“If anyone’s going to ruin your night, it should be you”

Responsibility and affective materiality in Undertale and Night in the Woods

Bibliographic Data

ID21689849
AuthorsKylie Veale (0000-0003-1709-8932, Massey University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume28
Issue2
Pages451-467
Publication date2022-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueConvergence The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1354-8565 • E-ISSN: 1748-7382
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/13548565211014434
OpenAlexW3163330705
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited13

Affective materiality is a tool for exploring how engaging with textual structures shapes the affective experience of a story. The experience of video games is distinctive because their modes of engagement can lead to players feeling responsible for the decisions they make within the diegetic space of the game and its contextual storyworld. Night in the Woods and Undertale both use the perception of responsibility found in video game modes of engagement as an active storytelling tool, but apply it in different ways. Despite the differences in their contextual application, both games use affective materiality to encourage players to reflect on the consequences of their decisions in multiple arenas: within the context of the game, their engagement with other games and their engagement with the wider world. In doing so, both games apply storytelling techniques that distinguish playing video games from the experience of other media forms and encourage an empathetic engagement with fictional storyworlds

Aesthetics · Art · Feeling · Multimedia · Narrative · Perception · Sociology · Storytelling · Video game · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · History · Media Influence and Health · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Psychology · Social Psychology

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