Characterization of Greek Mythological Characters in Video Games
Creators: name: Vandewalle, Alexander
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025

description: Presentation held in the lecture series "Digital Humanities in Focus: Methods, Applications, and Perspectives" at the University of Rostock on October 28, 2024.

Abstract:

Video games are increasingly seen as an important and expressive medium for the “reception” – that is, the imagination and subsequent representation (Hardwick, 2003) – of the past. Games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (2018, Ubisoft Quebec), God of War (2018, Santa Monica Studio), or Smite (2014, Titan Forge Games) introduce players around the world to various aspects of antiquity, history, and mythology. This lecture will present the findings of a recently completed PhD project on games, characterization, and Greek mythology, and introduce a postdoctoral project that takes these conversations in new directions. After a theoretical introduction to characterization in video games, I explore how mythological games such as Smite, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Immortals Fenyx Rising (2020, Ubisoft Quebec), the God of War series, or Theseus (2021, Sisi Jiang) treat the characters from Greek mythology. This investigation leads to various modalities of Greek mythology reception in games that parallel the diversity of mythological storytelling in antiquity itself, and illustrate the heterogeneity of contemporary mythological games. Next, I discuss what is arguably the future of Greek mythology (and its characters) in the realm of gaming. As traditional models of game production are increasingly challenged in the 2020s, and game design tools ever more accessible to a wider audience (Keogh, 2023), it is increasingly often independent developers that take center stage in the game industry. These important developments also have large consequences for the reception of the past: indie games like Hades (2020, Supergiant), Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (2023, Summerfall Studios), or the forthcoming Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island (forthc., Polygon Treehouse) all feature representations of Greek mythological characters that exhibit a diversity regarding gender, sexuality, race, body type, (dis)ability, and more. Games thus have the potential to drastically reshape the popular perception of the ancient world, as they move from predominantly stereotyped (Lowe, 2009), male (Ciaccia, 2022), and violent (Serrano Lozano, 2020) texts to more inclusive versions of these stories. In doing so, they take up their own place next to more established media like literary novels and poetry, where similar processes have operated for a longer time (Guest, 2022; Klooster, 2023). As such, this lecture not only examines how video games have already treated the narratives known from Greek mythology, but also casts its gaze forward, and investigates which versions of the past are seemingly on the horizon.

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Short bio:

Alexander Vandewalle recently completed his PhD on the characterization of Greco-Roman mythological characters in video games. Starting 1 November 2024, he will work as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Ghent University and investigate the reception of Greek mythology in indie games through the lens of (counter-)hegemony. He has previously presented and/or published on characterization in video games, game analysis methodology, players’ experiences with historical video games, various topics related to the reception of the ancient world in games (including mythology, aesthetics, intertextuality, epigraphy, pedagogical applications, and haptic feedback), and broader media franchises (Star Wars, Marvel Cinematic Universe). He is also the creator of Paizomen (www.paizomen.com), a work-in-progress database of video games set in classical antiquity, and co-hosts regular archaeogaming livestreams on Twitch with the Save Ancient Studies Alliance.