A Survey of Child-Characters in Contemporary Videogames

In this chapter, I outline the findings of a large-scale content analysis of child-characters in contemporary videogames. I discuss the absence of child-characters in most gameworlds and explore the implications of making child-characters invincible. I comment on the distribution of race and gender in my sample, and I argue that stereotypes about children make child-characters legible signs for communicating key information about rules and mechanics. I share a typology I derived from organising my dataset according to the dominant function of the child-characters. I make suggestions about how this typology might be used to identify overlaps between Games Studies and Children’s Literature studies. I conclude by describing my approach to close reading videogames and introduce introducing the concept of ‘critical ekphrasis’.