The Living Dungeon: Space, Convention, and Reinvention in Dungeon Games

• Author / Creator

  Palmer, Zachary

• Across digital and tabletop gaming, the ‘dungeon’ has been a generic setting with enduring popularity for decades. A staple of games of medieval fantasy-themed adventure, the traditional dungeon is a subterranean labyrinth full of monsters, traps, and treasures into which brave or foolish adventurers face danger for glory or gold. This thesis recognizes ‘the dungeon’ as it relates to game production and game culture as a peculiarly rich spatial concept. Through this work, I answer answering not just “what is a dungeon?” – but, more provocatively, “what could be a dungeon?” or “what does a dungeon do?” Ultimately, I argue the dungeon operates much like a genre, establishing a commonly-understood range of expectations for game creators and a comfortable range of expectations for game audiences and providing opportunities for subversion.
  I turn to game studies’ implementation of genre as more than a taxonomic label, but a communication tool that provides a range of predictable expressions and experiences for creators and audiences that also creates the possibility for subversion. I argue that the dungeon convention provides much the same advantages of a genre to game creators and game audiences. As a dungeon is a convention of space and not a cultural work in itself, my understanding of genre is supplemented by an understanding of space as actively and culturally constructed through human action.
  To support this argument, I engage in close readings of several dungeon games from distinct but related backgrounds. Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven (1998) is emblematic of the conventional dungeon game and illustrates its conventions when embedded within games that value simulation and coherence. Rogue (1980) and the many ‘roguelikes’ it has inspired demonstrate the utility of the dungeon space as one that can be constructed through automatic rules rather than intentional design and also one that can simultaneously accommodate a variety of interactive and thematic styles. I use several more recent roguelikes that use dungeon settings to demonstrate the dungeon’s affinity with hybrid game designs, providing a useful point of reference for players and a point of departure for designers. My final case study, Darkest Dungeon, shows the dungeon’s potential for not just hybridization but transformation through subversion of the convention. Through thematic appeals to the cultural language of horror fiction and through the establishment of game states that generate negative affect like tension, fear, and guilt, Darkest Dungeon reframes the dungeon from a source of fun adventure to a source of horror.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • game studies
  • dungeon
  • rogue-like
  • space
  • roleplaying game
  • roguelike
  • genre

• Graduation date

  Spring 2020

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-jt6x-2y29

• License

  Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.