Black Book
Game
Documents about Black Book
Whitepaper5 pages
Playable Folklore: Digital Games and the Representation of Folklore and Cultural Heritage
This paper examines how digital games represent folklore and cultural heritage, arguing that the translation of living, variable cultural processes into codified, rule-based systems introduces structural and ethical tensions.
- Translating living, variable folklore into codified, rule-based game systems creates structural and ethical tensions, chiefly that tradition becomes stabilised as 'heritage' when it is managed or staged for external consumption.
- The paper proposes 'playable folklore' as a lens that treats games not as display cases for heritage but as cultural systems in which traditions are selected, stabilised, transformed, and contested.
- Its theoretical framework rests on four concepts: cultural presence, folk mechanics, digital folklore, and mnemonic hegemony.
University of MaltaJun 2026
Whitepaper5 pages
Folklore-Driven Representations of Femininity in Slavic-Coded Video Games: The Figure of Baba Yaga
This paper analyzes the representation of femininity, specifically geriatric femininity, through the figure of Baba Yaga in a selection of Slavic-themed video games published or produced between 2015 and 2025.
- The study analyses eight Slavic-coded games released or announced between 2015 and 2025, including Eventide, Yaga, Black Book, Blacktail, Reka, Scarlett Deer Inn, Night is Coming, and The End of the Sun, some assessed via paratext or demos because they remain in production.
- Across the sample, old age is rarely foregrounded even when Baba Yaga appears as a helper; she is often rendered youthful or simply young.
- Where her aged features do appear, they are treated comically or designed to evoke sympathy through frailty.
DiGRAJun 2025
Companies behind it
As the documents state it.