To Dream a Game. Dreams as Interactive-Narrative Devices in Digital Games

Dream a Game. Dreams as Interactive-Narrative Devices in Digital Games
Abstract: In this article, the author investigates the position, characteristics and functions of dreams and dreamlike phenomena in digital games. The author situates his own research within the broader field of academic disciplines that have studied dreams, their meaning and their interpretations in general (psychodynamic, activation-input-modulation, neurocognitive, and esoteric), and especially within the domain of literary studies, which study dreams in texts as literary devices. He provides four characteristics (experience, entrance, exit, and mode of inducement) and two functions (ludological training and narratological revelation) of dreamish phenomena in digital narratives/games. At the end, the author focusses on the necessary lucid characteristic of digital dreams, due to the – also necessary – interactive nature of the digital medium itself