Radical game fictionalism

Abstract

Game fictionalism can be understood as the claim that at least some games utilize fictions to provide the material and formal settings for games and gameplay. The thesis of game fictionalism has at least two discernible forms. Gameworld fictionalism is the claim that the worlds depicted in games, where they exist, are fictional. The world of Tamriel, like Tolkien’s Middle Earth, is a fictional world: it does not really exist but rather is an imaginative creation that is the setting for The Elder Scrolls series of videogames. A second position, radical game fictionalism, is one that draws on the philosophical concept of fictionalism to make a claim about the social ontology of games. Radical game fictionalism is a much more ambitious thesis than gameworld fictionalism, because while it makes claims about the ontological status of the apparent worlds of games, it also may pertain to games without obvious fictional worlds