One of the most popular game series is Dark Souls. As a cultural phenomenon, Dark Souls started a whole genre of game (‘soulslike’), boosted dark fantasy aesthetics, and produced memes such as ‘bonfire lit,’ ‘humanity restored,’ and of course, ‘YOU DIED.’

This game stresses ‘negative’ feelings, such as hollowness, despair, distortion, fear, sorrow, and fatalist determination. The lore of Dark Souls reproduces mythological ideas, such as a past golden age, the death of old gods, the decline of the world, and the unavoidable end of humankind. In this depressive setting a protagonist can only prolong the agony of the world or end it once and for all. Breaking the canons of a heroic story and offering a powerful, but depressive, narrative, Dark Souls became extremely successful game despite lots of problems in game balance, unfriendly interface, optimization and outdated engines. I consider that the reason for this popularity lies not just in its visual/audio style, nor in level design, but rooted in expressing emotions that Dark Souls manifests. In this essay I will talk about the emotional origins of ‘darkness’ in games though a parallel with the medieval homo ludens, who I argue, were looking for the same kind of space for uncomfortable emotions. As I am a historian and religious scholar, fantasy settings are close to my interests, especially those inspired by ancient or medieval images.

In neoliberal societies with a dictate of 'positive thinking,' even experiencing such emotions as grief, sorrow, despair, loneliness and abandonment is often considered indecent and dangerous. Public expression of uncomfortable emotions puts one in a position of vulnerability, whose sanity is questionable and lead to public a condemnation or at least compassion.

Following a strict model of appropriate behavior is not a modern invention. Late-medieval and early modern societies claimed normative behavior from each member of the community in secular and ecclesiastical spaces, based on the social class, age, gender, origin, etc. This strict social environment along with disasters, wars and diseases gave fruitful ground for popular beliefs and cults, which gave participants a hope or at least explained the world in categories understandable to believers. Popular religiosity not always contradicted the official Church, but offered a relatively free space for playing with beliefs, emotions, and feelings that were condemned by the hierarchical society and the official Church. As Le Goff called it, the 'medieval world of imagination' is a special topic for interdisciplinary studies between the history of art and social history. In this case, I consider 'game' in Huizinga's sense, as an alternative world with certain rules, attributes and behavior strategies, different from those expected in wider society. This space opened an opportunity to play with socially unwelcome emotions and actions. Some examples include the carnival, which manifested 'sinful' behavior, as well as exalted religiosity, which stressed pain, tears, passions, redemption and their expressions in visions, revelations, public processions of penitents, and in various pieces of art.

For instance, the concept of Purgatory formed over the centuries in monastic and popular religiosity as a space which was free from the social hierarchy. Contemplation on Purgatory and its sufferings encouraged overexpressing emotions that promised redemption. Experiencing these emotions in visions, dreams and religious processions provided a way to build an alternative reality or medieval world of imagination.

It is an interesting parallel that in many games we see similar intentions that the medieval homo ludenswas seeking in religious practices, though without a spiritual background. A space where negative emotions are desirable to play satisfies the need to express hidden feelings. At the same time, the game does not put player into a vulnerable position with all these emotions.

A remarkable example of a game, which manifests unique and tragic emotions is Senua's Sacrifice. Created in a collaboration between designers, historians and psychiatrists, this product emphasizesexperiencing mental disorders in both medieval categories of visions and dreams, as well as in modern terms of psychosis, derealization, panic attacks, abandonment, depression and post traumatic syndrome. The game is a unique example of how to translate these emotions with aesthetical methods that will also correspond to historical knowledge about medieval visions and affect. On the topic of aesthetics and emotions in Senua's Sacrifice I made a separate stream.

Another game, Blasphemous, was inspired by baroque affect and actively uses images of passions, tears, penitence, pain, etc. Though this game is less emotionally-oriented, however, baroque passions look attractive as they also manifest expressions of pain and despair that are typically ashamed.

Speaking from my experience of a historian and a game developer, I believe that studies of emotions and of experiences of the past can help us understand and interpret modern players' behavior without shrugging off or devaluating uncomfortable feelings that players wish to experience. Indeed, society dictates the normative expression for all histories, and here we see video games in a continuity with the playing spaces of the medieval homo ludens.