Videogames as a Digital Attempt to Touch the Mythological

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis of video games and the use of VR technologies in the gaming sphere. The trend towards increasing gamification of modern man's being is examined and problematized. The main question raised by the author is what is the actual status of video games in the existence of modern man. The aim of the research is to study the ontoanthropology of video games, and VR games in particular, and search for their correlates with archaic practices. This, in turn, led to the consideration of the ontoanthropology of the virtual and the ontoanthropology of the game as its variety. The author comes to a conclusion that video games are a substitute for initiation which is most fully and safely performed by means of immersive equipment and taking rite-ritual activity into virtual reality. The results of the study can be used for an expert assessment of video games, identifying the prospects for their implementation in pedagogical, psychological or other consulting activities aimed at achieving a sense of inner transformation of the person in the direction of greater completeness and authenticity of existential experience. The findings can form the basis for philosophical conceptualization of modern mechanisms of digital identity formation and contribute to the growth of socio-humanitarian reflection on the problem of human self-identification and methods of achieving a sense of ontological fundamentality and wholeness of being in a virtual reality.

Keywords

• myth; hero
• initiation
• existential experience
• virtual reality
• immersive technologies
• video games
• digital literacy