Child Heroes

In this chapter, I analyse videogames that cast a child-character in the role of hero. I point out the recurrence of cooperative mechanics in these games. Using Röki and Knights and Bikes as examples, I suggest that an emphasis on cooperation challenges the idea that ‘heroism’ is an essential, innate quality possessed by an exceptional individual, and instead frames heroism as something that happens between agents. I argue that, despite the wide-spread use of The Hero’s Journey as a narrative structure, there is something fundamentally ‘unheroic’ about the storytelling affordances of videogames. I adapt terminology from picturebook theory to describe the interplay of semiotic planes in videogames, and appropriate Ursula Le Guin’s ‘Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ to develop an ‘Inventory System Theory of Fiction’. I conclude that the child-hero subverts the fetishization of adult independence and honours the neediness of humans of all ages.