The Representation of Delirium: a link between player and society

Videogames are works of fiction that represent objects of reality (Longo, 2016). As cultural objects (Griswold, 1987), they are sources of social information, “quasi-social setting” (Longo, 2006) generating hyperreal contexts within which various aspects of reality are amplified and deformed. By adopting this sociological perspective, it is possible to analyze what happens on screen as actual social situations, although they are simulated. The aim of the chapter is to analyze three videogames through a qualitative approach to content analysis to extract sociological meaning from the game-interactive narrative. The chapter analyzes works that depict the relationship between the protagonist of the videogame and society through a narrative delirium, which is how the manifestations of madness substantiate the narrative. The delirium functions as a possible access to the world that stimulates the mind-reading ability, triggers reflection on the nature of a possible world (Eco, 1979), and improves the understanding of embedded imaginative constructs (Bernaerts, 2009). The distinctive feature of the medium, that is, interaction, allows videogame design choices to be explored and interpreted in terms of the player’s decision-making agentivity.