The Hero's Journey has been overused and abused in videogame writing for decades. We discuss Stephanie C. Jennings' tracing of the authoritarian heart of the monomyth from a reading of Horizon Zero Dawn to GamerGate. We also talk about one of the most hyped games of the last few months, the cyberpunk cat game Stray.

Hosted by Dom Ford and Paweł Grabarczyk.

This is the sixth episode of ITU Playcast, a podcast by the Center for Digital Play at the IT University of Copenhagen. Each episode, we have a chat about one academic paper and one game.

Notes:

Jennings, Stephanie C. (2022). 'Only You Can Save the World (of Videogames): Authoritarian Agencies in the Heroism of Videogame Design, Play, and Culture'. Convergence, vol. 28, issue 2. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221079157

BlueTwelve Studio. (2022). Stray. Published by Annapurna Interactive.