Digital Elves as a Racial Other in Video Games

Acknowledgment and Avoidance

Bibliographic Data

ID2409482
AuthorsNathaniel Poor (0000-0002-5248-8883, Brooklyn, NY, USA, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume7
Issue5
Pages375-396
Publication date2012-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGames and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1555-4120 • E-ISSN: 1555-4139
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1555412012454224
OpenAlexW2331920537
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited15

Elves are a long-standing cultural trope in the West, where they have often represented the other and fears associated with otherness. Elves continue to do the same cultural work today and are a fixture of fantasy settings. Fantasy-based video games portray elves in a variety of ways across a few types of elves (high elves, half-elves, and dark elves), but there are consistencies to their portrayal across such spaces. Given the dearth of work on elves in modern narratives, the cultural work of elves as the other in video games is analyzed here. World of Warcraft (WoW), EverQuest II, The Elder Scrolls series, and the Dragon Age series were studied, with Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) as background. Although WoW is somewhat exceptional in its portrayal of elves, digital elves are mostly portrayed similarly to a historically idealized real-world Western minority

Art · Fantasy · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Sociology · Television series · Digital Games and Media · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Media, Gender, and Advertising

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