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The Hero Reloaded: The reinvention of the classical hero in contemporary mass media
Edited by Rosario López Gregoris and Cristóbal Macías Villalobos
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 23] 2020
► pp. 73–102

The Videogame Hero in his Labyrinth

The Hero in Electronic Gaming

| University of Málaga

In this paper we analyze the main features of some of the most popular videogame characters in the recent years (that is to say, heroes, villains and antiheroes), compared to classical Greco-Roman heroes, after reflecting on the consequences of the fact that a videogame hero only comes to life as an player’s avatar who gets into the skin of the hero through the controls of the gamepad, usually in a single experience.

Keywords: Hero, Player, Avatar, Videogame, Gameplay
Article outline
  • 1.Preface
  • 2.The Role of the User/Player: The Concept of Avatar
  • 3.The Videogame Hero: Between Reality and Fiction
  • 4.The Role of Time in the Videogame Story
  • 5.Toward a Definition of the Videogame Hero as Compared to the Classical Hero
    • 5.1The Videogame Adventure, a Story in the Making
    • 5.2Toward Democratization of the Heroic Condition
    • 5.3The Hero as a Man of Action: The Purposes of Heroic Action
    • 5.4Regarding the Hero’s Individualism
    • 5.5The Particular Case of Role Videogames and Online Multiplayer Systems: Toward a New Type of Videogame Hero?
    • 5.6On Heroes and Villains
    • 5.7The Figure of Anti-Hero
    • 5.8The Hero or Superhero as Surety for the Established Order
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ivitra.23.c4
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Connell, Jasmyn & Chris Comerford
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Vandewalle, Alexander, Steven Malliet & Kristoffel Demoen
2023. Playing with Character: A Framework of Characterization in Video Games. Games and Culture DOI logo

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