Postmodern Game

Postmodernism in Videogames:


All video games because they are digital constructions are in effect "simulacra" and therefore illustrate a key element of Baudrillard's view of the world of hyper-reality.

In videogames you can easily find examples of meta-reflections such as "Game Over" or "Round 1, Fight!" that appear on the screen of the player.


A videogame is self-referential in the sense that it acknowledges the technological aparatus of the computer and this can have a major impact of the player experience, a text reflecting on the fact that it is a text. It can be said that this is similar to "breaking the 4th wall" in cinema and theater. However, Rune Klevjer suggests that "game fictions are not delineated by a 'fouth wall' as they are in film or literature."

Klever would argue that its a mistake to apply this term to videogames because reality and fiction in games does not function as it does in traditional media but instead says that its useful to think about the boundary between player and fiction as a threshold rather than a wall.

Metal gear Solid (Konami 1998) is a good example of a game that refers to the apparatus it runs on, specifically the controller. An example of this is when boss, Psycho Mantis tells you to put the controller on the floor so that he can move it with his mind as well as claiming to be able to read his memory card, commenting on slopping saving habits.

Over the past few years this more direct approach of gaming has become uncommon as games are becoming more imersive.