CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Hushegyi, Ádám |
|---|---|
| Title | Of Damsels, Knights, and Identity Politics: Social Norms and Boundaries in Central and Eastern Europe's Role-Playing Video Games |
| Summary | The thesis argues for the study of video games as a branch of popular culture with an exceptional ability to communicate social norms and boundaries, which enter into dialogue with their audiences’ political views and convictions. The thesis explores these themes through the analysis of two successful Central and Eastern European titles, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) and Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018), both of which have become subjects of heated discussions about politics and representation in video games, yet they have not received extensive academic attention. Following a literature review and theoretical framework, the thesis offers a comparative close reading of these games, which finds that they use themes such as nationalism, religion, and historical allusions to communicate diverging sets of values. Subsequently, the thesis examines how The Witcher 3 and Kingdom Come were received by journalists and audiences. In this part, the thesis offers a brief qualitative content analysis of three online discussion threads, which concludes that arguments about the games’ controversial aspects served as proxies for audiences to comment on a larger debate about political correctness and self-representation in the video game industry. Through these analyses, the work reaffirms the need to study games as politically charged entertainment on a textual as well as extra-textual level. |
| Supervisor | Kovács, András |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/hushegyi_adam.pdf |
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