Aylin Pekanık
ABSTRACT:
Metafiction is a self-reflective narrative form that examines and critiques its own themes and structure, serving as a mirror that reflects both its creator and its audience. Within this context, metafiction in digital games breaks through the artifice of narrative to address the players directly as the facilitators of the story and collaborators whose play patterns, personal experiences, expectations, and habits shape game narratives. With the application of both game theory and literary analysis, this paper will examine a selection of metagames: Lovecraftian horror game Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem displaying meta-mechanics as a form of disempowerment, satirical walking simulators The Stanley Parable and The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe deconstructing the established game tropes, self-aware characters of games Pony Island and Inscryption presenting the developer as a metaphorical adversary, and fictional nonfiction The Beginner’s Guide dissecting the parasocial relationship between developers and players, and the mentally taxing nature of game development. This paper will showcase the meta mechanics and disruptions in such games as wholly unique forms of metatextuality. Ultimately, this paper aims to establish a metagame canon, suggest a typology, and acknowledge metafiction’s place as an essential and inseparable mirror for the storytelling medium of digital games.
KEY WORDS:
deconstruction, digital games, fourth wall, metafiction, metagame, self-reflection.
DOI:
10.34135/actaludologica.2024-7-SI.34-49
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