Near-Death Experience in Video Games or How Looking Death in the Eyes Can Be a Sales Concept: The Case of Blasphemous from an Anthropological, Metaphysical, and Promotional Standpoint
Josefa Ros Velasco, César San Nicolás Romera, Miguel Ángel Nicolás Ojeda
Escritura e Imagen December 13, 2022 DOI: 10.5209/esim.84833 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Near-death experience |
| Key points | Argues that death in video games, analyzed through Hans Blumenberg's theory of the "absolutism of reality," allows players to encounter and integrate an uncharted phenomenon through interaction, and that death operates as a sales concept in promotional storytelling, as illustrated by the case of Blasphemous, because it resonates with players' common symbolic consciousness. |
Abstract
Death is common in video games and one of the key elements to achieve bestseller status. From an anthropological perspective, near-death experience in video games enables the player to encounter familiarity with this uncharted phenomenon through interaction–which is necessary to understand and include it naturally in life from a metaphysical point of view–given the recreationalcommunicative nature of video games and their capacity for creating culture and horizons of meaning– not just the video game as a device, but also the full transmedia promotional narrative in which players participate first-hand. In this article, we analyze the anthropological and metaphysical components of the representation of death in video games following the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg’s theory of the absolutism of reality, as well as the case of Blasphemous and its promotional storytelling to determine how death appears as a sales concept in the publicity due to its place in the players’ common symbolic consciousness.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on near-death experience, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times | 1987 | Historical analysis | |
| Neuroscience and the Near-Death Experience: Roles for the NMSA-PCP receptor, the sigma receptor and the endopsychosins | 1990 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Implications of near-death experiences for a postmaterialist psychology. | 2010 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Near-Death Experience as a Probe to Explore (Disconnected) Consciousness | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Near-death experiences between science and prejudice | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |