Preserving Cultural Memory through Narrative Games

Abstract

Abstract: This article interrogates four narrative-driven video games as sites for the production, mediation, and transmission of cultural memory. Each title is anchored in distinct modalities of remembrance—ranging from post-Soviet historical and folkloric imaginaries to subjective affective trajectories and speculative, future-oriented mythologies. While situated in divergent cultural and temporal contexts, these works converge in their deployment of immersive storytelling and interactive world-making as mechanisms for negotiating cultural narratives and sociopolitical themes. To structure our analysis, we employ the T.R.E.E.S. framework—Tourism, Responsibility, Exploration, Environment, and Story—as a critical heuristic for examining how ludic design engenders processes of meaning-making and mnemonic inscription. By situating these games within a human-centered theoretical paradigm, we contend that interactive narrative constitutes not merely a representational strategy but a dynamic technology of cultural sustainability and an emergent vector for social innovation.