“A Crown is Warranted With Strength”: Bosses,Fantasy,and Democracy in Elden Ring

Abstract

This article examines the symbolic and discursive effects of the “final boss” trope in speculative and fantasy games. In contrast to our own world, the rulers, kings, and presidents of speculative games are often the most powerful individuals personally or physically, not just systemically. I employ political theorists Claude Lefort and Eric Santner to argue that the utilization of this trope allows audiences to safely engage with tensions and uncomfortable affects which are inherent to life in a democracy. Fighting bosses which are both monarch and the most powerful of their faction allows audiences to smooth frustrations with the symbolic and discursive chaos which often pervades democratic life. I examine one boss, Godrick the Grafted of Elden Ring, as a particularly fascinating example of this dynamic. I employ close readings of character dialogue and design to argue that such games serve a more concretized political function than scholars have identified.

Keywords

fantasy games game research political theory boss monster

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ball

K. D.

(2017). Fan labor, speculative fiction, and video game lore in the “Bloodborne” community. Transformative Works and Cultures, 25. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.01156

Castiglia

Castronovo

(2004). A “hive of subtlety”: Aesthetics and the end(s) of cultural studies. American Literature, 76(3), 423‐435. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-76-3-423

Commander

M. D.

(2016). The space for race: Black American exile and the rise of afro-speculation. ASAP/Journal, 1(3), 409‐437. https://doi.org/10.1353/asa.2016.0039

Curtis

(2019). “America is a piece of trash”: Captain America, patriotism, nationalism, and fascism. In Burke

Gordon

, Ndalianis (Eds.) The superhero symbol : Media, culture, and politics (pp.47‐62). Rutgers University Press.

Dittmer

(2013). Captain America and the nationalist superhero: Metaphors, narratives, and geopolitics. Temple University Press.

Ferguson

C. J.

(2007). The good, the bad and the ugly: A meta-analytic review of positive and negative effects of violent video games. Psychiatric Quarterly, 78, 309‐316. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-007-9056-9

FromSoftware, Inc. (2022). Elden Ring [Video Game].

Gannon

C. E.

(2005). Rumors of war and infernal machines: Technomilitary agenda-setting in American and British speculative fiction. Rowman & Littlefield.

Gray

K. L.

(2020). Intersectional tech: Black users in digital gaming. Louisiana State University Press.

10.

Hoedt

(2019). Narrative design and authorship in Bloodborne: An analysis of the horror videogame. McFarland.

11.

Illger

(2021). The lifelike death: Dark souls and the dialectics in black. Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, 11(1), 111‐123. https://doi.org/10.7557/23.6357

12.

Kłosiński

(2022). How to interpret digital games? A hermeneutic guide in ten points, with references and bibliography. Game Studies, 22(2). https://gamestudies.org/2202/articles/gap_klosinski

13.

Kunzelman

(2020). How we deal with Dark Souls: The aesthetic category as a method. In R. Glover-Rijkse & A. de Souza e Silva (Ed.), Hybrid play (pp. 167‐181). Routledge.

14.

Lefort

(1988). Democracy and political theory. University of Minnesota Press.

15.

Leonard

D. J.

(2006). Not a hater, just keepin'it real: The importance of race-and gender-based game studies. Games and Culture, 1(1), 83‐88. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412005281910

16.

Malkowski

T. M

Russworm. (2017). Gaming representation race, gender, and sexuality in video games. Indiana University Press.

17.

Nelson

D. D.

(2008). Bad for democracy: How the presidency undermines the power of the people. University of Minnesota Press.

18.

Reer

Krämer

N. C.

(2020). A self-determination theory-based laboratory experiment on social aspects of playing multiplayer first-person shooter games. Entertainment Computing, 34, 100353. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2020.100353

19.

Regalado

A. J.

(2015). Bending steel. University Press of Mississippi.

20.

Rousell

Cutter-Mackenzie

Foster

(2017). Children of an earth to come: Speculative fiction, geophilosophy and climate change education research. Educational Studies, 53(6), 654‐669. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2017.1369086

21.

Santner

E. L.

(2012). The royal remains: The people's two bodies and the endgames of sovereignty. University of Chicago Press.

22.

Shaw

(2014). Gaming at the edge: Sexuality and gender at the margins of gamer culture. University of Minnesota Press.

23.

Theodorou

(2020). Prepare to die: Reconceptualising death, and the role of narrative engagement in the Dark Souls series (2011–2018). In Death, culture & leisure: Playing dead (pp. 83‐94). Emerald Publishings Limited.

24.

Vella

(2015). No mastery without mystery: Dark Souls and the ludic sublime. Game Studies, 15(1).

25.

Whitaker

C. J.

(2019). Black metaphors: How modern racism emerged from medieval race-Thinking. University of Pennsylvania Press.