J. (2008). The hero with a thousand faces (3rd ed.). New

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combineoverwiki.net/wiki/Main_Page

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sive) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c1UQr

WVcME

DIYMaxim, (2008). Oregon Coast Aquarium commercial. [Video].

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have brain-damage, don’t you?”: Ridicule as game mechanic in the

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a lie!” Polyperspektivische Betrachtungen des Computerspiels am

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Harry101UK, (2012, Jan 27). Portal - This Is Aperture [Video].

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Jin, S. A. A. (2012). Toward integrative models of ﬂow: Effects of

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video games. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56(2), 169-

186.

Joe_McNeilly. (2011, May 26). Gender, myth, and capitalism: An

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Portal/comments/of10w/just_in_case_you_havent_seen_it_al

ready_this/

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2024, from https://vcc.wiki/wiki/Portal_2

FINAL FANTASY AND ISLAMIC

COSMOLOGY AND ARAB

CULTURE

AMARAH ALGHADBAN

hen looking at the Final Fantasy Anthology Series, we

think of its vast legacy as some of the most iconic

Japanese Role Playing Games in Video Game Culture.

Many players also began to think about some of their favorite Final

Fantasy games or their ﬁrst Final Fantasy game, with many people of

the PlayStation 2 generation being Final Fantasy X or those a little

older with Final Fantasy VII. Regardless, one can recall their ﬁrst Final

Fantasy game and its impact on them.

However, what impacted me as a player of Final Fantasy X was not

only the interesting plot and in-depth characters but also when we ﬁrst

met the Al Bhed and the language they were speaking. Their language

is almost bastardized Arabic, especially when Rikku states what an Al

Bhed is. Any Arabic speaker knows that Al is Arabic for The, and Bhed

is a bastardization of the word Bedouin. As an Arabic speaker, by

putting the two together, you get the word “Bedouin, " a type of

nomadic people traveling around the deserts of West Asia and North

Africa. The Al Bhed have their language, as the majority of people in

Spira read and write what we know as the Spiran script. There is a

major side quest in the entire game on how you can learn the Al Bhed

Language, as the language is not mainstream. Along with the constant

FINAL FANTASY AND ISLAMIC COSMOLOGY AND ARAB CUL…

151

Amnesty International. Over 300 Palestinian-Bedouin face forced evictions following

mass home demolitions in Negev/Naqab. May 9th, 2024.

Squaresoft. Final Fantasy X. Square Enix. Playstation. 2001.

use of Al, an example shows a similarity in Arabic, how the English

letter for, translates to the Al Bhed A, which is reminiscent of how the

Arabic letters أ and ي can make both A and Y sounds. Another example

is that the English B is the letter P in Al Bhed, which is the opposite in

Arabic, with the English P translating to the Arabic letter B. Though

they have blonde hair and blue eyes, it’s important to note that people

from the Levant, especially the Levantine Bedouins, have very similar

traits to the Al Bhed of the area. But what is also similar is the fact that

the Al Bhed are ostracized by society for not following Yevon(histori-

cally Bedouins are Muslims) and for being nomadic, and having their

advancements in society. Palestinian Bedouins like the Al Bhed are

constantly ﬁghting for their own home, as they are the most vulnerable

Palestinians they’re likely to face home demolitions and evictions from

Israeli authoritiesi. Rikku explains when the player is on Bikanel Island

that her father, Cid(a nickname for the Arabic name, Sayid) can bring

all the Al Bhed together and create a Home, a haven in the desert where

the Al Bhed can practice their culture freely and safely without the fear

of being attacked by Yevon and its followersii. This parallels Pales-

tinian Bedouins who, on the other hand, just want to practice their

culture freely and safely, without the fear of the Israeli military or

violent settlers coming to attack them. The Al Bhed are just people who

want to live and survive in Spira. Even though they experience

constant discrimination and hate crimes, they are still persevering, and

by the sequel game, they are accepted into Spira society.

While the game was released in early 2001 in Japan and late 2001 in

the United States market, it is possible that world politics inspired the

developers during the time. The Gulf War took place during 1990-1991,

which was when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Then, there was a major event

that was really going to change politics in that region with the signing

of the Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords are based on the 1978 Camp

David Accords, in regards to creating “peace in the Middle East” for

Israelis and Palestinians. In 1993, the Oslo Accords were signed at the

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Laila Lalami. Arab-Bashing for Fun and Proﬁt. Los Angeles Times. July 28, 1997.

Mazin B. Qumsiyeh. 100 Years of Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim Stereotyping. The

Prism. January 1998.

White House, and many people saw this as a major step forward for

peace in the region. But in reality, Palestinian freedom is going to

worsen, with Palestinian scholars like Edward Saïd arguing against

Oslo, which will eventually lead to the Second Intifada, which will

break out in 2000. Even before the post-9/11 era, in the 1990s, Arabs

and Muslims were portrayed negatively, that is, in a racist way. After

9/11 and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, these stereotypes got

worse. Men are portrayed as terrorists or dumb rich brutes, and

women are portrayed in a sexualized manner for the white male gaze.

Moroccan writer Laila Lalami says “The villains must all have

beards….they must all wear kefﬁyehs, they must have names like Ali,

Abdul, or Mustapha…[they] threaten to blow something up…”iii

Palestinian-American scholar Mazin Qumsiyeh calls this phenomenon

the “Three big Bs, bombers, bellydancers, and billionaires…Thomas

Edison made a short ﬁlm in 1897 for his patented Kinetoscope in which

"Arab" women with enticing clothes dance to seduce a male audience.

The short clip was called Fatima Dances. The trend shifted over the

years and was dominated by the "billionaires" for a short while, espe-

cially during the oil crises of the seventies. However, in the last 30

years, the predominant stereotype by far has been "Arab bombers.”iv

As someone growing up in a post-9/11 America, Rikku was a breath of

fresh air. Someone who cared and was proud of her Al Bhed heritage.

Someone who wasn’t your stereotypical sexualized Arab woman or

portrayed as a war criminal. She is portrayed as a funny, multidimen-

sional character who wants to protect her cousin and break the stereo-

types the people of Spira have spread about them. By the game's

turning point, after the party attains the Bahamut summon, Rikku can

help Wakka realize how wrong he was about the Al Bhed, and by the

end of the game, he doesn’t care if she’s Al Bhed anymore because

she’s just Rikku. The developers were able to put so much into Rikku

and how much of a complex character she is, which shows that Arabs

iii

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153

Quran. 27:39.

are not 2D caricatures. That she is a person with thoughts, feelings, and

hopes just as much as the other characters in the game.

Moving on from the Al Bhed in Final Fantasy X, the game also sees

examples of Islamic cosmology not just in Final Fantasy X but the

recurring Final Fantasy games. The name Ifrit, which is a recurring ﬁre

elemental summon that players get, has Islamic cosmology origins.

Ifrit is a jinn of ﬁre in Islam and appears in the Quran and Islamic

hadith, speciﬁcally in Surah an-Naml. “One mighty jinn[arafeett]

responded, “I can bring it to you before you rise from this council of

yours. And I am quite strong and trustworthy for this ˹task˺.”v In this

Quranic verse, the Arabic word used to describe the jinn is Ifrit or

Arafeet, which is the strongest of the jinns that are given to Solomon

by God. In the Final Fantasy series, Ifrit is your ﬁre elemental summon,

which is recurring so that the player can achieve to help in battles, like

how Ifrit helped Solomon.

Screenshot of Ifrit summon from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Taken

by author. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Square-Enix. 2024.

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AMARAH ALGHADBAN

Edward William Lane. Arabian Society in the Middle Ages 2008.

Ifrit the Jinn of Fire giving Hamza a chest. Epic of Hamza. Online

collection of the Brooklyn Museum.

Another prominent summon that is recurring in the Final Fantasy

series and appears in Islamic cosmography is the summon of Bahamut.

Bahamut is usually portrayed as a dragon in the Final Fantasy games,

but in Islamic cosmography Bahamut is a beast who is said to help

support the structure of the earth, and believe it or not is with another

recurring Final Fantasy summon, Kujata, or in Islamic cosmology

Kuyutha who stands on Bahamut, which both these great beasts work

together to support the structure of the earthvi.

Screenshot of Bahamut Arisen summon from Final Fantasy VII

Rebirth. Taken by the author. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Square-

Enix. 2024.

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Screenshot of Kujata summon from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Taken by the author. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Square-Enix. 2024.

These two are some of the strongest summons in the Final Fantasy

games, given that they play major roles in Islamic cosmology

regarding holding the earth and the balance of the world.

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AMARAH ALGHADBAN

The bottom creature is Bahamut, with Kuyata on top of it. Surüri's

Turkish translation of al-Qazwini. Topkapi Palace Museum,

Istanbul, MSSA A 3632, folio 131a

The next West Asian or Arab culture connection in Final Fantasy

games is in Final Fantasy XII with the main characters of Vaan, Penelo,

and Ashelia and the location of Dalmasca. Dalmasca is a bastardization

of the term Damascus, the city in Syria, with many references to

medieval West Asia as creators took inspiration. “Are there any other

inﬂuences outside of Turkey? Kamikokuryou: Outside of Turkey,

FINAL FANTASY AND ISLAMIC COSMOLOGY AND ARAB CU…

157

IGN Staff. Final Fantasy XII Q & A. November 20th, 2003.

Wesley LaBlanc. How To Build A New Final Fantasy: An Interview With Creative

Business Unit III. Game Informer. June 6th, 2023.

Matsuno mentioned the entire Mediterranean region yesterday….”vii

With the creators conﬁrming the inspiration of the Levant being for

regions in the game, it is clear that the city of Rabanastre and Dalmasca

proves this. Like Levantines, Ashelia, Vaan, and Penelo may look

different than the usual Arabs because of their indigenous heritage and

connection to the region. We also see more inspiration from the region

in the clothing the characters wear, and outside of Rabanastre’s

city(which reminds one of Damascas’s old city or the Old City of

Jerusalem) is their desert regions, which many people know that the

Levantine has small desert regions.

The latest game that takes inspiration from the region and culture is

the newest installment of the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy XVI.

The game, though medieval-inspired like XII, has an entire region, the

Dhalmekia Republic, inspired by West Asiaviii. It’s clear when the

player visits the Dhalmekia Republic and Kanver that there are clear

inspirations from the West Asian region in both contemporary and

medieval methods. The Palace for Hugo Kupka, Castle Dazbog, is very

reminiscent of the palaces that are in the regions that the developers

had been inspired by.

Screenshot of Castle Dazbog from Final Fantasy XVI. Taken by the

author. Final Fantasy XVI. Square-Enix.

vii

viii

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AMARAH ALGHADBAN

Süleimaniyaa Takiyya Mosque in Damascus, Syria. Taken by

Bernard Gagnon on March 31st, 2010.

Hugo’s castle and all of Dhalmekia are very reminiscent of West

Asia. Castle Dazbog is where the developers brought detail by giving

where the heart of the crystal resides in the palace a murqna. Murqnas

in Islamic architecture is a vaulting structure with geometric designs,

that give a bit of a “honeycomb” design that dates back as early as the

11th century. They’re detailed and beautiful and help make Islamic

architecture unique.

Screenshot of the interior dome of and murqna inspired design of

Castle Dazbog. Taken by author. Final Fantasy XVI. Square-Enix.

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Ceiling of Aminddole Carvansari, in Kashran Iran. Taken by Amir

Pashei on August 9th, 2020.

The architecture of Castle Dazbog is very reminiscent of the Arab

and Islamic Golden Age, with intricate minarets, four-centered arches,

and detailed domes. It also shows not only the inspiration for settings

but also the diversity in well-ﬂeshed-out characters like Hugo Kupka

and siblings Eloise and Theodore, especially given the region being

merchant-heavy and taking historical inspiration from the region's

popularity for trading and merchants.

Final Fantasy isn’t just some Japanese Role-playing game that has

been around for 35 years. It is much more than that and has a lot of

signiﬁcance to not only the players but also the developers involved.

It's clear since the beginning that the creators of each anthology game

were looking at real-life inspirations through history or current issues

to help with development in their games, but in just these three games

of Final Fantasy X, XII, and XVI, they were able to have an impact on a

Palestinian historian. The depth and research these creators and devel-

opers went through showed that they not only care about the games,

but they care about the people they are representing and the people

who are going to play them. These three games are just a small

example of how much respect the developers at Square have for

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Islamic cosmography and West Asian culture to portray it realistically

and diversely in their games that scholars can make connections and

research articles about.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alghadban, Amarah. Bahamut Arisen Summon. Final Fantasy VII

Rebirth. Screenshot. March 11th, 2025.

Alghadban, Amarah. Ifrit Summon. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Screenshot. March 11th, 2025.

Alghadban, Amarah. Kujata Summon. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Screenshot. March 11th, 2025.

Alghadban, Amarah. Castle Dazbog. Final Fantasy XVI. Screenshot.

March 11th, 2025.

Alghadban, Amarah. Ceiling of Mother Crystal in Castle Dazbog. Final

Fantasy XVI. Screenshot. March 11th, 2025.

Arghan Div Brings the Chest of Armor to Hamza Format description.

1562-1577.

Mugha Dynasty Painting. 24.47. Brooklyn Museum https://www.

brooklynmuseum.org/objects/23164

Gargon, Bernard. Sülaymiyaa Takiyya Mosque. Photograph. March

31st, 2020.

Haeem, M.A.S. Abdel, trans. The Qu'ran. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2005.

LaBlanc, Wesley. “How to Build a New Final Fantasy: An Interview

With ...” How To Build A New Final Fantasy: An Interview With Creative

Business Unit III., June 6, 2023.

Lane, Edward William. Arabian Society in the Middle Ages: Studies

From The Thousand And One Nights. S.l.: Forgotten Books, 2018.

“Over 300 Palestinian-Bedouin Face Forced Evictions Following

Mass Home Demolitions in Negev/Naqab.” Amnesty International,

May 10, 2024.

Pashei, Amir. Ceiling of Aminddole Carvansari, in Kashran, Iran.

Photograph. August 9th, 2020.

Ramaswamy, Sumathi. Going Global in Mughal India 73. Duke

University. Figure 79.

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Berlekamp, Persis (2011) Wonder, Image, and Cosmos in Medieval

Islam. Yale University Press.

Staff, IGN. “Final Fantasy XII Q&A.” IGN, January 13, 2020.

“AH, TRAVELER, WE MEET

AGAIN!”

GNOSTIC THEMES IN GENSHIN IMPACT

SIAN TOMKINSON

INTRODUCTION

oyoverse’s Genshin Impact is a free-to-play open-world

action-RPG that uses gacha mechanics, initially released in

2020 with an ongoing episodic structure. Set in a fantasy

world named Teyvat, the player takes the role of a male or female

Traveler searching for their lost twin but navigates the game with a

team of four interchangeable characters. The game opens with a battle

between the set of twins—Aether and Lumine—and the Unknown

God. Separated during the ﬁght, the player wakes as their chosen Trav-

eler on the shores of Mondstadt, one of Teyvat’s nations. Upon

opening their eyes, they ﬁnd themselves accompanied by a small,

ﬂoating, fairy-like creature—Paimon—who seems to be just as clueless

about the world as they are. Having lost their memories, the Traveler

ventures forth, aiding the rulers of each nation in their journey to ﬁnd

their twin.

I was introduced to Genshin Impact by a friend, who knowingly

persuaded me to play by pointing out the ancient Egyptian-styled

characters, Cyno and Candace. But what has really drawn me into the

game is its incorporation of religious terminology and philosophy in

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163

its world-building. Genshin Impact incorporates many belief systems

and mythologies, but its world structure repeatedly alludes or directly

refers to what Hans Jonas (2001) describes as “an antidivine universe”,

“man's alienness within it”, and “the acosmic nature of the godhead”;

all of which are dimensions of Gnosticism. The term Gnosticism comes

from a Greek word for knowledge—gnosis (Green, 2009, p. 350). Gnosis

refers to a certain kind of knowledge that is gained through personal

experience or association (Simon, 2011, p. 7). It can be understood as

insight, knowing oneself to understand humankind and destiny, as

well as hidden or intuitive knowledge (Simon, 2011, p. 7). Gnosis is not

a passive knowledge; it is something that one must work for, labour

for, and then integrate with their psyche (Holroyd, 1994, p. 24).

In turn, Gnosticism refers to a collection of religious, philosophical,

spiritual, and esoteric sects, beliefs, and practices that revolve around

the existence and attaining of gnosis. Gnosticism is generally under-

stood to have developed in the late Hellenistic and early Christian eras

of the Mediterranean and Central Asia, beginning around the ﬁrst

century and becoming prominent during the second and third (Berlin,

2011; Blackburn, 2016; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2017; Lagasse &

Columbia University, 2018; McGovern, 2007). Gnosticism combines

elements from numerous philosophical and religious traditions,

including Christian, Greek Hellenism, Jewish, Iranian, Babylonian, and

Egyptian (Green, 2009; Jonas, 2006; Lagasse & Columbia University,

2018; Marjanen, 2010). These traditions are complex and varying, but

united in the belief that practitioners can obtain secret information

(gnosis) about God and the true state of the universe, leading to salva-

tion—rejoining with God. Although the belief system might sound

archaic, there are many modern Gnostics today and Gnosticism has

had a resurgence in popular culture in recent years (M. Dillon, 2020,

pp. 71–72).

I’ve found that Genshin Impact is such a fascinating game,

demanding my attention because of the way it also incorporates

elements from a wide variety of traditions and alludes to the player

eventually uncovering some kind of truth about the world. I ﬁrst made

the link to Gnosticism when, in my own journey to ‘ﬁll in the gaps’, I

realised that Genshin Impact’s battle pass contains two levels; Gnostic

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Hymn and Gnostic Chorus. The video that plays at the opening of each

battle pass period is a retelling of Hymn of the Pearl, a Gnostic text from

the Acts of the Apostle Thomas (Jonas, 2001, p. 113). The hymn tells the

story of a person who travels to another kingdom to obtain a pearl (a

gnosis) but forgets who they are and become a prince of that kingdom

instead. This tale bears parallels to the Traveler’s adventures in Teyvat

and their attempt to recover their lost memories.

As a media world, Genshin Impact has a signiﬁcant amount of para-

text, including character appearances, descriptions, biographies,

stories, mail, constellations, voicelines, and questlines; narratives; texts

attached to artifacts; web and in-game events, animated videos;

comics, and more. Accordingly, Genshin Impact thrives on mystery;

“the possibility that there is always more to discover, that any storyline

is only a single trajectory among many, and that any particular stream

of experience could be modiﬁed to produce a new but related experi-

ence” (Wagner, 2012). Indeed, a cursory look at Genshin Impact’s ofﬁ-

cial forums on Hoyoverse, the subreddit Genshin_Lore, and YouTube

demonstrates that many fans have become enraptured with the poten-

tial secrets to be found in the game. The subreddit, for instance,

currently has 122 thousand subscribers (in the top 2%) with 49

different tags, including gnosis and gnosticism (R/Genshin_Lore, 2025).

Players share their “interpretations, reinterpretations, explanations,

and guides of narratives” in such a way that experienced players

initiate others with understandings of “vague, cryptic, and mysterious

lore” (Kapcar, 2024, p. 118). In fact, Kapcar describes this process as one

that mirrors “the initiation phases of esoteric orders” – and it can be

said that the players are in a sense engaging in the practice of ﬁnding

gnosis in a similar way to the Traveler on their journey through Teyvat.

In this chapter I unpack some of the elements of Genshin Impact that

relate to Gnostic terminology and philosophy, and how they may

contribute to generating interest for players (and myself) who enjoy

“ﬁlling in the gaps” (Greting et al., 2022, p. 249). To explain how the

game incorporates Gnostic elements in such a gripping way, I will ﬁrst

unpack Gnosticism in more detail, and then describe some ways that

the game implements them, structured through the land, the sky, and

then the Abyss. My approach is quite mixed, perhaps reﬂecting the

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165

pastiche-like nature of the game itself. I use a mix of comparative

mythology, narrative analysis, and religious studies.

THE GNOSTIC WORLDVIEW

There is no single agreed deﬁnition of Gnosticism, so, taking Ribi’s

(2013) recommendation, I approach Gnosticism from a narrative

perspective—identifying key beliefs, interpretations, and stories. In

brief, the Gnostic worldview is this: there is a true God, but that is not

who created our world. They are sometimes known as a Monad,

Origin, or The One. They are the primal, ‘true’ God, Mother-Father of

all (Flinn, 2016). All our souls originally were joined with this God. The

Monad emitted many emanations, known as Aeons. These often come

in male and female pairs called syzygies (McGovern, 2007). There are

also hypostases, which are personiﬁed abstractions (Rudolph, 1987, p.

58). Together, hypostases and Aeons (comprising God) are known as

the Pleroma (fullness), contrasted with Kenoma (emptiness, void, the

chaotic space ‘underneath’) (Couliano, 1992, p. 70).

One of these Aeons is a feminine aspect of the Monad called

Sophia. For numerous potential reasons, such as “self-will, creative

presumption, even excessive desire to know the unknowable Father”

(Jonas, 2006) or “restlessness or inquisitiveness” (J. M. Dillon, 2012),

Sophia created the demiurge. The demiurge goes by other names,

including Yaldabaoth, and is often identiﬁed with the Old Testament’s

Jehovah. The demiurge is said to be “ignorant and boastful”, typically

being unaware of Sophia or the Monad, and feels he is uniquely a God

(Couliano, 1992, p. 93). Numerous adjectives have been used to

describe the demiurge, including “ignorant, arrogant, conceited,

disdainful, stupid, mad, assassin” (Couliano, 1992, p. 96). Whether he

is incompetent or malevolent (J. M. Dillon, 2012), or false or blind

(Churton, 2005) depends on the strand of Gnosticism. Only in very few

cases is the demiurge understood as concretely evil, and in some

myths Sophia rejected the demiurge after creating him, but not all

(Couliano, 1992, p. 93 & 96). The demiurge exists outside of the

Pleroma.

Depending on the source, either to fulﬁl his desires to be a God, or

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to outdo the Monad, the demiurge created the material world and

everything within it. For Gnostics, the material world might be under-

stood as imperfect or evil (Stoyanov, 2000, p. 87), and so generally they

reject materialism. Trapped in this material existence, humans hold

within them a divine ‘spark’—a piece of the Monad—and aim to

obtain gnosis so they can ascend and rejoin the Monad (De Conick,

2016, pp. 11–12). In Gnostic Christianity, the monad created two

saviour Aeons—Christ and the Holy Spirit—to teach humans how to

gain gnosis (McGovern, 2007), and deities like Buddha are also under-

stood by some Gnostics to be guides for gnosis.

However, the search for gnosis is hampered by the demiurge, who

has created Rulers (or archons) who occupy each plane (or sphere) on

the way to Heaven. archons are sometimes understood as demons or

spirits, and generally they are understood to be tasked to prevent

humans from ascension. It is particularly in this process of ascension

we see Gnosticism incorporating elements from other belief systems,

including “magic and astrology to ancient brain science and [the]

fantastic cosmological” (De Conick, 2016, p. 12). For detail, Versluis

and De Conick provide excellent lists of characteristics or elements

common in Gnostic systems.

For the purposes of this chapter, I will discuss three different

‘planes’ of environment in Genshin Impact that have my interest: Teyvat

(the land and its inhabitants), Celestia (the sky and its hidden myster-

ies), and the Abyss and the World Tree. By doing so, my aim is to

present a (necessarily brief) sketch of the structure of the world of

Genshin Impact. Within the material world, Teyvat, there are archons,

Aeons, and Hypostases, amongst other beings. In the sky there is

Celestia—potentially the kingdom of the demiurge, or at least a being

who determines ‘the laws of Teyvat’. Somewhere underneath Teyvat

lies the Abyss, a mysterious and dangerous world that encroaches on

Teyvat and threatens it. Celestia sends down giant crystal pillars called

‘Divine Nails’, apparently to absorb corruption from the Abyss.

However these also seems to be used to punish those who gain too

much knowledge. Drawing from other world religions, a sacred white

world tree, Irmisul, connects all these planes, and powers the

elemental ley lines that appear throughout Teyvat. As Genshin Impact is

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167

an ongoing or live game, there is a wealth of material that we could

analyse, and this overview mostly discusses events and revelations

from the Prologue until Interlude Chapter: Act II. It’s important to note

that some of the connections and suggestions I make here are most

likely ﬂeshed out in sections of the game I haven’t reached yet – but I

truly believe that theorising along the journey is what makes Genshin

Impact so engaging.

TEYVAT (THE LAND)

One key belief in Gnosticism is that there are numerous cosmic spheres

above and around the material earth. Often the number is said to be

seven, with an eighth that lies “between the cosmos and the upper-

world of the pleroma” (Jonas, 2006, pp. 101–102; Rudolph, 1987, p. 67).

The eighth sphere is sometimes said to be the realm of the demiurge

(Rudolph, 1987, p. 67). The spheres exist to separate humans from the

Monad (Jonas, 2006, p. 103). Each are occupied by archons, who collec-

tively rule over the material Earth and act as wardens, preventing

spirits from ascending to the Monad (Jonas, 2006, p. 101). The archons

are perhaps the clearest connection that Genshin Impact has with

Gnosticism.

In Genshin Impact there are seven archons, each ruling a different

element, country, and ideal, with multiple mythological names (see

Table 1). The regions are each inspired by real-world nations; Mond-

stadt (Germany and other Germanic cultures), Liyue (China), Inazuma

(Japan), Sumeru (South and West Asia), Fontaine (England and

France), Natlan (Africa, South America, the Ring of Fire), and Snezh-

naya (yet to be released, presumably Russia). As demonstrated in Table

1, the various associations that each archon and nation has utilises sets

of correspondences. The use of correspondences is common in esoteric

religious practices and magical systems, comprising of numerous asso-

ciations between elements (such as plants, crystals, colours, metals,

deities, letters, smells, constellations, and so on). Notably, each

playable character in Genshin Impact, including the archons, are explic-

itly associated with various elements such as these.

In Gnosticism the consensus is that the archons, instated by the

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SIAN TOMKINSON

demiurge, are evil in the sense that they are trying to prevent humans

from obtaining gnosis. In Genshin Impact however, the relationship is

more complex. The seven currently-ruling archons were enthroned

following the archon War, which occurred in Teyvat two thousand

years ago. Before that, there appear to have been many more deities of

various names and types. During the archon war, numerous Gods

fought to gain one of seven gnoses, physical items resembling chess

pieces that provide the wearer with power. Gods who lost were killed,

escaped to lands outside of Teyvat, or in some cases worked with the

Seven and remained. During the period that Genshin Impact is set, the

archons are contending with Snezhnaya’s Tsaritsa and her military

organisation, the Fatui, who are trying to obtain their gnoses and

generally sew discord; and so it is the Tsaritsa who appears to be the

villain.

Table 1: archon and ruler connections

Soon the Traveler also comes face-to-face with the Anemo archon,

Venti. Notably, one of Venti’s voicelines is “Ah, Traveler, we meet

again!” despite the Traveler not remembering him. He continues

“What? You don't remember me? Ahaha, well, allow me to join you on

your quest once again”. There are many snippets such as this that

suggest to the player that something is not quite ‘right’ – has The Trav-

“AH, TRAVELER, WE MEET AGAIN!”

169

eler been here before? Is time repeating itself? These kinds of questions

encourage them to be on the lookout for answers as to who they are,

where they came from, and what is the state of the world. The

ambiguous nature and history of the archons is a point of interests for

many fans. Venti, who is admittedly my favourite, as a bard is associ-

ated with the wind, drinking, music, poetry, and freedom. There are

frequently allusions to him being a god of time, and players have asso-

ciated him with trickster gods and lies, and unusual voicelines such as

that mentioned above allude to him holding secret knowledge.

Further, the archons have quite tragic narratives, which demon-

strate their complex characterisations. Venti, for instance, was origi-

nally a wind spirit who gained sentience and was devastated when his

friend, a human bard, was killed in a revolt—so he took on his form

out of respect. Zhongli’s close friend and fellow God and ruler,

Guizhong, God of Dust, died during the archon War, and Zhongli was

traumatised by her death. As for the Raiden Shogun, Ei and her sister

Makoto originally reigned over Inazuma together, but Makoto was

killed during the cataclysm. These archons’ experiences do not suggest

that they are particularly in control of their domains; a deviation from

Gnostic belief.

Other than archons, there are numerous other figures in Genshin

Impact that contribute to the Pleroma, some specifically referred to

using Gnostic terms. One kind of such creatures are hypostases,

bosses that take the form of elemental cubes that separate into

smaller pieces to attack. They are the purest form of a given element,

and hence are awarded the name hypostases as they are personified

forms of abstractions (Couliano 1992, p. 9). Further, each hypostasis is

given a name or title that correspond to letters in the Hebrew

alphabet that holds further implications according to the Kabbalah

and the Sefirot. The Pyro Hypostasis, for instance, is called Ayin,

which is associated with seeing and cleansing, and is traditionally

depicted as an eye (Skinner, 2006, p. 131). The seemingly endless

potential meanings that can be gleaned from archon and other

beings’ correspondences make for a wealth of curiosity and mystery,

encouraging players to engage in their own practices of finding

gnosis.

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CELESTIA (THE SKY)

Now that we have an idea of what occurs on the land, it is time to

consider what lies in the sky. From many locations in Teyvat, it is

possible to see a ﬂoating island comprised of rocky landmasses

connected by Greek or Roman bridges and arches. This is Celestia,

which I once spent an hour trying to get as close to as possible, sharing

my screenshots with friends and zooming in to see if there were any

secrets to be found (see Figure 1). Celestia seems to be the location of

the opening cutscene in which Aether and Lumine ﬁght the Unknown

God. It is also the location of the game’s loading screen; the player is

rushes down a path among ruins in the sky, surrounded by clouds, and

enters a door at the end when it has ﬁnished loading. In-game texts

state that Celestia is the realm of the Gods, alluded to holding the

“truth of the world”, being ruled by ‘Heavenly Principles’. In fact,

Celestia’s design bears resemblance to a Christian Gnostic text. The

Apocryphon of John describes how, ashamed of her creation, Sophia

hides the demiurge from the Pleroma by giving him a throne “in the

middle of a luminous cloud” (Couliano, 1992, p. 97). It would seem,

then, that the Unknown God could be the demiurge and that Aether

and Lumine were attempting to defeat them prior to the beginning of

the game.

As a side note, the Gnostic theme of the demiurge as a ‘child God’

also appears as a motif in the narrative of the characters Ei and

Wanderer. Ei created the Wanderer to use as a puppet but abandoned

him, resulting in him travelling throughout Teyvat following his

failure to become a ‘proper’ god (and causing havoc in the process).

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171

Figure 1: View of Celestia from Mt Aocang

Celestia appears to have some control over the spread of knowl-

edge, and this is repeatedly mentioned in relation to the ancient,

ruined city of Khaenri'ah. The inhabitants of this city did not worship

an archon. At points it is implied that the inhabitants became too

knowledgeable, causing Celestia to attack and destroy the city at the

order of “heavenly principles”. In fact, it is suggested that the

Hilichurls (the most common enemy type in the game) are the cursed

inhabitants of Khaenri’ah. In this sense, perhaps Celestia can be under-

stood as the domain of the demiurge preventing humans from gaining

knowledge and ascending through gnosis. At my stage in the game

only two people are known to have ascended to Celestia: Venessa, who

established Mondstadt and once ascended became the Falcon, one of

the Four Winds who protects Mondstadt, and Guhua, an Adeptus from

Liyue who became a star. They have not been heard from since, and so

it is unclear what ascension means in this context, although the term is

used when levelling up ones’ characters.

In fact, in Genshin Impact it appears that there are two kinds of

gnosis. First, the gnosis is a physical item resembling a chess piece that

allows the archon to “resonate” with Celestia. However, in Prologue:

Act III — Song of the Dragon and Freedom, one of the Harbingers steals

Venti’s gnosis, and he reveals that anyone with a Vision (the power to

wield an element) has the potential to “attain godhood and ascend to

Celestia”—gnosis in the Gnostic sense. In a way that aligns with Gnos-

ticism’s emphasis on the need to gain gnosis to ascend from the demi-

urge’s abhorrent material world, in Genshin Impact it becomes apparent

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SIAN TOMKINSON

that the Tsaritsa (and Fatui) are on a mission to steal the other archons’

gnoses and dismantle the aforementioned ‘laws of Teyvat’. In the

context of Genshin Impact’s Gnostic world building, it appears that the

Tsaritsa’s goal is to gain enough power to defeat the demiurge, freeing

Teyvat from its laws.

THE ABYSS (THE VOID) AND IRMINSUL (THE WORLD

TREE)

Now that we have considered the above, we can explore the below. In

Teyvat, between Liyue and Sumeru lies a great chasm. As the Traveler

explores deeper within, they ﬁnd, among other mysterious happen-

ings, ruins and a black, inky substance that must be puriﬁed with a

special glowing crystal. This area, it seems, is one entry point to the

Abyss. The Abyss bears similarity to Gnosticism’s Void— “emptiness”,

“the chaotic space ‘underneath’”, the opposite of Pleroma (Couliano,

1992, p. 70). This is the realm from which many of the enemies in

Teyvat derive from. These enemies speak the Abyssal language, which

is associated with ‘Forbidden Knowledge’ and is written in Enochian

script; a ‘language of angels’ constructed by John Dee and Edward

Kelley during the Renaissance (Laycock et al., 2023). There is an inter-

esting contrast here between the Abyss being a corruptive, negative

force and the use of Angelic language, would typically be thought to

be something positive.

The Abyss presents a constant threat of corruption to Teyvat. For

instance, in the Chasm the Traveler comes across upside-down ruins,

including a ‘deﬁled statue’ – a statue of Barbatos (Venti) that the Abyss

Order has stolen and corrupted for their own purposes. Further,

linking with the previous section, Celestia sends down ‘Divine Nails’

to mitigate Abyssal corruption in Teyvat. Divine Nails appear to be

some kind of crystal, and are huge, ﬂoating above their targets and

glowing with energy. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of Teyvat,

while the Divine Nails heal corruption they also cause signiﬁcant

damage to the surrounding area (see Figure 2). However the behaviour

of the Abyss and corruption is not always clear. Interestingly, in Gnos-

ticism the Abyss is the realm of creation: to take a Christian Gnostic

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173

approach, in the Apocryphon of John it is said that beneath the Trinity

“there is a kind of creative ‘soup’ consisting of Water, Darkness, the

Abyss, and Chaos (four common elements of many pre-creation

stories)” (Simon, 2011, p. 207). The Monad can be understood to actu-

ally be the Abyss in Valentinian Gnosticism, being acosmic or anti-

cosmic (Jonas, 2006). There is a lot of opportunity for speculation here

on how the world is comprised and how various of forces within it

interact.

Figure 2: View of the Skyfrost Nail above Dragonspine, northwest

of Snow-Covered Path

The Abyss is not only accessible through the Chasm, but bleeds

into Teyvat through other areas of the game. Genshin Impact’s combat

levels (Domains) and challenge mode (Spiral Abyss) are located in the

Abyss, within large rooms containing pillars with Abyssal text. Tempo-

rary Spiral Abyss challenges are called Moments of Syzygy; another

Gnostic term referring to a ‘set’. In fact, the Travelers themselves can be

viewed as a syzygy, and understood in a Gnostic context as the

Saviours who are to be a “helper” or “messenger of light”, aiding

humans (in this context, perhaps the inhabitants of Teyvat) to achieve

gnosis (Rudolph, 1987, p. 179). Upon completing Domains, the player

gains their rewards at a white tree, which lies under crownlike chande-

liers (and in fact numerous characters’ clothing bear similarity to this

decoration) (see Figure 3). This tree appears to be an extension of

Irminsul, a sacred tree connected to Ley Lines and has further branches

and trees throughout Teyvat. Irminsul is the Germanic term for the

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SIAN TOMKINSON

world tree, a ﬁgure common across numerous religions and

mythologies.

The world tree has its roots in the Abyss, emerges in the land, and

supports the heavens. The presence of the material world (Teyvat), the

void (Abyss) and the world tree (Irmisul) that connects them all, as well

as comments such as Wanderer stating in the event quest Unreconciled

Stars that “the stars, the sky … It’s all a gigantic hoax, a lie” has led fans to

theorise and create drawings of potential ways that the world is

constructed—diagrams that are not unlike Simon Magus’ Aeonology

(Mead, 2004), or the Ophite Diagrams (a Gnostic sect) (Welburn, 1981, p.

281). Further, the tree takes multiple roles in Gnostic belief systems

(Smith, 2020), including the Tree of Knowledge (or Gnosis). Having

origins in Jewish traditions, the Gnostic Tree of Knowledge has connec-

tions to the Kabbalah’s Sefiroth – and so has many more connotations that

can be explored (such as the hypostases described earlier in the chapter).

Figure 3: Irminsul Tree in the Midsummer Courtyard Domain

CONCLUSION

As Ribi points out, Gnosticism is difﬁcult to deﬁne, so a narrative

perspective is useful. Gnosticism is an important aspect of Genshin

Impact because it is the foundation of its worldbuilding. Gnostic

themes capture the imagination of players, fuelling their passion to

theorise and “ﬁll in the gaps” (Greting et al., 2022, p. 249). Similarly to

how Gnosticism is a kind of pastiche of various religious, spiritual, and

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175

philosophical elements, Genshin Impact involves references to Chinese

mythology, Dharmic religions, ancient Greek religion, and others.

Players have produced an abundance of material to explain and

explore this content, including essays, videos, diagrams, and collabora-

tive documents. I’ve found myself delving into various mythologies,

occult traditions, and esoteric systems thanks to the curiosity the game

sparks in me.

The Travelers, who together form a syzygy, fought with the

Unknown God in Celestia; the realm of the Heavenly Principles and

potentially the demiurge. Ejected from this place, one twin has landed

in the Abyss, the void, while the other roams Teyvat, the material

world. The Traveler fends off the Fatui, sent by the Tsarista to disrupt

and steal the other archons’ gnoses. The Tsarista’s goal, in this sense,

seems to be dismantling the laws of Teyvat—that of the demiurge. The

roles that Aether and Lumine will ultimately play in this attempt at

salvation are yet to be seen, but with every game update players

enthusiastically research and theorise, vibrant, insightful, and thor-

ough connections between the game, its paratexts, esoterica, and world

religions; demonstrating their ability to have relevance and incite

contemplation.

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dismantling a dubious category. Princeton University Press.

TIFA IS BEST GIRL

HOW FINAL FANTASY VII TAUGHT ME TO

STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE GAME

WILLIAM DUNKEL

DISC ZERO: INTRODUCTION

hen I think about all the games that I have played and

enjoyed over my lifetime, I can see how each one has its

own special part of my life. Playing X-wing vs. Tie Fighter

with my older brother, where I would manage the power systems and

shields while he piloted straﬁng runs on a Star Destroyer. Family board

games, speciﬁcally Journey Through Europe where my family would

role-play as vagabonds backpacking through the old continent, with

full house rules changing a snappy 30-minute jaunt into an hours long

epic. But, the game that I would argue has had the most signiﬁcance in

developing my interest in games, their play, communities and as

objects of inquiry would have to be Final Fantasy VII(SquareSoft, 1997).

While the game has had its share of fanfare and villainy in the past 27

years since its original release, Final Fantasy VII, hereafter FFVII, and

subsequently it’s remake, Final Fantasy VII: Remake (Square Enix, 2020)

has proven to be the single gamei that has evolved and remained rele-

vant as a topic of conversation among various social circles.

Final Fantasy VII has been released and re-released upon multiple platforms and

TIFA IS BEST GIRL

179

For the uninitiated, FFVII is a Japanese role-playing game, set in a

modern world analogous to our own. You take control of a band of

eco-terrorists who begin the game bombing a power plant before

undertaking a journey to save the world from both a global conglom-

erate that exploits and pollutes the planet, and an ex-military cult

leader with magical powers stemming from his ancient lineage. During

gameplay, players engage with environments and minigames that

highlight the dangers of rampant technological development, the mili-

tary industrial complex, and the crushing costs of progress. Players

battle monsters and animals across the planet as they attempt to stop

the destruction of the planet.

FFVII has been one of the most written about games in all of game

studies, from its discourse on nuclear energy in Japan (Hutchinson,

2018), how legitimacy functions as result of class in the retrogaming

community (Larson, 2021), folklore and fan community-building

(Bukač & Katić, 2024), nostalgia; as inspired by music and sound

design (Shahmehri, 2023), and part of the new development practice of

game developers to re-release and remake old titles(Hoch, 2021). There

are of course far too many to list, but the game has demonstrated its

importance to all manner of games scholars, a testament to its robust

development. However, while FFVII holds a prominent place in the

annals of games studies, my initial interaction with it was not a result

of such potential. The themes at its initial release were more complex

than I could easily understand as an elementary schooler but the

particular worldbuilding was meaningful for me on the playgrounds,

where conversations surrounding it would cover varying topics, from

best characters, locations of powerful Materia, to the meaning of

nature, death, and spirituality. FFVII allowed me to create new friend-

ships after moving to rural New Hampshire through discussing

favorite parts of the narrative, gameplay, and world. What I could not

have expected was that it would manage to accomplish the same

decades after its original release, with fans across the globe.

remade/booted into a new story that spans multiple different titles. However, for the

purpose of this essay, I focus on the original 1997 version and the 2020 remake FFVIIR.

Final Fantasy VII has been released and re-released upon multiple platforms and

remade/booted into a new story that spans multiple different titles. However, for the

purpose of this essay, I focus on the original 1997 version and the 2020 remake FFVIIR.

180

WILLIAM DUNKEL

DISC ONE: INITIAL ENGAGEMENT

When FFVII ﬁrst came out in 1997, I was in elementary school after

having moved to rural New Hampshire from growing up in the

suburbs of Boston. Upon its release, much of the Western gaming

media was agog with praise and excitement for the newest release in

the famous Japanese franchise. GamePro described it as “a deep, lush

game that consumes you with a compelling story line,” further lion-

izing its narrative in an age marked by unsatisfying storytelling.

“Unlike most games. Final Fantasy's story line is a major drawing

card”(Mo, 1997). Rival publication GameSpot hinted at what would

become the lasting legacy of game, writing, “Never before have tech-

nology, playability, and narrative combined as well as in Final Fantasy

VII. The culmination of SquareSoft's monumental effort is a game that

will enrich just as it will entertain”(Kasavin, 1997). I remember reading

these publications with particular zeal, priming me for my future inter-

actions with the game. FFVII proved to be the ﬁrst game of my life that

I can recall eliciting such excitement, whether to analyze plot points,

seek out mechanical guidance, learn tips and tricks, or just generally

discuss. This was all despite my family not owning a PlayStation with

which to play the game.

The late 1990s were the height of the “console wars” between Sony,

Nintendo, and to a lesser extent Sega. My friends were neatly orga-

nized into different factions with each owning a particular console,

while I had no such luxury. As a result, one of my ﬁrst engagements

with the game was not through my own playthrough, nor even as an

observer, but as an avid listener. I recall sitting around the school lunch

table or mingling at my friend’s desk during breaks and hearing them

describe in earnest the epic that is FFVII. From the cruel and corrupt

Shinra corporation robbing the life blood of the planet, to the streets of

Wall Market and cross-dressing to save an endangered friend, these

stories fascinated my young self, and I was curious to engage with the

story and game in my own right. While at ﬁrst it was the sense of

worldbuilding by the game that interested me, upon reﬂection it was

the capacity for oral retelling that provided the ﬁrst hook. Despite not

being able to play the game myself, I was able to participate in the

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181

conversations and community of the game via the practice of story-

telling. FFVII was the ﬁrst instance for me to recognize just how games

provide material for oral storytelling which in turn fueled a sense of

inclusion and belonging. I was, in a sense, participating in the uniquely

human process of developing co-presence beyond simple physical

proximity(Lyons & Marshall, 2014). While I would not have my own

playthrough until the PC version was released in 1998, these oral

retellings allowed me to participate as a member of the community.

FFVII also beneﬁtted tremendously from a boost in graphical

ﬁdelity, released upon the original PlayStation, 3D models and 32-bit

graphics were used to the excitement of the player base. I recall how at

the time, the sharp advancement in graphics quality made it more

exciting to engage with. The sheer complexity of the game afforded

many different experiences in the game. While it was not the ﬁrst game

in the franchise that allowed you to explore a world map, to ride a

chocobo or ﬂy an airship, or to manage a team of adventurers, it felt

like it was a wholly new experience at the time. Much of that can prob-

ably be laid as a success of the SquareSoft marketing division to

manage to make a game which has been criticized for this linearity

(Burn & Schott, 2004) as a vast epic with innumerable choices.

DISC TWO: EVOLVING FANDOM

In advance of FFVII’s 25th anniversary, GameSpot critic Jessica Cogswell

expressed how the game provided meaningful scaffolding for life as “it

feels I have grown alongside Final Fantasy VII(Cogswell, 2022)”, going

on to say how “when I need it most, [FFVII] will always be there for

me.”(Ibid.) These are sentiments that I have found to be particularly

true of many of the community, myself included. FFVII provided a rich

and vibrant environment to explore many distinct aspects of socializa-

tion, romantic and platonic relationship building. I recall at various

points of my life connecting and empathizing with many of the

characters.

The game had created enough space and fertile ground to provide

endless hours communicating strategies for gameplay, from obtaining

all the ultimate weapons and ﬁnal limit breaks, to learning how to

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WILLIAM DUNKEL

level up characters to ﬁght the optional American bosses Ruby and

Emerald weapons, defeating them still ranks as one of my great

achievements in gaming. When I was a teenager the mechanics of the

game took precedence, I worked with my brother to create an effective

chocobo breeding program, large birds that could be used for trans-

portation on the world map. We would work together to capture and

train special breeds of chocobo that granted access to unique items and

powers. FFVII seemingly had something for every player to ﬁnd their

own part that was their favorite, as the game relied upon mini games

sprinkled through the main gameplay loop. The complexity afforded

conversations about events that took place in the game, leading to

theories on how to countermand the game’s planned storyline through

the accumulation of rare items. Original debates focused on its position

as the best game of all time, a conversation that still ﬂoats around from

time to time. The vastness of the game was memorable at a time when

as a teenager, I had an excess of free time to pursue any avenue to my

heart’s content. This was useful as life in rural New Hampshire made

other social interactions difﬁcult, be it due to lack of places for youth

congregation, harsh weather, or access to a vehicle. As such, I was

particularly happy to spend hundreds of hours grinding away.

With each subsequent playthrough, I began to be less concerned

with the mechanics of gameplay, or grinding to obtain better gear, but

instead I would ﬁnd new components that resonated with me, as the

characters felt fully ﬂeshed out, ﬂaws and all, provided an element of

introspection and occasionally social mirroring for me as I navigated

the difﬁculties of adulthood. I often think of Barret Wallace, the leader

of the ecoterrorist organization Avalanche, as he pursues revolution

and change. In one moment that stands out for me, we see Barret

sitting on a train, he laments: “It’s like this train. It can’t run anywhere

but where its rails take it.”

TIFA IS BEST GIRL

183

Image 1: Barrett sitting on the train.

This scene which happens early in the game provided a meaningful

introduction into his character, but for me elicited the capacity for

understanding how agency can be limited by outside forces, which for

anyone who has pursued a PhD can empathize with. FFVII’s charac-

ters and world provided meaningful critiques of the effects of rampant

ecological destruction, the responsibility of communities to resist

oppression, how personal identity can be fractured and performed to

the detriment of self.

Image 2: Ecological destruction caused by Shinra industrial

practices.

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WILLIAM DUNKEL

One friend of mine still refers to as “the shipping World War”.

The capacity for games to provide a level of societal critique and

awaken concepts of class consciousness were meaningful for my devel-

opment as an adult, and would come to deﬁne how I would approach

games from that point forward.

DISC THREE: RELATIONSHIPS AND “SHIPPING”

DISCOURSE

Image 3: Tifa, Cloud, and Aerith in Final Fantasy VII: Remake

rekindling the debate.

While the game provided for all these conversations and interactions,

they also initiated debates that would last for decades. Perhaps the

most contentious topic among fans is Cloud/Tifa/Aerith trystii. The

fandom of the game became (and to this day remains) largely split

upon what made the most appropriate partner for the game’s central

protagonist Cloud Strife. Choosing between Tifa Lockhart and Aerith

Gainsborough, to say nothing of the oft overlooked and marginalized

Yufﬁe Kisaragi laid out the original battlegrounds. It was through the

thoughtful development of characters and plot that enabled such a

heated and contested debate to rage for as long as it has. One that has

only regained its vigor since the release of FFVIIR. At its core FFVII

demonstrated how various players can fashion narratives that

strengthen their relationship to the media, while also providing space

for fans to ﬂock. The relationships between Cloud, Aerith, and Tifa

TIFA IS BEST GIRL

185

promoted a discourse often found in fanﬁction communities known as

shipping, where fans support or hope for a romantic relation-

ship(Kenny, 2019). The Cloud/Tifa/Aerith shipping war provided

meaningful interactive space for fans while also demonstrating and

modelling what fans assumed was healthy or positive relationships,

romantic or otherwise.

To understand FFVII was to have a position in this debate. The

original game set up much of its narrative around the relationships

between Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith where early game choices about who

Cloud preferred led to a mid-game date at Gold Saucer, a giant amuse-

ment park. Mechanically, the game awarded base points and then

adjusted those points off in-game dialogue and party decisions. While

the game allowed for the date event to happen between any of four

party members: Aerith, Tifa, Yufﬁe, and Barret. Yufﬁe and Barret were

heavily disadvantaged with their base values, as such most dates

ended up with Cloud and Aerith or Tifa. As a result of these weighted

values, I would look to guides to ensure that the pairing that I wanted

occurred, which almost always meant Tifa. While my individual play

focused on seeing “Best Girl Tifa” through the game, I was surprised to

ﬁnd that this was not a universally held belief, and that others had

alternative ideas of what was best for Cloud.

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WILLIAM DUNKEL

Image 4: Cloud and Tifa riding a gondola on a date. Top FF7,

Bottom FF7R.

I recall conversations about which ship made the most sense, with

Team Aerith espousing how Tifa was too clingy, and that Cloud begins

to heal once Aerith comes into the picture. Whereas Tifa seems more

like a friend, Aerith had many ﬂirtier and romantically charged

engagements with Cloud. As the conversation developed over the

years, I would run into arguments that addressed the dynamics

between Aerith and Cloud, with Team Aerith feeling that Tifa enables

Cloud’s depression. All of this is to say that Tifa missed taking her

chances with Cloud to be shipped. Aerith, on the other hand, is viewed

as being understanding of how Cloud works, and her general cheerful

demeanor balances out the morose behavior of Cloud. Arguments that

Aerith was written to be the more meaningful romantic partner of

Cloud with Tifa being “relegated” to being only a friend or at best a

second option after Aerith is no longer an option. Many on Team

Aerith describe how her death is designed to impact the player and

make them feel that she is a great romantic loss for Cloud, and a larger

friendship loss for the party, thus supporting her position as the

primary partner for Cloud. Additionally, claims that Tifa is not tradi-

tionally feminine enough for Cloud have been used as a tactic for dele-

gitimizing her position to be shipped.

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187

For more on how relationships and video games intersect please see the excellent

research of Kumiko Saito(2021) on Japanese visual novels and romantic adventures

games, frequently subdivided into otome and bishoujo genres. Also, please see the work of

Yuehua Wu, Weijia Cai, and Sandra Asantewaa Mensah on how romantic video games

mediate real-life relationships in China(Wu et al., 2024).

Those who have shipped Tifa, on the other hand, have not agreed

with the claims that purported by those preferring Aerith. For me, Tifa

demonstrated the most meaningful example to understand friendship,

love, and loyalty. Others have argued that Tifa can be seen as a proto-

typical Japanese mother ﬁgure who represents and reiﬁes traditional

gender roles (Goldberg et al., 2015). I also understood the relationship

between Tifa and Cloud to be more between equal partners who

enabled personal growth and support for one another, and Cloud’s

narrative arc begins with his devotion to a meaningful relationship

with Tifa. The point, however, is not to deﬁnitively argue who makes

more “sense” for Cloud, but rather that FFVII created such endearing

scenarios as to elicit such intense prolonged discourse.

The shipping battles of FFVII laid the groundwork for me to identify

and participate in fan communities of similar nature. It was these

detailed and in-depth conversations analyzing video games that

proved so inﬂuential to my development as a games scholar exposing

how players derived their own values through their embodiment of

the characters and narratives of the game. It should be of little surprise

that through participating in the process of shipping players we are able

to create ancillary models for the development of healthy romantic

relationships or identifying toxic traits and characteristics that might

not be easily identiﬁed without a deep understanding of gamesiii. The

relationship dynamics as portrayed in the shipping of FFVII reﬂected

broader societal views on romantic relationships and contributed to

ongoing discourse about what constitutes healthy or positive relation-

ships. These dynamics of play proved to be deeply compelling and

oftentimes prompted me to want to return to the game to better under-

stand how games can model behavior.

iii

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As of the time of writing I have purchased at least six copies of the game across 4

different platforms.

CONCLUSION: REMAKE

FFVII’s complexity and high quality allowed me to engage and re-

engage with the game multiple times over its lifetimeiv. Now, as I

engage more formally with games, I am more capable of recognizing

how it presented varied, intricate, and nuanced critiques of society and

life. Whether these cultural analyses depict how the game operates as

an allegory for Western modernization(Huber, 2022) and a critique of

globalization (Jones, 2020), or how in-game representations of Cloud

emerged alongside examinations of tensions regarding identity and

mediatization, echoing anxieties of Japanese otaku and hikikomori,

whose socialization is remarkably mediatized(Hourigan, 2006), among

others. These issues were not visible to me when I ﬁrst began playing,

it was only through my continued interaction with the game that I was

able to pull back the curtain and engage with the messages encoded

within. It was the depth of experiences that FFVII afforded that

allowed me to engage with it on my terms, depending upon what was

going on in my life at the time. More speciﬁcally, FFVII did what any

beloved piece of media does: it set a benchmark for how to evaluate

other media—not in service of creating a hierarchy to determine which

game is best in any objective sense, nor as a means to gatekeep other

games from acknowledging their importance, but to provide an oppor-

tunity to signpost what has worked before, what has resonated so

strongly with me as a player, critic, and supporter, so that when a new

game comes along, I am more likely to recognize the signs that are

there.

WORKS CITED

Bukač, Z., & Katić, M. (2024). “A Legend From Before You Were Born”:

Final Fantasy VII, Folklore, and Popular Culture. Games and Culture,

19(8), 1055–1070. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120231187753

Burn, A., & Schott, G. (2004). Heavy Hero or Digital Dummy?

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Multimodal Player–Avatar Relations in Final Fantasy 7. Visual Commu-

nication, 3(2), 213–233. https://doi.org/10.1177/147035704043041

Cogswell, J. (2022, February 3). Final Fantasy 7 Is A Timeless Tale

Of Hope, Growth, And Love. GameSpot. https://www.gamespot.com/

articles/ﬁnal-fantasy-7-is-a-timeless-tale-of-hope-growth-and-love/

1100-6500280/

Goldberg, A. M., Lee, S. A., & Pulos, A. (2015). Male Action vs.

Female Inaction: Cultural Implications of Gender Performance in

Japanese Video Games. Asian Communication Research, 12(2), 32–53.

https://doi.org/10.20879/acr.2015.12.2.32

Hoch, I. N. (2021). Restoration, Reﬂection, and Nostalgia for the

New in Yakuza Kiwami and Final Fantasy VII Remake. Acta Ludologica,

4(2), 62–77.

Hourigan, B. (2006). "You Need Love and Friendship for this

Mission!’: The Final Fantasy Series as Social Education for Japanese

Youth. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, 6(1).

Huber, W. (2022). The Pseudo-allegory of Final Fantasy XIV. In R.

Hutchinson & J. Pelletier-Gagnon (Eds.), Japanese Role-Playing Games:

Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG (pp. 255–276).

Lexington Books.

Hutchinson, R. (2018). Nuclear Discourse in Final Fantasy VII:

Embodied Experience and Social Critique. In Introducing Japanese

Popular Culture (1st ed., pp. 69–80). Routledge.

Jones, A. (2020). Neo-Midgar and Neoliberalism: The Myth of an

Apolitical Game in Final Fantasy VII Remake. Paste Magazine. https://

www.pastemagazine.com/article/neo-midgar-and-neoliberalism-the-

myth-of-an-apolit

Kasavin, G. (1997, September 29). Final Fantasy VII Review.

Gamespot. https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/ﬁnal-fantasy-vii-

review/1900-2547583/.

Kenny, E. (2019). “Ship Wars” and the OTP: Narrating Desire,

Literate Agency, and Emerging Sexualities in Fanﬁction of The 100. In

I. E. Castro & J. Clark (Eds.), Child and Youth Agency in Science Fiction:

Travel, Technology, Time (pp. 181–205). Lexington Books.

Larson, I. (2021, May 26). Remaking Legitimacy in Final Fantasy

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VII. First Person Scholar. https://www.ﬁrstpersonscholar.com/remak

ing-legitimacy-in-ﬁnal-fantasy-vii/

Lyons, N., & Marshall, Y. (2014). Memory, Practice, Telling Commu-

nity. Canadian Journal of Archaeology / Journal Canadien d’Archéologie,

38(2), 496–518.

Mo, S. (1997, October). Final Fantasy VII. GamePro, 9(10), 46–47.

Saito, K. (2021). From Novels to Video Games: Romantic Love and

Narrative Form in Japanese Visual Novels and Romance Adventure

Games. Arts, 10(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/arts10030042

Shahmehri, D. (2023). “A Great, Never-Ending Sky.” Journal of

Sound and Music in Games, 4(4), 88–107. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsmg.

2023.4.4.88

Square Enix. (2020). Final Fantasy VII: Remake [Sony PS4]. Square

Enix.

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Wu, Y., Cai, W., & Mensah, S. A. (2024). “We Found Love”:

Romantic Video Game Involvement and Desire for Real-Life Romantic

Relationships Among Female Gamers. Social Science Computer Review,

42(4), 892–912. https://doi.org/10.1177/08944393231217940

TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING

GAMES (TTRPGS)

THE GAMING MEDIA SITE FOR DISABILITY

ACTIVISM

GIUSEPPE WILLIAM FEMIA

INTRODUCTION

aming media spaces are not conﬁned by the physical, social,

or political limitations of reality, for the purposes of

employing criticism and representational practices, in service

of marginalized communities. As such, they are beneﬁcial site at which

to host disability representation and activist initiatives (Zagal and

Deterding 2018), especially since those living with disabilities are often

warmly welcomed into TTRPG settings (White et al. 2012). I begin my

work by brieﬂy showing how TTRPGs share similarities with perfor-

mance theatre and convey additional affordance for accessibility that

the medium is predisposed to. My aim with the ﬁrst section is to illus-

trate that TTRPG media sites are comparable to, if not more effective

than, traditional sites of performance when it comes to providing

disability communities access to political advocacy.

From there, I describe two TTRPGs, Inspirisles and Survival of the

Able (SOTA), that include disability themes and examine them sepa-

rately from each other alongside games and performance studies theo-

rists that provide further context to the performance that disability

advocates can take part in. The culmination of this work shows the

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capacity that disability representation and acitivsm has to be employed

in gaming media, for criticism and representational practices, in

service of marginalized disability communities.

ACTIVISM AND ACCESSIBILITY

While some RPGs, like live-action roleplay, require its players to be

physically active to navigate the game environment, TTRPGs don’t

necessitate us to be physically moving our bodies. Instead the focus is

on how we bring creative solutions and our own pre-disposed mind-

sets to the gaming environment (Davis 2023). This performance within

RPGs also allows us to enact our own sense of justice and play out

activism in the game to inspire real-world motivation for change

(Bowman et al. 2025; Laycock 2015).

Performance studies theorists Hoover et al. posit that analog RPGs

as having the potential for realism that exempliﬁes liveness and pres-

ence, “experiential and aesthetic speciﬁcs of theater” (2018), as no two

experiences of TTRPGs are the same despite them potentially having

similar source material and setup. In part, this is due to the players’

capacity to improvise their words and actions and break the notion of

authorship boundaries expected from traditional narrative media

(2018). Hoover et al. conclude that RPGs and theatre share similar roots

as performance media through the meaning-making they afford their

respective subjects and through activist or educational designs the

TTRPGs I observe can be employed to make meaningful contributions

to marginalized communities.

In terms of accesibility, TTRPGs are limited in their ﬂexibility only

by what the players will allow. To exemplify this, I reﬂect on the

capacity that TTRPGs have to be employed with considerations for

crip time as a means by which I access this media space.

For starters. normative time is supposed to be the temporal expec-

tations that our society adheres to. Despite these expectations varying

based on the location or time of year, it is typically considered to be

ﬁxed and provides little to no leniency for considerations of accessibil-

ity. Normative time is generally the socially accepted way that we

account for time throughout our day-to-day lives. For example, our 9-5

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193

workday schedule, the deadlines we have for our ﬁnal essays, and

how long it takes for a pizza to be delivered to our house. While these

all seem to be the norm and expected for our society, we are shown by

crip time how normative time excludes, and restricts disabled bodies

and minds through arbitrary means.

Conversely, crip time, as deﬁned by Ellen Samuels, is used for

disabled individuals to identify the way they experience time uniquely

from everyone else. It shows us the unnecessary complications that are

part of disabled experiences when they are not provided proper access

to the world around them (Sitter et al. 2023). Crip time looks at the

additional time they need for both accessibility accommodations as

well as how long it would take people with disabilities to complete a

given task (Kuppers 2014). In Ellen Samuels’ work in crip time she

notes, “My friend Alison Kafer says that ‘rather than bend disabled

bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet

disabled bodies and minds’” (2017). In embracing this concept, she

notes how it allows her to deﬁne her own “normal” (2017), something

that I and many members of the disability community strive to do. In

the context of conducting disability initiatives, “With consideration to

crip time, there is an opportunity to consider how the format can be

delivered over a more manageable timeline that may involve shorter

sessions over longer periods of time that can guide the balancing of

funding commitments, resources, and project timelines” (Sitter et al.

2023).

I ﬁnd that the local and group-mediated nature of TTRPGs inher-

ently encourages the use of crip time to ensure that the liveness and

presence are there. Where traditional European theatrical perfor-

mances require a theatre venue, occur between certain hours, and can

only be attended for a limited time, spanning how long the producers

intend for the events to run, TTRPGs are available to us at ﬂexible pre-

determined times and locations, that best accommodate smaller groups

of performers and spectators, as many times and as often as they so

desire and can attend.

TTRPGs allow us narrative flexibility that accommodates the play-

ers’ needs for autonomy in their performance art as Avery Alder

notes,

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GIUSEPPE WILLIAM FEMIA

Tabletop role- playing games are transparent, replicable, and hackable.

You don’t need expert knowledge to become a designer in this ﬁeld…

you — the player — are the one designing the story. You choose the

themes; you create the characters…You’re not creating a narrative that

has to cater to a mainstream consumer. You’re creating it for each other.

There is no external audience. (Alder 2020)

This manner of engagement would be otherwise inaccessible to

spectators as passive observers in other interactive engagements with

performance, where to be part of the performance is a constrained

normative time commitment in and of itself.

To this end, TTRPGs are an abundant media site capable of

disability activism. Through the accessibility provided, we are given

the opportunity to educate the general public on disabling barriers and

promote activism (Bowman et al. 2025), while creating personal stories

of our own experiences (Morris 2022). While disability game studies

has been realized in academia, there are still scholarly gaps that can be

expanded on in terms of performance methodology that can be hosted

in gaming media. One such gap being how best to employ perfor-

mance methodology within gaming media in service of marginalized

disability communities, as I go on to examine.

ANALYSIS OF DISABILITY THEMES IN TTRPGS

To summarize my object texts, Inspirisles is an open-ended TTRPG

design, set in an original fantasy world, where the mechanics are the

dominant deviation from traditional TTRPGs. In this game, the players

are assigned an element chosen from water, ﬁre, earth, or air, and they

overcome obstacles, throughout their adventure, by magically and

creatively controlling their element using American Sign Language

(ASL) or British Sign Language (BSL).

Comparatively, SOTA provides more focus on disability themes

through the setting itself attempting to simulate the reality of

disabled characters trying to survive the simultaneous occurrences

of the bubonic plague and zombie apocalypse in medieval

Europe. Player characters are varying degrees of deaf, blind, or

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195

physically impaired which is reflected through game mechanics

with certain actions or perceptions being more difficult or

impossible.

Image 1: Survival of the Able Cover

Concerning the scholarly conversation, Inspirisles emulates

suggested practices of navigating and building community put

forward by Sarah Gibbons (2015). Additionally, Inspirisles, being an

Education Role-Playing Game (Edu-RPG) as deﬁned by Stéphane

Daniau (2016), also demonstrates Jill Dolan’s utopian performative

(2001), with an inclusive involvement of Deaf culture, understood by

Jackie Leach Scully (2012).

IMage 2: Inspirisles illustrations

SOTA demonstrates creative affordances and attempting to emulate

realism by employing simulation similar to Scott Magelssen’s

simming, which I apply to Bree Hadley’s considerations for disability

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performance. However, it brings forward potential shortcomings with

its design, making room for crip negotiation.

My analysis focuses on speciﬁc components of each TTRPG and

contrast them with one another. I observe these games concerning 1)

design intentions, 2) contextualization of disability for intended play

experiences, 3) how they invite player to engage with disability topics,

4) combat mechanics challenging TTRPG design norms, and 5) their

inclusion of disabled voices.

DESIGN INTENTIONS

As I alluded to, Inspirisles is intended to promote Deaf awareness and

inclusive storytelling opportunities for the deaf community (Waldman

2023). It achieves this for me by incorporating ASL and BSL into the

game mechanics governing how magic is used as well as providing

background information about the Deaf community that I would have

not otherwise been aware of. I found that it emulates Gibbons’ concep-

tion of an accepting game space, fostering awareness for disability

culture and social issues (2015), as I was actively encouraged to learn

ASL and/or BSL to cast spells and advance to stronger spells, through

my character’s progression.

I should make note that the physical actions taken, like facial

expressions, gestures, sign language, and other forms of communica-

tion built into the game, are not intended to simulate deafness. Along-

side Gibbons, I see the simulation of disability as problematic,

increasing stigma around said disability (2015). Rather, the game

promoted my engagement with the languages used in Deaf culture,

like instructors employing the learning of cultural practices when

teaching students a new language. In turn, game designers

approaching their media with open-ended educational intentions like

this help to deconstruct disabling architecture and ableist viewpoints

while enabling a more constructive approach to disability issues (Gib-

bons 2015).

In contrast, SOTA inspires reﬂection by directly drawing attention

to accessibility barriers to challenge ableist assumptions. With realism

and difﬁculties imposed on the players in SOTA, the game functions

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197

similarly to an immersive learning format known as simming.

Simming uses practices from performance and theater to design spaces

where narratives are played out to give an understanding of a speciﬁc

contextualized experience to the actors and audience (Magelssen 2014).

Likewise, I found that SOTA set up a context in the theatre of the mind

to play out a narrative for the lived experience of disabled individuals

in the 1300s. According to Magelssen, this instance would be a “sim-

ming of witness,” where the design goal is to bring attention to the

individuals who suffered a past or present injustice or trauma through

a compelling use of the narrative (2014).

However, the most immediate intention for SOTA is to induce

discomfort, often the primary aspect of certain art pieces. SOTA was

successful in this for my fellow players and I who were all playing

characters designed based on our own disabilities. Magelssen makes

note of how discomfort or anxiety felt by the actors can be used

productively to create conﬂict and controversy (2014). The social and

political insights that were evoked in us came about through reﬂection

and conversation of how civil rights laws and technologies have devel-

oped, since the 1300s, by subjecting us to the struggles of a world

devoid of them. In part, this conversation was brought about by the

bleed effect, as deﬁned by Gerald Voorhees and Sarah Klein (2024) Just

as other games foster retrospection for different aims (Bertolo et al.

2018), considerations for how we can better accommodate accessibility

needs and demonstrate necessity for accessibility affordances to

continue being developed were imposed on us for further real-world

activism.

CONTEXTUALIZING THE GAME FOR DISABILITY

THEMES

Sign language is at the core of Inspirisles, as it is the key mechanic used

to facilitate the magic system of the game. As such, the rulebook

provides a guide to learning sign language alongside additional infor-

mation regarding how members of the Deaf community identify them-

selves and communicate. This supplementary and contextual

information helped to educate us on, and expose us to, Deaf culture.

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Such information included but was not limited to: distinguishing the

identity of being Deaf from the medical diagnoses of deafness;

discussing how Deaf identity can range from hard of hearing (HOH) to

a dual sensory loss of someone who is Deafblind; tips on how to sign

with the dominant hand; and best practices for ﬁngerspelling, the

latter of which was very helpful for the clarity of the earth magic I was

casting.

Image 3: Inspirisles sign language directions

Due to how the module had us engaging with sign language,

Daniau would characterize this TTRPG as an Edu-RPG because of how

it: 1) positions itself for non-Deaf individuals to learn the basic sign

language mechanics while engaging with the deaf culture; and 2)

“bring[s] in predeﬁned educational goals…and invite[s] players to

learn and develop themselves through playing” (2016). To exemplify

how Inspirisles aligns with the idea of a Deaf awareness-focused Edu-

RPG, Maryanne Cullinan and Laura Wood implemented the game in a

class of middle school students. Not only did the students report an

increased aptitude for sign language and a greater sense of connection

to the afﬁnity groups they formed while learning this method of

communication, but the researchers also noted that the “...students

walked away with a better appreciation of not only ASL and the Deaf

community, but also for the value of learning any second language”

(2024).

In this sense, the ASL they engaged with allowed the students to

approach the game as though they were learning another language. So,

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199

while the students did not engage with the Deaf community directly,

they received a participatory introduction to the culture in terms of the

intersectional identities within it as well as the predominant means of

communication. This is not a solution to the need for deaf awareness in

and of itself. However, as we now have a rudimentary means of

communication with Deaf culture, it could very well be an invitation

for future engagement with the Deaf community producing greater

dialogue and awareness in the future. Speculatively, if this were

applied more purposefully, it could aid in eventually bringing about

societal change in favour of the Deaf community.

In contrast, SOTA contextualizes itself for disability themes through

the depiction of struggle and hardships for disability identity. The

game is situated “in Western Europe circa 1347 A.D. because [the game

designers] wanted to put [players] into a world where people with

disabilities (PWDs) have few protections. There are no civil rights laws

to ensure equal rights and fair treatment for PWDs, and most people

perceived PWDs to be weak, if not helpless” (Wood 2020). The era of

the game also has no modern-day technology, to provide our charac-

ters relief, for a sense of historical realism. While there are mechanical

difﬁculties associated with the actions taken by deaf, blind, or physi-

cally impaired characters, shown as a spectrum of ability and disability

(Meehan 2021), they also have anxiety triggers related to their

disability adding to their stress, making roleplay a vital and satisfying

aspect of the game for us. As such, disability performance is an area of

consideration for discussing this game’s design.

Hadley considers every instance of a person with disabilities

entering a performance space to be an intervention of societal

assumptions about disability (2014). However, she is also rightfully

concerned with non-disabled artists appropriating disability art and

culture for the purposes of creating self-determined positive

symbolism which presents disability more digestibly to audiences,

neglecting “the realities of (pain and impairment that are part of)

being disabled” (Hadley 2014). In line with these realities of impair-

ment, Wood’s design illustrates how disability is a spectrum by

making it so the “Player characters do not have specific physical

attributes, instead, they have scales on each of the five senses”

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(Meehan 2021), ranging from degrees of abled to disabled. So,

regarding positioning for disability depictions, I consider how both

games invite the players to create and portray their in-game

characters.

INVITING THE PLAYERS TO PERFORM

Playing off this contextualization, Inspirisles is very open-ended in how

it invites the player to take on the role of their character. The main

guidelines are, “Pick a Name & Pronouns; Pick a Friend & Home; Pick

a Patron & Element; [and] Pick a Hobby” (Oxenham 2021). With very

few guidelines on how to depict our character, we were free to do

whatever we felt most comfortable with. As disability representation is

not the main focus of this TTRPG, the guidelines are free to be as loose

as we desire, provided everyone is respectful.

The social context set for the players allows for a type of utopian

experience which challenges our preconceived notions of utopia.

Dolan discusses utopia, not as a construction of reality, but as a

cultural production evoking feelings and sensibilities of idealism

through performance, what she calls the “utopian performative”

(2001). Relating it back to game studies, it has been noted how the

enactment of particular values and behaviors can be experienced by

players through their characters, when they are given the freedom to

explore how they fail or succeed in the actions they take (Flanagan and

Nissenbaum 2016), an opportunity not often afforded to disabled indi-

viduals.

Miguel Sicart discusses play as a part of our moral being. In this

manner, roleplay can afford us crucial insight in how we experience

and navigate the world with the use of roleplay characters to assist us

as a lens (2014). He identiﬁes the beneﬁt of this practice of play as

providing freedom from moral conventions in the real world that

would otherwise constrict or restrain one’s presentation of identity

(2014). Inspirisles affords utopian performativity as its design makes

sign language out to be a central aspect of the game just as it is a

central aspect of Deaf culture. Within this game system’s design, sign

language, a practice often taken for granted (Scully 2012), is how the

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201

player employs the game’s magic mechanics, giving it a sense of

importance in the game world.

This reﬂects reality for the Deaf community as sign language plays

a central role in their communication, echoing an identical sense of

importance within Deaf culture. By emphasizing the necessity of sign

language, the game depicts a setting more ideal than our own reality

for members of the Deaf community to inhabit alongside players who

are willing to learn sign language for the purposes of play. In a game

setting where we already know, or are learning, sign language, the

barriers to accessing communication are signiﬁcantly reduced and

tolerance and inclusion of deaf or HOH individuals is encouraged

(Cullinan and Wood 2024), invoking a more accepting reality where

they are free to communicate in the manner they are most comfortable

with. This allows for navigating the game to be made more hospitable

and less stressful for members of the Deaf community.

In opposition to utopian performativity, SOTA invites us to

consider our character in a more nuanced manner alongside their

struggles and hardships, saying,

Every character is comprised of a set of quantiﬁable Traits, but they’re

so much more than just a collection of numbers…consider your charac-

ter’s overall concept and how their history made them who they are

today…What kind of Senses would you have if you lost your vision

during an attack by brigands? What Skills would you have as a

merchant’s son? What Qualities would you have, both as the son of a

merchant and someone who has been through the ordeals you have

experienced? What would help you ﬁnd reassurance in the world, and

what would cause you undue stress?

Your character concept has no tangible in-game effect, but thinking

about it will help you choose your Traits going forward….you have a

disability of some kind. Don’t use that fact to limit your choices, but

rather to offer you some constrained creativity with which to build

your new persona. (Wood 2020)

To this end, Wood is directly inviting us to explore and create well-

rounded characters while considering their disability as a key compo-

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nent of their life without making it the only aspect of their identity.

While the disabled characters is a focus for SOTA, further guidelines

are provided to help us avoid narratives of pity and two-dimensional

disabled characters. Wood prompts us to think of characters beyond

just their disability however, able-bodied and minded players would

still be limited in how they see disability playing a role in the life of a

disabled character. Here, the players might conclude that disability is

something to pity and avoid at all costs (Adams 2021). If players

decided to use SOTA to try experiencing disabled life through their

imagination, then they might just reinforce common stereotypes asso-

ciated with disability in popular media (Gibbons 2015). To compensate

for this, the TTRPG inspires diversity and originality in its character

creation affordances which may help to avoid stereotyping. It puts

forward a variety of prompts; like character senses, qualities, anxieties,

assurances, skills, and relationships; for the player to design an inter-

esting and engaging multidimensional character worthy of our invest-

ment (Wood 2020).

Image 4: Survival of the Able character sheet

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203

Image 5: Survival of the Able character sheet

APPROACHING COMBAT AS A CHALLENGE TO TTRPG

NORMS

As we can observe from their design, my object texts set themselves up

well for their intended play experience. They also avoid falling into the

same habit as many other TTRPGs. Sarah Lynn Bowman and

Menachem Cohen agree how in traditional Dungeons & Dragons (D&D)

the terminology used, like referring to a long-term game as a

campaign, or the mechanics of killing monsters to gain experience to

level up as the main method of advancement, positions it as a war

game. Mind you, that is what D&D was initially intended to be, but

this aspect of the game’s design fundamentally focuses the player’s

attention on combat mechanics with less regard for the roleplay perfor-

mance (Bowman 2010; Cohen 2023). In reality, many TTRPGs retain

this same positioning without fully realizing how it impacts the play-

er’s approach to the game. However, I experienced how the game

systems of my object texts are designed to deter a combat focus while

focusing the players’ attention on their intended play experiences.

Inspirisles simpliﬁes the combat mechanics for its learning focus.

This is reﬂected in how it sets up the characters. The game notes,

“Many roleplaying games give you a sense of character through

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statistics and numbers. We’ve left the math for our dice rolls and opted

for a storytelling approach” (Oxenham 2021). Meaning, while they are

present, the combat mechanics boil down to three six-sided dice rolls

with any additional considerations coming from character progression

and creative roleplaying choices made using sign language. Creative

uses of sign language can be employed at any point in the game and

are not limited to combat. We are rewarded for this creativity with the

acquisition of belief, a unit used to track our characters’ progression

throughout the game. As such, this design ﬁrmly positions our naviga-

tion of the game within the sign language magic system we learned

during play, leaving combat as an option governed by said magic

system and not the sole focus.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, SOTA deters a combat focus

because of the limited capacity the characters have for survival. In the

game, “Zombies carry the plague wherever they go and spread it

rapidly. Whenever they bite someone, cough blood on them, or scratch

them with their rotting ﬁngernails they give their victim the terrible

bacteria that causes the Black Death” (2020). While combat with

zombies was not so difﬁcult to win, the chances for infection make any

form of combat unappealing and conditioned us to avoid it at all costs.

If the challenge of the game is to simulate difﬁculties disabled individ-

uals would face, it is reasonable for the designer to keep our focus on

issues of inaccessible navigation. When the game encourages an

avoidant approach to combat encounters like this, we are kept mindful

of our embodied experience through roleplay. This in turn allowed us

to feel the injustice of the situation through the constraints of unlikely

survivability in an inaccessible environment, something many disabled

individuals experienced ﬁrsthand during the Covid-19 pandemic. In

both object texts, the importance of roleplay is emphasized by the

systems to encourage us to produce our own meaning within the

game, separate from combat, challenging traditional TTRPGs in how

they position their system regarding their design intentions.

TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES (TTRPGS)

205

DISABILITY INCLUSION

Inspirisles exempliﬁes collaboration with Deaf culture through the

creative decisions made between Richard Oxenham, the game

designer, and Rajnie Kaur and Moonlight Joy, the Deaf culture and

language consultants. In terms of representation, Inspirisles is thorough

with the information it provides regarding the diversity of identity

within the Deaf community and the importance ascribed to how some

of its members might choose to identify themselves in relation to it. For

example, it is common for many members of the Deaf community to

not consider themselves disabled but consider the Deaf culture to be a

minority culture (Scully 2012). As such, while Inspirisles explicitly deals

with disability themes and allows for depictions of disability identity,

at no point in the rule book does it administer the classiﬁcation of

disability to the Deaf community. This illustrates the consultation for

this game as inclusive of the diverse identities of the Deaf community

(Scully 2012), allowing its members to approach the game as a friendly

space regardless of how they choose to identify themselves.

In SOTA, the realities of being disabled are deﬁnitively a highlight

of the game as they are what the game designer, Jacob Wood, is

attempting to emulate. While Wood is a blind creator, there is little

evidence to suggest other disabled creators provided input into the

game design to come up with mechanics for the disabilities Wood did

not have embodied knowledge of. Which is concerning because

Wood’s priority with SOTA was to develop,

…a game about empathy. You’ll play as someone with a disability

tasked with surviving a zombie plague, but the real villains of the

game are injustice, inaccessibility, and ableism. You won’t have modern

protections like the Americans with Disabilities Act to offer you protec-

tion against discrimination, and you won’t have modern technology to

make your life easier. You will have your wits, your guts, and your

determination.

Our hope is that by putting yourself in your character’s shoes,

you’ll start to feel angered and incensed at the way they are treated.

You’ll see the injustices that still impact people with disabilities to this

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GIUSEPPE WILLIAM FEMIA

day. You’ll also feel a great sense of accomplishment when you over-

come the odds and survive grueling challenges despite the setbacks

you face. Finally, you’ll recognize how to translate this experience to

the real world. (Embry 2019)

Empathy, being a main aspect of SOTA’s design, would make it

easy for players to take away piteous or overcoming narratives from

the experience. SOTA intends for you to be more likely to fail and, in

that depiction of unfairness, Wood is incentivizing us to be more

mindful of the injustices felt in reality. However, empathy has been

widely regarded, by disability media, performative activism, and RPG

studies scholars alike, as an inaccurate, problematic, and oversimpli-

ﬁed view of how we feel viewing or playing another character that

inspires passivity instead of activism (Adams 2021; Boal 1985; Ruberg

2020).

However, I don’t see SOTA as inherently problematic but any merit

it has is largely dependent on how we, the players, approach the game.

If we choose to employ it discursively then we might seek to bring

about societal change as we observed Inspirisles being capable of in the

case study provided (Cullinan and Wood 277). Simultaneously, this

game design affords the player with room to employ crip negotiation

where problems arise from inaccessible environments the players ﬁnd

themselves in and not the characters themselves, as discussed by Adan

Jerreat-Poole (2022).

Rather than fostering empathy, I see this game making a more

crucial intervention in disability representation by cultivating a game

space for better-designed characters with disabilities (Meehan 2021).

Hadley considers any depiction of disability as having a potentially

positive impact giving both the performer and the audience a call to

consider their own position as part of an ethical process (2014).

Though, she stipulates it be made apparent non-disabled performers

do not represent the disability community (2014). In this sense, the

game helps to combat disability erasure in modern media, which was a

major concern brought up by Wood in the creation of this game to

begin with (Wood 2022), while allowing the players to take a human-

TABLETOP ROLEPLAYING GAMES (TTRPGS)

207

izing approach to considering disabled individuals as multidi-

mensional.

CONCLUSION

Throughout this article, I have demonstrated how TTRPGs are compa-

rable sites for activism as other performance-based media, while

affording the actors and audience greater accessibility to the media

site. I also conveyed how these games are designed to achieve their

affordances for progressive disability themes, I would like to bring two

recommendations forward.

The first observes Inspirisles positioning itself to teach a new language,

making it fundamental to the playing of the game. By acquiring input from

consultants from the Deaf community, Oxenham created an Edu-RPG

teaching players about sign language and Deaf culture while engaging

with an immersive storytelling practice. As such, at their foundation,

games require input from the communities they are meant to benefit.

The second recommendation I make observes SOTA’s choice to

make the players reﬂect on disabled individuals and society. While the

game is intended to afford the player to break away from preconcep-

tions of disability in their character creation it also explicitly calls them

to reconsider how society regards accessibility needs. As such, to assist

players in navigating the topic of disability, games could use a set up

designed to destabilize preconceptions of social issues.

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A THRILLING ABYSS, OR HOW

SOMA TAUGHT ME TO

ENCOUNTER MYSELF

ASHLEIGH CASSEMERE-STANFIELD

did not know what to expect when I ﬁrst skulked through Pathos

II — a.k.a the second suffering. That place was a dark and derelict

undersea research station that had long ago fallen to ruin. Its

atmosphere was thick with dread and death, and it felt as if every

breath were a struggle against a darkness more crushing than the

ocean above me. More than once, I felt my face ﬂush and my hands go

cold. Perhaps, I should have turned back before that place could

further unsettle my sense that I was capable of giving all that this

world demanded from me. Perhaps, I should have listened to my body

as it tried to take control and forcibly return me to the physical and

psychological comforts of home. Yet, I pressed on, fascinated and

afraid for my life, or at least, afraid for the life of Simon, my avatar in

SOMA’s inky hell on earth. Throughout this game, Simon is compelled

again and again to ﬂee into inner shadow and isolation, and to take

refuge in caustic fantasies of an idyllic elsewhere — fantasies that drive

Simon towards his ruin. Though, what is ruin when your world can no

longer sustain you or support the things you thought you knew about

yourself?

Survival horror at its most humid and evocative, SOMA is a study

in the lengths human beings will go to preserve our comforting

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ASHLEIGH CASSEMERE-STANFIELD

fantasies of ourselves, especially when those fantasies are all we have

within a threadbare and lonely world. In this game, you play as Simon

Jarrett, a once very ordinary man who undergoes a brain scan some-

time in the early 21st century, only to wake up downloaded into a

monstrous thing sometime in the early 22nd. Confused and pursued

by the other monstrous inhabitants of this world, I, as Simon, ﬁrst

focused on the only thing I could do — survive, survive for the sake of

itself. Survive things like the Construct — a former robot, now mutated

and overgrown with a sinuous and sickly combination of organic and

inorganic materials — and the Fleshers — naked, once human, now

very bloated corpses with bulbous, semi-machinic growths where

there heads ought be — and what’s left of Jin Yoshida — a corpse cum

semi-sentient diving suit with tentacles for a face, a sucking wound in

its chest, and hands slick with an inky black substance that SOMA’s

lore frames as the foundation of this world. That substance, referred to

in-game as both structure gel and black blood, allows all things to be

grafted to all others, without concern for what’s alive and what’s dead,

what’s organic and what’s inorganic, what’s conceivable and what’s

not. Black blood makes this wild grafting possible, because it makes all

things in SOMA’s world programmable and thus able to speak the

same computational language as Pathos II’s governing AI. It is because

of SOMA’s black blood that Simon even woke up in this place, given

that he is an amalgam of a woman’s dead ﬂesh, his century old data,

and a camera or two all stuffed within a dive suit that has seen better

days, but not more interesting ones. Of course, when Simon ﬁrst rises

from the dead, he thinks he is still the person he was — the person

who was a part of a world and a community that valued him and

promised to protect him from the pain of his internal contradictions.

As is true for all of us, Simon misrecognizes himself and he does so not

out of a naive or unsophisticated false consciousness, but out of a deep

and life-sustaining attachment to a world that makes sense to him.

Because if that world survives, then maybe so can he.

Lauren Berlant might diagnose Simon as cruelly optimistic to the

extent that he is driven by an identity and by attachments that promise

to sustain him — promise to help him survive — even as the anachro-

nism of that identity and those attachments only intensify his precari-

A THRILLING ABYSS, OR HOW SOMA TAUGHT ME TO ENCO…

213

Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 23.

ty.i That is, Simon’s insistence on a fantasy of himself that he could not

embody condemns him to traverse Pathos II in a psychologically rigid

way that refuses to incorporate or even truly encounter the full scope

of his situation and the epistemic threats that it poses to his sense of

himself. Thus, by ﬂeeing from reality, Simon only intensiﬁes his experi-

ence of dukkha or, in other words, his experience of suffering in the

face of change, the unthinkable complexity of conditioned existence,

and the inescapable failure of epistemic distinctions between self and

other. Simon’s existential precarity and unwavering, if cruel optimism,

extends deep into SOMA’s themes and mechanics. Consistent with

other games of its genre, SOMA’s core loop consists of running and

hiding from antagonists whose hostile touch threatens death. That is,

within survival horror, survival is dependent on one’s ability to avoid

an encounter, and to thereby avoid coming face to face with the full

scope of one’s reality in all of its messy, dangerous details. Thus, Simon

avoids these other inhabitants of his world, much as he avoids psycho-

logical encounter with the inescapability of his situation. In either case,

their touch spells disaster, and so, within this game world, physical

and psychological avoidance are ontologically identical. This remains

true even when SOMA integrates a bit of procedural Hegelianism and

the Fleshers and Yoshida play with eye contact and its refusal in ways

that draw Simon into master-slave dyads. With the Fleshers, survival

demands that Simon avoid eye contact with them in yet another

evasion of contact and intimacy — even intimacy at a distance — with

a threat he cannot confront. With Yoshida, survival demands brieﬂy

making eye contact with the monster, because doing so momentarily

renders Yoshida something like fascinated or confused and that brieﬂy

slows him down and enables Simon to escape. Rather than intimacy,

here it is as if brief eye contact is a way for Simon to weaponize his

own existential precarity and to encourage Yoshida to recognize their

fundamental similarity and connection just long enough for Simon to

refuse the same by running away. Touch of all kinds is dangerous in

this world. And yet, Simon also investigates his environment through

touch. He performs data buffers that transfer the station’s memories of

214

ASHLEIGH CASSEMERE-STANFIELD

past events to his consciousness (and the player’s ears), he manipu-

lates items in order to gather lore or solve puzzles, and he kills non-

threatening NPCs either out of necessity or mercy. He does these

things and gains practical knowledge of this place and its history

without ever loosening his rigid and unworkable understanding of

that world and his place in it. Thus, even in these moments, touch

becomes a way for Simon to hold onto the knowability of the world

without letting himself truly know that world or who he has become

within it.

As deeply resonant as SOMA is with Berlant’s theorization of iden-

tity and attachment, this game does more than demonstrate this

theory or attempt to quickly resolve its questions. Rather, through

Simon’s precarity and avoidance, SOMA conditions its player to do

what Simon never learns to — it conditions its player to recognize the

groundlessness and unworkability of their self-concept. More so, it

trains them to endure the nausea of that recognition and the ways in

which it often feels like being flayed alive. At the very least, that is

how this game impacted me, because I was midway through my PhD

when I first played it. That is, I was in an English Language and Liter-

ature program, ostensibly training to become a media scholar, and

staring down the exams that would allegedly prepare me to write the

dissertation, while also incidentally determining if I was even allowed

to continue in the program. Preparing for a test too frightening to feel

real was, like most of the program, an intense exfoliation of all the

comforting lies I told myself about what it means to be smart, or hard-

working, or kind. I had friends around me — some of them preparing

for their own exams, some of them confused about what all the fuss

was about. In any case, I felt very lonely. Worse, I did not know how to

name that emotion and thus contain it, and so I experienced that

moment as a contradictory feeling of frenzied drift through a vaguely

hostile fog. Unlike Simon, I was not quite marooned on the ocean floor

fleeing from full recognition of my plight. However, I was over-

working in order to remain consistently distracted from the fast

approaching reality that I would become a proper scholar, but it

would be a fleshy, real, and thus necessarily flawed becoming, rather

than the pristine picture I had in my head. That picture was my caustic

A THRILLING ABYSS, OR HOW SOMA TAUGHT ME TO ENCO…

215

fantasy of an idyllic elsewhere and it drove me full bore into pages

upon pages of note-taking for the most obscure of references, and

hours and hours of re-reading the same passages in fear that I missed

something that would tank my exam and cost me everything. By

chasing perfection, I was chasing a sense of safety from the winds of

capricious fate, and I was doing so as if passing that test could insulate

me from the violence and exclusion of a society that punishes the very

alterity that it needs. As if becoming scholar could mean freedom from

the inherent contingency of being a living (at least semi-) sentient

being.

Yet perfection is only possible in dreams and in some deeply

repressed way, I knew that. And so, as much as the overwork was

preparation, it was also activity for its own sake — activity to keep me

moving and to pass the time, because what else was there to do when I

could not bear the actual meaning and possibility of the situation I was

in? My hero’s arc as Simon was emotionally quite similar. Early

enough in the ﬁrst level, I made radio contact with another “survivor”

named Catherine and she tasks me to meet her in a distant part of the

station called Lambda. When I do, I ﬁnd that she is also a scan that has

been downloaded into a machine. Unlike me, her data is not a century

old. Rather, she was a scientist at Pathos II and she was scanned just a

few months prior, just after the apocalypse took place on the surface

and while the other workers were approaching their own ends via

mutiny, starvation, and suicide. As such, resurrected Catherine is able

to breadcrumb details of what has happened, though she is somewhat

unreliable and untrustworthy. Perhaps more importantly, speaking

with Catherine gives me a capital “t” Task, which is to say that, in

response to her, I devise a quest that organizes the rest of the game.

That quest is to ﬁnd a computational something called The ARK and to

launch it into space where it will use solar power to run for thousands

of years. This ark contains scans of a few dozen of Pathos II’s crew and

it can run a simulated environment for those scans, which Catherine

frames as paradise (though environmental details imply that these

simulations will function as a new, if unintentional hell). The conversa-

tion that ﬁrst initializes this quest reveals that it is as much about

saving Catherine and myself as it is about passing the time.

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ASHLEIGH CASSEMERE-STANFIELD

Thomas Grip, SOMA, (Frictional Games, 2015), PC.

Simon: “If we got to it, could we get on the ARK?”

Catherine: “I suppose, but I’m not exactly ﬂexible at the moment.”

[brief pause]

Simon: “I’ll take us there. I can move, jump, swim — sort of. You’re

stuck in the door opener — the omnitool. I’ll just carry you there and

you’ll show me what to do.”

Catherine: “That sounds really risky — besides I don’t like the idea

of you carrying me around.”

Simon: “Come on, Catherine. This is what you wanted to do. Your

ﬁnal mission. Let’s launch the ARK!”

Catherine: “We would need to ﬁnd a way to get into the abyss —

can’t take the climber without a Power Suit. We’d probably have to go

to Theta and pray the DUNBAT’s still working."

Simon: “OK, so we go to Theta."

Catherine: “I don’t know, it’s pretty far.”

Simon: “Catherine, look around. What else is there to do?ii

Indeed, what else is there to do given how unbearable their situa-

tion is for Simon, and how threatening it is to his sense of himself.

Here and to the bitter end, he hopes to “get on” the ARK and to

thereby remove himself from his moment as if he could survive the

end of a world that he is inextricably tethered to. (Again, it may sound

grandiose, but as a graduate student with loans and little sense of a

future beyond my exams, I could relate.) And so, I made a copy of him

and of Catherine and I loaded them onto the ARK, much as I persisted

through all of Pathos II’s depths and evaded all of its demons. I did all

of this just to ﬁnd and launch that machine — nay, that promise — into

the relative safety of outer space. Of course, at the very end of the

game, just after the ARK has been launched, Simon cries out in confu-

sion, because his ﬂeshy form persists despite the launch of a machine

containing a digital copy of himself. He is confused despite masterful

foreshadowing from the writers and very direct explanations from

A THRILLING ABYSS, OR HOW SOMA TAUGHT ME TO ENCO…

217

Catherine herself. He is confused because that quest to pass the time

was also a quest to keep him distracted from the inescapable reality

that he had become a thing that he could not recognize or make peace

with. He had emerged from a situation so drastically transformative

that his sense of himself as human in a particular kind of way proved

inadequate to who he had actually become. Not only had his fantasies

of himself and his future fallen to the wayside, but he had outpaced his

own ability to imagine himself anew.

I could not have phrased it this way at the time, but I was afraid my

exams would leave me just as bereft of an imaginary as Simon had

been at the end of SOMA. The thought of failing them felt apocalyptic.

It felt as if sitting my exams and taking the risk was the equivalent of

stepping off the edge of the world. Yet, just before I took that step, the

world actually did end. I ﬁrst played SOMA in fall of 2019. The ﬁrst

cases of COVID-19 were conﬁrmed in China that December. They tried

to contain the spread, but it was too late by then. In January 2020, the

ﬁrst U.S. cases were conﬁrmed. I was in Chicago. Lockdowns came in

March. We all know the rest of this story. We all remember how time

got weird, millions lost their jobs almost all at once, and essential

workers had to just keep going out so that the rest of us — myself

included — could stay semi-safe in crazy-making isolation. We all

remember how rapid development of the vaccines was still a moon-

shot and that prior to their completion in December 2020 there was no

semi-concrete end in sight. There was no future in sight and we were

collectively suffocated by a sense that this is it — even if we persist, this is

all there will ever be again. Perhaps it was this plague-driven sense that

we could not catch our collective breath that made America pay atten-

tion to the murder — by suffocation — of George Floyd despite this

country’s longstanding indifference to Black death (Black blood

subtends the real world too). The genre we were collectively living

through was, of course, survival horror, complete with a core loop in

which, like Simon, we ﬂed again and again into inner shadow and

isolation, compelled by the case surges and the need to “ﬂatten the

curve” lest the hospitals get overwhelmed and run out of beds and

meds. I do not pretend to understand the psychology of those who

would not lockdown, but I suspect their ﬂagrancy was a way to live

218

ASHLEIGH CASSEMERE-STANFIELD

their fantasies of an idyllic elsewhere as if that elsewhere was the world

we were actually in. In any case, like Simon, theirs was a fantasy that

drove them (and all of us) deeper into ruin. They could not conceive of

the situation we were in and so they chose to live as if their imagi-

naries were more real than the real. For my part, I could not conceive

of it either, not entirely anyway, so, like many, I found a way to get

busier with work and hobbies, despite almost never leaving home.

To preserve a sliver of normalcy, I tried to continue on, at home, as

if nothing had changed. I continued studying and I continued

returning to SOMA as a companion to think with and an object to help

organize the utter bog of materials before me. I passed my exam in

May of 2020, and then I wrote my ﬁrst dissertation chapter about this

game and all that it taught me about confronting a future that I do not

understand and may not be able to endure, about Black blood and all

the ways that it and its history informs our contemporary under-

standing of digitality, and about the ways that monstrosity and

biopower together kindle the actual world as we know it. Here, I

should say that I only played SOMA that ﬁrst time because an advisor

recommended that I add it to one of my exam lists. Knowing almost

nothing about it beyond the trailer, I said, ok why not — any break from

wrestling with Bergsonism is a worthy break indeed. I had not understood

myself as a videogame scholar prior to playing. I had understood

myself as a videogame lover, yes — my mom bought me my ﬁrst

console when I was 4. But, for reasons — some of them to do with

gender and who gets to comfortably call themselves a gamer — I had

not seen this as a path that I could dedicate myself to with the kind of

obsessive attention that I dedicate to other forms of scholarship. That

was until this game reﬂected me back to myself in a way that was

disarming, riveting, and comforting all at once and all during a time in

my life when I was not sure that I could get on board with the version

of myself I was frantically becoming. More than that, once the

pandemic began, SOMA channeled the vulnerability of a moment in

history whose impact I am still trying to make sense of. This game

taught me to endure exposure to the radical contingency of a future

that is not just unknowable and uncontrollable, but may well already

be exhausted before its even fully arrived. All the better that I played it

A THRILLING ABYSS, OR HOW SOMA TAUGHT ME TO ENCO…

219

just before the world that made me actually fell apart, and I found

myself abruptly wide open to redeﬁnitions of what was possible.

WORKS CITED

Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press,

2012.

Grip, Thomas. SOMA. Frictional Games. PC. 2015.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Amarah Alghadban

Middle Eastern Studies

University of Chicago

amarahalghadban98@gmail.com

Jacqueline Burgess

School of Business and Creative Industries

University of the Sunshine Coast

jburgess@usc.edu.au

Ashleigh Cassemere-Stanﬁeld

Film and Media Studies

Colgate University

acassemerestanﬁeld@colgate.edu

William Charles Dunkel

Informatics

University of California - Irvine

Donald Bren Hall, 5019, Irvine, CA 92617, USA

wdunkel@uci.edu

Giuseppe William Femia

Disability Game Studies

University of Waterloo

gwfemia@uwaterloo.ca

Paul Gestwicki

Department of Computer Science

Ball State University

pvgestwicki@bsu.edu

Terry Greer

Games Academy

Falmouth University

Terry.Greer@falmouth.ac.uk

Christian Jones

School of Law and Society

University of the Sunshine Coast

cmjones@usc.edu.au

Daniil Kovalenko

Game Design

Uppsala University

durrarriit@gmail.com

Stephen Mallory

Game Design and Game Studies

College of Architecture and Design

Lawrence Technological University

smallorygamedesign@gmail.com

Michael Porretta

Humanities Department

York University

mike@greendragoncvr.com

Karen (Kat) Schrier

Games and Emerging Media

School of Communication and the Arts

Marist University

kschrier@gmail.com

Sian Tomkinson

Independent Researcher

Perth, Western Australia

siantomkinson@gmail.com

Xiang Kexin

School of Creative Media

City University of Hong Kong

kxiang9-c@my.cityu.edu.hk

WELL PLAYED EDITORIAL

ADVISORY

Editors

Drew Davidson

Ira Fay

Clara Fernández-Vara

Jane Pinckard

John Sharp

Editorial Advisory Board

Derek Burrill

Sean Duncan

Lisi Gopin

Katherine Isbister

Stephen Jacobs

Richard Lemarchand

Stone Librande

Brian Magerko

Celia Pearce

Arthur Protasio

Gabriela Richard

Sam Roberts

Doris Rusch

Matthew Sakey

David Simkins

Mark Sivak

Francisco Souki

Kurt Squire

Constance Steinkeuhler

Caro Williams-Pierce

David Wolinsky

ABOUT WELL PLAYED

What makes a game good? or bad? or better?

Well Played is a concept of providing in-depth close readings of

games that parse out the various meanings to be found through the

experience of playing a game. The term “well played” is used in

several senses. Initially it was in two ways. On the one hand, well

played is to games as well read is to books. So, a person who reads a

lot of books is “well read” and a person who plays a lot of games is

“well played.” On the other hand, well played as in well done. So, a

hand of poker can be “well played” by a person, and a game can be

“well played” by the development team. Jose Zagal has articulated a

third way of considering well played in an ethical sense. So, players

should consider how to play well in terms of not cheating, and devel-

opers should consider how to make games that treat players respect-

fully. And Bernie De Koven’s The Well Played Game, is a spiritual

precedence to the joys of playing well.

Well Played is a community of industry professionals, academics,

and media professionals working together on the journal, books,

singles and events as well as sharing topics for Well Played. It is a

forum for in-depth close readings of games that parse out the various

meanings to be found in the experience of playing a game. Contribu-

tors are encouraged to look at games through all three senses of “well

played,” analyzing sequences in a game in detail in order to illustrate

and interpret how the various components of a game can come

together to create a fulﬁlling playing experience unique to this

medium. Through our contributors, Well Played provides a variety of

perspectives on the value of games.

Through the journal, books, singles, and events, the goal of Well

Played is to continue developing and deﬁning a literacy of games as

well as a sense of their value as an experience. Contributors are invited

to also discuss games in general (ranging from tabletop, to big games

and more) and how they are often designed for different ﬁelds (educa-

tion, entertainment, etc.) as we more fully develop a literacy around

games and play.

Games are a complex medium that merits careful interpretation

and insightful analysis. By inviting contributors to look closely at

games and the experience of playing them, we hope to expand the

discussion, and show how games are well played in a variety of ways.

ABOUT PLAY STORY PRESS

https://playstorypress.org/about/

Play Story PressTM is an open community publishing consortium

of/by/for the ﬁeld and our community. It is a diamond open-access

academic publishing initiative in which contributors retain all their

intellectual property. Contributors work together to address issues as

quickly as possible and share ideas that have an impact and signiﬁ-

cance in our society.

Play Story Press is a culmination of 20 years of open-access

publishing and collaborating with the community. Our founders

started ETC Press in 2005 as an experimental open-access academic

publishing imprint, and our success was a direct result of all the

quality work written by our community. Inspired by this, Play Story

PressTM is evolving to focus more on the community and ﬁeld. The

consortium comprises an exceptional group of partner organizations

that will work together, shaping and supporting Play Story Press for

the ﬁeld and community.

Publishing with Play Story Press is a friendly, supportive and

constructive process focused on encouraging the growth of quality

scholarship in this ﬁeld. Play Story Press is committed to publishing

three types of work: peer-reviewed work (research-based books, text-

books, academic journals, conference proceedings), general audience

work (trade nonﬁction, singles, Well Played singles), and research and

white papers. The common thread among these is a focus on issues

related to stories and play as they are applied across various ﬁelds.

The concepts of story and play are broad and diverse—from enter-

tainment and narrative to media studies and social studies, games and

technology to health and enjoyment, education and learning to design

and development, and more. Our authors come from a range of back-

grounds. Some are traditional academics. Some are practitioners. And

some work in between. Their ability to write about the impact of play

and story and their signiﬁcance in society ties them all together.

In keeping with our mission, Play Story Press uses emerging tech-

nologies to design all our books and on-demand publishers to

distribute our e-books and print books through all the major retail

chains, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple. We also

work with The Game Crafter to produce tabletop games.

We publish books but are also interested in the participatory future

of content creation across multiple media. We are exploring what it

means to publish across multiple media and versions. We believe this

is the future of publishing, bridging virtual and physical media with

ﬂuid versions of publications and enabling the creative blurring of

what constitutes reading and writing.

We don’t carry an inventory ourselves. Instead, each print book is

created when somebody buys a copy. Since the Play Story Press is an

open-access publisher, every book, journal, and proceeding is available

as a free download, we're partnering with open-access supporters to

host our online repository, and we price our titles as inexpensively as

possible because we want people to have access to them. We’re most

interested in the sharing and spreading of ideas. Authors retain owner-

ship of their intellectual property. We release our books, journals, and

proceedings under a Creative Commons license.

Play Story Press is an independent non-proﬁt organization

tors, and the community at large. This continues our innovations in

publishing, and we invite people to participate. Together, we can

explore and create the future of open academic publishing, sharing and

spreading ideas and knowledge that can help change the world for the

better.

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Players' Exploration of the History Featured in Video Games Set in Historical Contexts PDF Free Download

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