Mytholoogical image of sacrification in videogames

The topicality of studying the archaic myth elements, its figurativeness, archetypic nature, rituali-ty, and symbolism in modern culture is explained by the understanding of myth existence totality in culture and human psychic. Videogames are a significant phenomenon in modern culture that transforms traditional social practices, constructs new meanings and images, influences the formation of cultural identities along with representing ancient mythological knowledge. Videogames model multiple virtual worlds, immersing which a person sometimes identifies the image of reality with reality itself. Such identification is a peculiarity of mythological world perception. Disclosing mythological structures and virtual space fabric is a complicated but meaningful research problem. The purpose of this article is to identify the elements of archaic myth in videogames through the image of sacrification. The main results of the research: 1) we have revealed the peculiarities of myth creation in the modern period of cultural development that is represented by constructing various mythological structures and worlds, immersing a person in them; 2) we have shown how videogames, fantasy games in particular, use ancient images and symbols brining new meanings to them; 3) we have studied representations of sacrification in such videogames as God of War, Apotheon, Final Fantasy XV, Legacy of Kain, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifices, Shadow of the Colossus, Heavenly Sword; 4) we have discovered that the mythological image of sacrification in the studied videogames is one of the driving foundations of the virtual narrative; 5) we have come to the conclusion that the researched videogames transmit the archaic mythological idea that sacrification of a god or a hero is a necessary condition of overcoming the eschatoligical crisis, maintaining the existing social and cultural order, and renovating the world. Transmitting the archaic semantics of sacrification as something good in cosmogonic, theogonic, sociocultural and personal sense is a common feature of the analyzed games. We have come to the conclusion that by adopting storylines, symbols and images of ancient mythological systems, reintegrating them and giving them new life in virtual worlds game designers bring archetypic mythological structures into action. Thus, in a videogame a player gets involved in hierophany without realizing it. He becomes a functional performer of the ancient rite of sacrification that has deep mythological, religious and philosophic meaning.

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