Subversions of closure: Death, dying and suicide in digital games
Wednesday 10 April 2013 15.30-17.30
Spiegelzaal, Soiron Building, Room 1.003 K. Wenz (AMC)
Discussant: A. Swinnen (AMC)
Abstract
Dying is something that happens behind closed doors, often in special institutions but rarely in one’s own bedroom or living room with family members all around one. At the same time, while this experience is being hidden from our everyday life, death and the fascination with it can be observed in digital media. This presentation discusses the function of death, dying, and
committing suicide in video games. Games challenge the concept of mortality as they offer replay as the player’s avatar can return to the last safe point, be resurrected, or simply start over again. The symbolic representation of death, its didactical and narrative function in games, and the question as to whether the player or the game are in control are discussed. How players gain control
through replay and counterplay strategies (for example, committing suicide) is opposed to the game’s impact on the player and how it forces him or her to adapt to the affordances of the game.
The omnipresence of death and dying in video games can be seen as based in the computer’s ontology. If we understand the computer as a simulation machine, then this challenges the concept of mortality. While symbolic representations of death in novels or movies allow for an imaginary examination of death and dying and philosophical questions of mortality, video games differ in their death simulations. They hinder this reflection and examination because of their replay function, as this highlights repeatability without consequences. Death in a digital game rarely means
narrative closure. What games add, however, is the observation of one’s own death, even though it is just one’s own avatar dying. The player is able to interact with a concept that many people do not like to contemplate in real life and observe the “own” death from the perspective of an observer. Whenever an avatar dies in game, the player’s immersion within the game world is disrupted
and the constructedness of the world is foregrounded. This offers the possibility to understand the way we conceptualize our real life, its rules, conventions, and its limitations as well.
