Published: 2023-06-29

Playing with Illness. Metaphors and Actualities of Diseases in Interactive Entertainment on the Basis of „The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind"

Tomasz Gnat Logo ORCID
Section: studies and essays
https://doi.org/10.31261/errgo.13304

Abstract

Susan Sontag opens her analysis of disease metaphors with the metaphor of health and disease as dual citizenship in bordering states. Games offer us a pass to reproductions and paraphrases of reality, so we also see here the borderline experience of good health/illness. However, it is worth asking whether in interactive entertainment one can find examples of representations of diseases that do not function as metaphors. Consequently, the aim of this essay is to analyze the metaphors put into practice – virtual life, but perhaps that is why they allow more than the observation of a dangerous pathogen. The main thesis of this essay is the position that games through the basic aspect of the medium – interactivity, often go beyond the “sentimental content” of the representation of the disease. Or at least the process of “sentimentalization” is more complex and is a product of many of the processes that make up the interactive entertainment experience.

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Gnat, T. (2023). Playing with Illness. Metaphors and Actualities of Diseases in Interactive Entertainment on the Basis of „The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind". Er(r)go. Theory - Literature - Culture, (46), 81–96. https://doi.org/10.31261/errgo.13304

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Er(r)go 46 (1/2023)

No. 46 (2023)
Published: 2023-07-03


ISSN: 1508-6305
eISSN: 2544-3186
Ikona DOI 10.31261/errgo

Publisher
University of Silesia Press | Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego i Wydawnictwo Naukowe "Śląsk"

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