Traumi videoludici: la ricerca della stabilità emotiva in "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice" e "The Town of Light" = Trauma in video games: Searching for emotional stability in "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice" and "The Town of Light"

This paper adopts a multidisciplinary perspective involving cognitive psychology and game studies for the analysis of the representation of a specific emotional condition, post-traumatic psychosis, in the video games "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice" (Ninja Theory 2017) and "The Town of Light" (LKA 2016). "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice" was developed under the supervision of Paul Fletcher, a neuroscientist. It is a third-person adventure video game that recalls Norse mythology and focuses on the psychosis of the protagonist Senua, who is constantly struck by visual and auditory hallucinations while making her way up a path to the top of a mountain to resurrect her beloved boyfriend. "The Town of Light" was developed in Italy after years of research at the former Volterra asylum. In this first-person exploratory thriller, players control Renée, a woman who tries to shed light on her traumatic past by returning, as an adult, to the asylum where she had been locked up as a young girl. Despite the ludic differences between the two cases under examination, similar narrative paths and strategies are employed to represent post-traumatic psychosis and deal with the theme of trauma in video games, such as seeing the protagonists face their deepest fears to reach a stable emotional condition

本研究采用认知心理学与游戏研究相结合的多学科视角，分析两款电子游戏《地狱之刃：塞娜的献祭》（Ninja Theory, 2017）与《光之镇》（LKA, 2016）中特定情绪障碍——创伤后精神病（post-traumatic psychosis）的呈现方式。《地狱之刃：塞娜的献祭》由神经科学家保罗·弗莱彻（Paul Fletcher）监督开发，该游戏为第三人称冒险类电子游戏，取材于北欧神话，聚焦主角塞娜的精神病症状：她始终饱受视幻觉与听幻觉的侵扰，一路攀登山峰，只为复活挚爱男友。《光之镇》是意大利团队在对原沃尔泰拉精神病院开展多年研究后开发而成，这款第一人称探索惊悚游戏中，玩家将扮演蕾妮（Renée）——一名成年后重返幼年被囚禁的精神病院，试图揭开自己创伤过往的女性。尽管两款被研究游戏在游戏性层面存在差异，但二者均采用了相似的叙事路径与策略，来呈现创伤后精神病，并探讨电子游戏中的创伤主题——例如让主角直面内心最深的恐惧，以达成稳定的情绪状态。