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Oedipus at the Crossroads: Tragic Agency in Contemporary Videogames

The document explores the concept of tragic agency in contemporary videogames, arguing that games offer a unique platform for enacting and reflecting on the tragic experience, which is defined as the total failure of human action in the face of fate.

• The paper defines tragic agency as the total failure of human action in the face of fate, and argues that games can make players experience this as a first-person, affective experience rather than merely observing a character's downfall.
• Close readings of Bloodborne, What Remains of Edith Finch, and The Stanley Parable form the paper's core evidence, with Bloodborne producing an Oedipal recognition of the player's complicity and a final relinquishment of control.
• The author locates the tragic in the frustration of meaningful action rather than in the satisfaction that much ludic scholarship emphasizes, and distinguishes tragedy from the more common notion of the tragic as merely sad.