How young adult videogames materialize senses of self through ludonarrative affects: understanding identity and embodiment through sociomaterial analysis

ABSTRACT

This article contributes a novel mode of sociomaterial analysis that develops critical methodologies to analyze how videogames participate in the production of affect during gameplay. The authors report on a multi-year international study addressing representations of youth in Young Adult Videogames (YA Games), or games played through the perspective of an adolescent. Over 450 hours of gameplay, researchers used ludo-narratological concepts to create a novel methodological approach to critical game analysis through which player-researchers attune themselves to the affects of ludonarrative harmony and dissonance as units of analysis, asking: How do moments of ludonarrative harmony and dissonance in YA Games produce senses of being an adolescent? Analyzing how ludonarratives participate in the production of affect in YA Games foregrounded social constructions of youth, including experiences with mental health. Implications for attending to affect in videogame criticism are discussed, as well as pedagogies for focusing on adolescents’ affective attunement to ludonarratives.

KEYWORDS:

• Videogames
• affect
• embodiment
• adolescence
• young adult literature

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: 890-2019-0073.