Remembering How You Died: Memory, Death and Temporality in Videogames

This paper examines how death and endings function in videogames, arguing that the repeated dying and resurrection of a player's avatar reflects a distinct and serious conception of mortality rather than a trivialisation of life. The author contends that Western narrative theory, shaped by Aristotelian plot structure and Judaeo-Christian and Hellenic notions of telos and linear time, has struggled to account for the "dying and undying" logic of games. Drawing on Vedantic and Buddhist ideas of reincarnation and moment-to-moment rebirth, alongside Gilles Deleuze's concepts of immanence and virtuality, the paper proposes that in-game death is best understood as both immanent and imminent, with each playthrough constituting an actualisation of possible events rather than a severance from a fixed past.

The central argument challenges criticism, notably from Gonzalo Frasca, that the reversibility of death in games cheapens the sacred value of life. The paper instead positions the avatar as a figure of multiplicity and difference-and-repetition, drawing on the Hindu concept of avatar as divine reincarnation, a meaning the term has largely lost in game criticism, where it usually denotes only player embodiment. Deleuze's account of real virtuality, in which past events remain active alongside new presents, is used to explain why earlier iterations of gameplay persist even after the avatar has died and returned.

The paper's scope is theoretical and conceptual rather than empirical; it draws no survey data or sample-based findings. It engages with prior game studies scholarship, including work by Jesper Juul, Barry Atkins, and Michael Nitsche on temporality in games, and situates these debates within contemporary philosophy and non-Western thought. The author acknowledges that the moral and religious implications of importing Eastern concepts into Western analysis require caution, and the paper aims to reveal an overlooked view of death in games rather than to assert a direct equivalence with traditional rebirth doctrines.