Artificial Pleasures and Ideological Subjectivation in Video Games: The Function of Positive Artefact Emotions in the Naturalisation of Ideology

This paper examines how positive emotional responses to video game representation help naturalise ideology in players. Its central argument bridges affective game studies and Marxist ideology critique: while standard Marxist accounts attribute ideological naturalisation mainly to realism and engaging design, the author contends that a third pillar, the player's empathy with the playable character, is equally necessary. Empathy functions as a mechanism that morally validates the artificial domination presented as natural order, transferring ethical value from the protagonist's agency to the game world and its implicit ideology.

The argument draws on three theoretical frameworks: Jonathan Frome's taxonomies of player emotion, which distinguish emotions by the level of game communication that triggers them and the type of goal against which they are assessed, and Petri Lankoski's model of player character engagement, which considers how the player ethically evaluates the playable character's actions. Within this framing, the paper distinguishes world-represented emotions, produced by scripted narrative events that cast the protagonist as victim and antagonist as wrongdoer, from artefact emotions, which arise from the artificial manner in which the game represents its characters and spaces. Conventionally realist and aesthetically polished representation of protagonists and familiar spaces tends to generate positive artefact emotions, while hypermediated representation of antagonists and spaces of otherness tends to generate negative ones.

The paper's analysis is primarily qualitative and textual, illustrated through case studies including Parasite Eve, Death Stranding, FEAR 2: Project Origin, and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. These examples are chosen to test the argument against games whose anti-mimetic representation or unconventional gameplay challenge standard accounts of ideological naturalisation. The work is positioned within the Proceedings of DiGRA 2026 and is supported by a Romanian national research grant, situating it at the intersection of affect theory and materialist game criticism.