Video games — modern mythology?
“The myth is in words given, a wonderful personal story.”
☞ A. Losev — «The Dialectics of Myth»
One can describe a myth in countless ways, using various words.
“The myth is the oldest tool for thinking and understanding, a special way of consciousness functioning.” — this definition is recorded in my mythology history notes. I fully agree with it, and it seems like nothing more can be added, but sometimes this definition falls short of fully capturing the essence of a myth.
The myth is characterized by the category of mythical time, namely the division of time into sacred (mythological) and profane.
Roughly speaking, the mythological was the time of personified gods, of indefatigable heroes, when all the stories occurred which we call myths. The time profane is a correlative pair of the mythological. It’s the earthly realm in which people live, act, and make mistakes today. These realms can be fully identified only through each other.
A great example of mythological time is the “dreamtime” concept from Australian mythology. It describes a sacred time when the physical, material world did not yet exist. The dreamtime still exists beyond the visible world, where the deceased and those yet to be born reside. The living can access it or communicate with the spirits residing there through specific magical rituals. These totemic ancestors are not so much spirits currently existing in the world, capable of changing it, as beings who lived and acted in the past, and they can “come to life” in rituals and dreams, in their descendants, and in the objects they created.
An archaic explicit myth is a narrative about a hero, his actions, and deeds. A computer game is also a narrative about a hero, just like The Witcher or God of War series, but the difference lies in the fact that a person can play the game as a hero, feeling their emotions and experiences, thereby becoming more deeply immersed in the narrative. Also, there’s an even more efficient way — you can create your own hero “from scratch”, like one does in MMORPG kind of games (WoW, TES Online, etc.).
The reincarnation of archaic mythology as video games can signify the return of immersive elements into myths. It’s evident that the conventional oral myth is outperformed by the myths of our time (not only video games but also comics, films) in terms of the immersive quality of the myth, rendering oral myths outdated, thereby archaic (who would want to read childishly written stories when there are highly realistic worlds that one desires to dive into).
Just as millennia ago, people have once again devised a ritual that allows them to live the “perfect” experience, the experience that is inaccessible in the profane realm. Video games are just like ideal worlds created by humans as the myths of sacred times themselves. They are the same stories with idealised characters about idealised events.
Starting with Tolkien, up to the present day, there’s been a new kind of a “hobby” — designing fantasy worlds with Middle Age-like settings, and unintentionally formulating unique, yet with such few variations, mythologies. They are sometimes incomparably shallow and seem as a facsimile to the great works of the master.
However, here’s a difference: while it’s an essential part of archaic mythology to teach morals and impart the wisdom of previous generations, by playing games individuals aspire to identify with characters, immerse themselves in the events, and face the challenges that befall a protagonist.
“Myth carried within it the experience and wisdom of predecessors, and it is through it that a person gained knowledge of the world around him.”
☞ Mircea Eliade — «Aspects of Myth»
This being said, we can draw a conclusion about the ever-evolving nature of storytelling: mythology has somewhat been modernised into more immersive and more captivating experiences such as comics, films, and especially video games. They contrast with traditional myths, which surely had their own authentic methods of engagement but fail to attract much attention nowadays.
And the last thing for you to ponder is the significance of mythology in human consciousness. No matter how developed and technologised the civilisation is, it continues to return to the same old stories, told in a different manner, true, but nonetheless so soothing and familiar.
Even now there lives this tiny part of a mythological consciousness in everyone of us…
Credits:
The first pic is taken here.
The second is from here.
And the third.
