Playing With(out) Borders: Video Games as the Digital Expression of Transnational Literature

Abstract

This paper inquires whether video games, as cultural artefacts stemming from the digital environment, can be interpreted from the angle of transnational literature. As such, two main hypotheses are reviewed: first, that video games are transnational in content, recycling in a syncretic manner the themes and archetypes that were once rooted in local, nationalized mythologies, but that are now decontextualized and revaluated in a transnational narrative space; and secondly, that video games create transnational communities with specific social morphologies, where both authors and readers can each become the immigrant who plays without (outside of) national borders. The conclusions that we may draw hereof do not concern game studies alone. Indeed, they may very well lead us to believe that in video games, transnational literature can and does find its most accomplished expression – a literature that not only places itself between national borders, but that also transcends these borders altogether.

Keywords

• transnational video games
• hybrid mythologies
• transnational narrative spaces
• transnational online communities
• game studies
• game philology