Getting High in a Hi-Tech Setting: Narrative Structure and Archetypical Partygoers in the Mass Effect 3 DLC Citadel Mission: 'Party'

This study, published in Eludamos in 2026, examines the "Party" mission in the Mass Effect 3: Citadel downloadable content through the lens of play theory and narrative structure. Its central aim is to map the party's dramaturgy and identify the partygoer archetypes that populate it. The authors contend that partying remains an understudied form of play in game studies, a gap made more pressing by concerns that declining social partying among young people may erode social skills. They justify their choice of a singleplayer science-fiction party as a case study on the grounds that its fanbase treats it as a reflection of real-world partying, and they note that although the player has no agency over the party's outcome, it carries emotional weight for players invested in the series' companion relationships.

The analysis combines Roger Caillois's play categories (agôn, alea, mimicry, ilinx, along with paidia and ludus and their extensions līlā and muhō) with Syd Field's three-act structure. Applied to the opening act, the framework finds competitive, rule-breaking, and vertiginous forms of play dominating, with character banter and faux pas serving to break the ice and generate the tension that propels the event forward. Across the full party, the authors trace a trajectory from social stiffness to chaos and then to dwindling energy, with the group photo functioning as a resolution that reunites fragmented guests. Specific pairings illustrate the categories, such as Wrex and Grunt embodying competition and Garrus and Zaeed embodying mimicry.

The study's principal conclusion is that the party is best understood as a porous, rule-based magic circle in which eleven distinct partygoer archetypes carry the event's ludic functions. These archetypes align only partially with Caillois's categories, and the authors caution against treating his framework as a rigid taxonomy. The representation also draws on familiar Western party scripts and popular-culture character tropes, such as Tali as the "Badass Bookworm," and Tolkien's concept of secondary belief helps explain how players engage with this constructed social world. The authors acknowledge the limits of a deductive study of a single scenario and recommend comparative work across other party depictions, attention to social background variables, and application of Goffman's frontstage and backstage distinction.