Ludomythologies: Myths in the Present and of the Present in Contemporary Games

This paper argues that myths operate in contemporary video games in two complementary ways: as transcendent cultural heritage carried into the present, and as immanent mythical structures generated by the games of today. Its central hypothesis is that games provide a significant space for the ideological and narrative development of myth, and that examining them can illuminate contemporary society. The authors frame the inquiry through definitions of myth as tradition-bearing stories that transcend, repeat, and generate new narratives, and they adopt mythanalysis, a methodology drawn from figurative structuralism and Gilbert Durand's work, to study both latent and patent myths in cultural moments.

The paper's review of existing scholarship finds the field thin. Prior work in Game Studies has largely concentrated on games with explicitly mythological themes, or has offered brief treatments of analogue games, production contexts, and the construction of new mythical worlds in virtual environments. The authors position their study as a corrective to this gap, emphasizing that myths in games are not limited to borrowed classical material but also emerge from repeated structural patterns of play and design.

On the immanent side, the authors argue that recurring motifs drawn from present-day concerns form a structural substrate with mythical potential. They identify climate crisis, pandemics, migration, citizenship, populism, totalitarianism, disability, minority representation, technological solutionism, and socioeconomic collapse as themes that contemporary games repeatedly engage, citing titles such as The Last of Us and Bury Me, My Love as examples. The paper acknowledges that such thematic engagement is sometimes superficial, but maintains that it is often built into archetypal mechanics, minimal ludic units, and narrative structures. The paper's contribution is therefore conceptual and programmatic, outlining a research agenda rather than presenting empirical findings or a quantitative sample.