This thesis undertakes a hauntological analysis of video games and their ludonarrative structures. Chapter One argues that avatars are spectral figures within a game’s narrative constructs, and examines the manipulation of time and space in games like Braid (2008) function in conjunction with McKenzie Wark’s concept of gamespace. Chapter Two performs a hauntological analysis of the lore of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, examining how characters manipulate the fourth wall in acts of metagaming in order to access gamespace from within the game world, culminating in a form of metagamespace.
Chapter Three engages with confessional, anonymous online fan sites to argue that, where metagamespace fails, fans continue to perpetuate extratextual sites of narrative interpretation, further proliferating spectral narrative threads.