Chapter 10

Johan Huzinga characterizes play as an act that is not only representation, but is re-presentational; that is, it’s an action that allows individuals to assimilate and recapitulate aspects of their lives (Huizinga 2002, 33ff). From a semiotic standpoint, games occupy a unique place in the pantheon of media; in a manner not seen in the western world since the early epic poets (Lord 2000), videogames serve as entertainment that allow for simultaneous performance and composition. In applying this concept to videogames, Roger Travis cites the useful identification of ‘performative play practice’, which he describes as play taking place in ‘intersubjective performance that takes place in a cultural zone demarcated for play’, or in a context that may resemble, but does not directly affect, ‘real life’ (Travis 2008). Play, then, can serve as an allegorical space in which the player can enact events and situations which have a significance outside the closed system of the game itself.

A videogame, however, is a world that is not bounded by the same limits that are imposed on events experienced outside it. From a semiotic standpoint, videogames occupy a unique place within the context of media as a whole. While there are certain technological and mechanical limitations to what can be done on a particular gaming platform, it’s also true that games are an immersive, multi-sensory medium that are not limited by what may or may not be physically possible. Game narratives take place in settings which might be entirely unfamiliar to the player: in space, or at the bottom of the ocean, or in a fantastical realm with no relationship to physical reality. The laws of physics, for example, do not necessarily need to apply, and characters encountered do not necessarily need to resemble any currently living person (or creature). Game environments are, in many ways, the experiential equivalent of Roland Barthes’ Empire of Signs, that utopian society in which language ceases to convey actual meaning and can exist as pure form (Barthes 1983). So, while no one would wish to play a game that was absolutely devoid of meaning, it’s also true that there is nothing in a game that is inherently meaningful; any meaning that is present must therefore be imbued by the player.

For a game to be successful, however, it is essential that the designer and the player be able to achieve a level of communication that establishes a set of ground rules within the context of the game itself. Games are closed systems that both create and evaluate their own reward systems; they are, as Huizinga characterizes it, ‘“played out” within certain limits of time and place [and contain their] own course and meaning’ (Huizinga 2002, 28). The designer must create a narrative framework that relates to the gameplay in such a way as to grant the player some scope of interpretation for the act of play itself (Arsenault and Perron 2009, 67). One of the most effective ways to do this in a videogame is to develop the game around a central conceit that the player can then use to relate to his or her own life experiences, thus providing a means of entry into the immersive world of the game. RPGs in general rely on the player’s investment in not only the world of the game, but the particular world-view and experience of their individual character.

Dragon Age: Origins, put out by BioWare in 2009, manages to achieve this sense of internal coherency through not only fairly standard world mechanics, but also the consistent use of a single metaphor scenario: life is blood². This scenario is constructed of an interwoven series of simple and complex metaphors relating the target domain blood to different aspects of the game narrative and character design that help create an immersive play experience. Dragon Age: Origins (DAO) takes place within a fantasy kingdom called Ferelden, possibly designed as an analogue to medieval Scotland, populated with fantasy characters (Gaider 2010), and, while most of the characters encountered there would be at least somewhat familiar to any player accustomed to the fantasy genre, does not strictly adhere to the rules that apply in the natural world. In addition (and as its title implies), DAO places a great deal of emphasis on identity and individual experience in the shaping of the narrative gameplay; players are encouraged to try different characters with different origins and to experiment with different branches of BioWare’s extensive dialogue trees. With the exception of the very beginning and very end of the narrative arc, Ferelden is, if not a true sandbox, at least not a directed play experience; players may choose the order in which they progress through the world and what choices they make while they do so. They are, both implicitly and explicitly, encouraged to experiment with identity as they create and direct player characters (hereafter PCs).

It’s intriguing, then, that BioWare would choose to focus such a game around such a grounded metaphorical domain as blood. It’s not surprising that blood would feature prominently; the ancient Greek agon occurred not only in the ‘play-sphere’ of the festival (Huizinga 2002, 50) but on the battlefields of the Homeric epics; the relation between play and physical contest is, evidently, deeply embedded in the western psyche (for more on this phenomenon, see Travis’s chapter in this same volume). Blood is not an uncommon feature in many games – there are plenty of FPSs and RPGs in which the player can expect to encounter it almost constantly – but, for the most part, such games employ blood as a sign (i.e. evidence of violence that has occurred) rather than as a means of conveying interpretive information to the player.

As a metaphor domain, blood is an extremely visceral (both metaphorically and, occasionally, literally) choice. Within the context of a game in which the player is encouraged to ‘get inside’ the PC, simultaneously creating and exploring the relationship of that character to the gameworld, it’s an effective way to achieve this identification. As Gregersen and Grodal so aptly phrase it,

interacting with video games may lead to a sense of extended embodiment and sense of agency that lies somewhere between the two poles of schema and image – it is an embodied awareness in the moment of action, a kind of body image in action – where one experiences both agency and ownership of visual entities. (Gregersen and Grodal 2009, 67)

The act of ‘embodying’ a PC is related to the physicality of gaming itself – at its most basic level, the audiovisual stimuli and the muscular activity required of the act of gameplay – but, in the case of DAO, successful embodiment also requires a more internalized component. The physicality of enacting the movements and interactions of the PC requires the player to navigate the world of Ferelden in a way that both demands and confers a deep understanding of the structures in place in that world. These structures are at least recognizable to the player as sharing the majority of their basic components, both physical and social, with the ‘real world’, albeit with the addition of certain fantasy elements. The PC encounters a recognizably hierarchical social structure, including class distinctions and organized cultural, religious, and military institutions, but this social structure has expanded to include familiar fantasy elements such as elves, dwarves, and magic (both constructive and destructive).

The player has the choice of entering the world by selecting a PC with one of seven distinct ‘origins’, or character backgrounds, which shape the identity and storyline of the character from that point forward. It’s no coincidence that this is a significant aspect of the gameplay in DAO, given that the word ‘origins’ is present in the title. It’s also a contributing factor in the development of the life is blood metaphor scenario; as Musolff has identified, blood has long served as a metonym for the establishment of a metaphorical relationship with the idea of origin or race (Musolff 2007, 21–43). Of course, all that blood can’t just walk around Ferelden on its own (although there’s a fair amount of it about, as the player comes to realize); this helps to set up the primary conceptual metaphor present in the game: the body is a container. This conceptual metaphor maps several elements of the source domain container onto the target domain body, as represented within the game; the body functions within the containment image schema, as identified by Lakoff (Lakoff and Johnson 1987, 126), and thus functions as a metaphor of spatial motion.

The life is blood metaphor scenario depends on several different metaphorical elements to support itself, of which body is container is only one. Kövecses would classify body is container as a basic metaphor, since its understanding does not require layered metaphorical interpretation (Kövecses 2006). Within the life is blood metaphor scenario there also exist two primary metonymies, in which a part of an object is used as a stand-in for the whole object – in this case, person for surroundings and blood for life, the latter of which is distinct from the life is blood metaphor scenario – and the complex metaphor emotion is blood. The latter, emotion is blood, depends on the basic metaphor body is container, and thus is a complex metaphor; it is, however, an accessible one, in that it also depends on an experiential understanding of emotion that almost any player would have access to from his or her own life.

Of these basic and complex metaphors, DAO relies most heavily on the body is container schema. The following entities within the source domain ‘container’ have corresponding elements in the metaphor as present in DAO:

The ‘outside’ entity corresponds to the appearance of the characters within the game. There are seven options available to the player in selecting the origin for the PC, all ostensibly recognizable to a player familiar with the genre of fantasy RPG: human noble, human mage, city elf, Dalish (i.e. forest) elf, elf mage, dwarf noble, and dwarf commoner. This selection has an impact on the player’s experience of the game, as each origin is accompanied by a distinct associated backstory and set of physical characteristics. These elements serve two purposes; first, they serve a gameplay function by, as Bissell notes, strengthening the association between the player and the PC; second, they serve a narrative function, in that many of the choices influence the interactions between the PC and NPCs throughout the storyline (Bissell 2010). Peirce would interpret the PC as a ‘symbol’, because the PC is recognizable as belonging to a distinct subset of the gameworld’s population (and, perhaps most importantly, the NPCs interact with the PC in their capacity as symbolic of their origin), but of course it is also a ‘dynamic object’, in that the player has the option of creating and enacting internalized motivations for the character (Peirce 1972).

The physical appearance of the PC, then, corresponds with the outside of the source domain ‘container’, in that it provides information to others (player and NPCs) about the PC; similarly, what is present on the outside of the container is often influenced, not by the PC him/herself, but by other elements in the PC’s surroundings. One obvious incarnation of this is the different races, or body types: humans, elves, and dwarves are physically distinct from one another, and these differences are perceived and remarked upon by NPCs. Within these categories, the outside of the body-container can convey additional information serving to demarcate the PC’s role or status within the societal structure.

It’s simple tautology that a container must contain something. In DAO, one of the most obvious things being ‘contained’ is blood. Blood plays a significant role in DAO, and is central to both the game progression and the metaphorically interpretive structure of the narrative.

Blood imagery is prevalent throughout DAO. It is used to form the logo in the title sequence, and thus is the very first thing the player sees. Blood maintains a thematic presence throughout the game as part of the player experience, even in UI elements not directly related to gameplay mechanics. When the characters move around the map, for example, they leave a blood trail behind them. Upon encountering a new area or quest, attention is drawn to the on-screen title by surrounding it with a representation of blood.

In a nod to realism (and, perhaps, as a means of highlighting the significance of blood as a metaphorical domain), the player has the option of turning on a setting that causes the PC to maintain the post-battle blood-splatter in non-combat game interactions. That is to say, the PC can interact with the NPCs in non-hostile or even friendly ways while looking like s/he just stepped off the battlefield. The continuity of the visual representation of violence is, in the setting of a fantasy RPG, jarring.

At its most basic level, the primary object of DAO is to defeat an army of evil creatures called ‘Darkspawn’. At the start of the game, the PC’s knowledge of the Darkspawn is equivalent to the player’s – that is, nothing more specific than that they sound like something you ought to be defeating. Once the PC is recruited to join the Grey Wardens – an organization of specially skilled warriors created specifically to defend Ferelden against Darkspawn surges referred to as Blights – it becomes immediately clear that, once again, blood has a role to play in the significance of this particular evil. In Ostagar, the first camp the player encounters outside the introduction, two NPCs explicitly inform the PC that Darkspawn blood is ‘poisonous’, ‘black as sin’, and has long-term effects; the PC is advised: ‘Don’t even touch it’.

In an early quest, the PC is instructed to gather several vials of Darkspawn blood for an as-yet-unexplained ritual. Once in the player’s inventory, it’s clear that there’s something unusual and, indeed, actively malevolent about it. As the PC (and the player) learns, these vials of blood are intended to be used in a ritual of initiation into the Grey Wardens referred to as ‘the Joining’. The initiation consist of the recruit drinking from a vial containing Darkspawn blood, with the result that the blood becomes absorbed into the body of the Warden (assuming it doesn’t kill him, of course; in the PC’s initiation, two of the three recruits are killed by the poison).

Dragon Age: Origins plays extensively with the idea of dark/light, i.e. the basic metaphor light is good and its counterpart dark is bad. The storyline precludes the presence of any unambiguously ‘good’ characters, but it is undeniable that the Darkspawn represent ‘evil’ (although the inclusion of the Architect in the Awakenings expansion complicates the simplicity of the depiction of evil, as well). The Joining ritual is particularly interesting, then, in that it involves the soon-to-be-Wardens ingesting a portion of Darkspawn blood in order to absorb it into their own bodies. This allows them to communicate with the Darkspawn, but also guarantees that they will become more and more like a Darkspawn themselves (that is, more and more mindlessly destructive); it is, then, essentially a death sentence. If the blood for life metonymy holds true, and the Darkspawn are the representatives of evil (i.e. anti-life), then it seems that Darkspawn blood is serving as a metonym for death. After the end of the ritual, the PC is given a vial of blood to serve as a memorial for the recruits who didn’t survive; as we shall see, this is echoed elsewhere throughout the game.

Three of the remaining entities in the source domain for body is container is that containers can be opened, emptied, or refilled (and/or have their contents transferred to another container). This relates closely to the idea that the ‘stuff’ of the container is blood; it doesn’t really take any imagination to see the significance of a body being emptied of its blood. At least, not under normal circumstances; in DAO, however, the result from presence (or absence) of blood in the body is an entirely different ballgame. The difference is that, in DAO, the body-as-container is a mutable object, as are the contents thereof. In short, there’s a lot of body-hopping going on.

The group of characters most affected by the mutability of the body is the mages. The mages are the magical figures in Ferelden, who (mostly) live in a tower guarded by a religious order called the Templars; the metaphorical implications of the tower are discussed in greater detail below. The mages derive at least some of their power from the ability to enter the Fade, a dream-realm in which the ordinary rules of the physical world no longer apply. There are, it seems, three sources of magical power in the game: the Fade, a magic-enhancing plant called Lyrium, and (in the case of mages specializing in such) blood. The ability to access the Fade is also a source of danger, however; from this realm, the mages can be corrupted or possessed by spirits or demons. There is a clear correspondence drawn between the ability to do magic (and access the Fade) and emotions. At several points the player encounters characters who experience a type of violent frenzy – one might even call it ‘blood lust’, if one could be excused for putting a rather fine point on it – under certain battle conditions, and the two sources of power are used together in blood magic. There is, then, clearly a relationship between blood and emotion in DAO. By extension of the body is container and emotional metaphors such as the experiential example anger is hot, then, we get the complex metaphor emotion is blood.

The ability of the mages to access the Fade allows them to exhibit agency with regard to their own body-containers. They are able to open those containers, and remove from them at least one part of their ‘self’. For example, the PC encounters characters who have been in the Fade for a long time, and express awareness that their physical bodies in the ‘real’ world have suffered adverse effects as a result. Within the Fade dwell demons whose identities are based on powerful emotional states – Desire, Rage, Hunger, and Sloth – and mages who enter must guard against possession or corruption by one of those spirits. This self-preservation is achieved, in part, through emotional control, an essential part of training for an apprentice mage.

Living alongside the mages are a group known as the Tranquil. These NPCs are former mages who, for one of several possible reasons, have been stripped of their ability to feel emotions, which has the result of disallowing them from performing magic of any kind. The PC has repeated encounters with one particular Tranquil named Owain, who expresses displeasure with the way the Tranquil are treated, asking: ‘am I to be denied personhood because I do not feel as you do?’ (BioWare 2009) This makes explicit the emotion is life analogy. If emotion is life and blood is life then it’s only logical that blood and emotion are serving as stand-ins for one another. In the mage origin story, the PC interacts with his/her friend Jowan, who is in danger of being made into one of the Tranquil because of his love for a young priestess-in-training. It is thought that Jowan would not be able to guard himself against demons in the Fade while in the grip of such strong emotion, so he is not permitted to enter. Since it later turns out that Jowan has turned to the (forbidden, because it requires blood as its source, most often from someone other than the mage him/herself) blood magic so that he can run off with his beloved, this assessment may have been accurate; if he was not able to resist the temptation of increased magical power, he might not be able to resist other temptations in the spirit realm.

One entity of the source domain ‘container’ is that the contents of one container can be moved to another. This is apparent in the Fade, but can also occur in the ‘real’ Ferelden. One of the PC’s companion characters is a witch named Morrigan, who lives outside the mage tower (or Circle), and thus is an illegal witch, known as an ‘apostate’. She first appears unexpectedly, over the shoulder of the PC in what the player would expect to be a typical post-battle tight shot. Her appearance out of nowhere is startling; still more startling is her presence there, in the ruin of an old Warden building in an uninhabited portion of the map known as The Wilds. Later in the game, the PC encounters an NPC who states repeatedly (chants, really; she’s reading from a holy book) that ‘magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him’. This creates a subordinate metaphor scenario in which the domain magic serves as metonymy for mage; the characters the PC encounters in Ferelden, then, have mapped the characteristic exists to serve man from the source (magic) to the target (mage), with the result that entire societal institutions become constructed around the idea that the mages themselves must be treated with suspicion and constrained, lest they attempt to use the non-moral power of magic to supersede their proscribed role. In an example of the person for place metaphor, Morrigan is an embodiment of The Wilds. She serves as a counterpoint to the rigidly structured world within which the PC has previously operated. The introduction of Morrigan within the ruin of an old Warden structure is no accident; she is, in a sense, the embodiment of the ‘ruin’ of the mage/Templar/Chantry structure within which Ferelden society would require her to exist, in that her presence outside it simultaneously challenges and reifies it as an institution.

Morrigan’s magical specialization is the Shapeshifter ability, meaning that she is able to take on the physical form of various beasts. This serves as a physical manifestation of her metaphorical rejection of society; she has gained the ability to physically modify her body to take on the shape of a beast, a reflection of her presence in The Wilds (again, both physically, in that it is where she literally resides, and metaphorically, in that it is outside the influence of Ferelden society). This ability – to inhabit different physical forms – is a mapped entity from the ‘container’ domain; her container-body can be opened and its contents put into another container.

Nor is this the only example of shapeshifting in DAO. Morrigan’s mother, Flemmeth, is also an apostate mage. Over the course of the story she transforms into a bird (to rescue the PC and her companion, Alistair) and a dragon, and threatens to take Morrigan’s body for her own. The PC also encounters a companion named Shale, a golem who, the player comes to learn, was once a dwarf. It’s worth noting that the dwarves are the only race immune to magic; they have no sensitivity to Lyrium, because of its presence in the bedrock within which they have carved their homes. As a result, then, this sort of transformation (into rock itself!) is the only container-shifting of which dwarves are capable.

The player may well be left with the impression that, at least in Ferelden, the container-body is an extremely malleable entity. It quickly becomes apparent that not only is that the case, but it’s also true that the container can sustain quite a bit of change before it might impact its contents in a permanent manner. While assisting the Dalish elves, the PC encounters a pack of cursed werewolves; if she chooses to help them regain their original human forms, they simply walk away with no indication that their internal identity has changed. The player is given the opportunity to experience this same theme again in the encounter with Kitty, a desire demon who has been trapped in the body of a cat. When confronted by the PC she expresses a desire to become a young girl (and, depending on how the PC handles the situation, may succeed in doing so); Kitty states that she wants to ‘see the world through [the girl’s] eyes’, (BioWare 2009), indicating that she has the ability to intentionally jump into the girl’s body, yet maintain her own identity. Once again, the player is struck by the flexibility of the body-as-container. This is an apt illustration of one entity contained within the container source domain: containers are, of necessity, passive and inert vessels. It is the tension between source and target domains (that is, the practical differences between container and body) that causes the characters in DAO to treat the mages with such suspicion; they are capable of transcending these limitations, and thus can voluntarily transfer their blood (where blood is metonym for life) from one container to another. As the PC learns, ‘the Circle Tower is as much a prison as a refuge; the ever-vigilant Templars of the Chantry watch over all mages, constantly alert for any signs of corruption’ (BioWare 2009), the end result being that those individuals no longer strictly bounded by their inherent physical limits have external limits imposed on them; their ‘containers’ have been strengthened externally.

While in the Deep Roads, the player encounters the Broodmother, a figure who embodies the central conflict at work in the thematic representation of the body’s malleability in DAO. Throughout the Deep Roads, the player is presented with hints and clues that there are dire consequences for the ingestion of Darkspawn flesh (which would, of necessity, contain quite a bit of blood); the player comes to understand that the Broodmother originated as a young female dwarf who, through a combination of compulsory feeding (both Darkspawn and, cannibalistically, that of her traveling companions) and sexual assault is transformed into a monster capable of producing future generations of Darkspawn. This forced consumption both subjects her to, and literally transforms her into, the cannibal other, bringing into question any presumption regarding the inviolability of identity.

Besides further blurring the already hazy line between good and evil present throughout DAO, the player’s interaction with the Broodmother highlights some of the contradictory and revelatory aspects of the issues of embodiment and identity present in the narrative. Within the metaphor scenario in which blood represents identity, it is the non-voluntary and unregulated nature of this particular ingestion that results in the complete physical transformation evident in the figure of the Broodmother. This transformation also grants her a generative power, in that her flesh, once corrupted, is capable of producing yet more of the same corrupted flesh. Thus, the body is container metaphor becomes corrupted by extension; once the container itself is violated, it is no longer capable of containing the identity it was originally intended to house, overflowing with the means of its own corruption.

This metaphor schema and the ways in which it is adhered to and subverted by the different player characters has a direct impact on the player’s narrative experience of Ferelden, in that the PC (and thus the player) is constantly encountering the societal safeguards that have been established throughout Ferelden to counteract the mages’ ability to transcend physical limitations. This is best illustrated in the mage origin story, specifically in the context of the PC’s interaction with her friend Jowan. The player learns that the Templars have a vial of blood taken from each mage, stored within phylacteries, which allow the Templars to track mages that have transgressed the imposed limitations by, for example, leaving the tower or practicing blood magic. The possession of a vial of blood by the Templars gives them a great deal of control over the mages, giving rise to the complex metaphor schema power is blood. Jowan and his love interest are under threat of being made Tranquil (note the recapitulation of the theme of emotion is blood); were he able to destroy his phylactery, he would be able to leave the tower. If he does not destroy it he may still manage to escape; the Templars, however, could simply use the phylactery to track him.

There is one character who is acutely aware of his own status as a container for his own blood, with blood serving as metonym for origin, as identified by Musolff, and life (Musolff 2007, 21–43): the PC’s primary companion, Alistair. In a typical videogame narrative construction, one possible objective for the PC is to install Alistair, the illegitimate son of the former king, on the throne of Ferelden. Atypically, however, Alistair is not particularly interested in becoming king; his personality is not well suited to it, for one thing, and his sole qualification seems to be his biological parentage. Toward the end of the game, the player may have the following conversation with him on the subject (emphasis added):

Alistair: So, I’m guessing someone told Anora I was planning to steal her throne. She has a nasty glare. Did anyone mention this wasn’t my idea? I think she’s a great queen. As far as I’m concerned, she’s welcome to it.

PC: I think you’d be a great king, Alistair.

Alistair: Really? What would ever give you that idea?

PC: Theirin blood will tell. You’ll rise to the occasion.

Alistair: That’s what I keep hearing. The way they talk about Theirin blood you’d think I should maybe just jar it and stick that on the throne. I never met my father, I understand he did all right as king. Worse things can happen to someone. What do you think I should do? Go ahead and be king? Just let it happen? (BioWare 2009)

Alistair’s assertion that his identity is somehow separate from his blood, especially coming towards the end of a narrative in which the life is blood metaphor scenario features so prominently, is jarring and, like all of Dragon Age: Origins, calls into doubt what the player has come to assume about morality in the world of the game (and, if the experience of embodiment has been successful, perhaps has an impact on the player’s interpretation of his or her own moral choices).

Thus, it is possible to see the way the metaphor scenario life is blood not only governs the player’s experience of Dragon Age: Origins, but serves to expand the framework of the narrative outside the game itself. As with most BioWare games, the game itself rewards the player’s drive to play for progression within the narrative over the drive to play for mastery of the game mechanics³. DAO is at its best when the player is invested in – and perhaps, to an extent, identifies with – the PC, because it allows the player to access the hermeneutic elements of game-play⁴; the life is blood metaphor scenario is unraveling the heuristic elements of the narrative that enable a deeper level of interpretation, allowing the game itself to serve as a mimetic medium through which the player can explore issues of identity (and identification), thereby furthering the player’s investment in the gameplay itself. The more the player learns about the world of Ferelden, the less it appears possible to take anything encountered within the game at face value; good and evil, so often a clear distinction in more traditional videogames, are a grey line indeed in BioWare’s presentation. DAO is no Left 4 Dead; there may be an insidious evil force at work in the world of Ferelden, but the solution is never as easy as ‘kill the monsters’, because the ‘monsters’ are never entirely other. The ways in which both the PC and NPCs can cross over this line at various points throughout the narrative depends largely on the subtlety of the PC’s interaction with the world of the game which, in turn, depends on the subtlety of the player’s identification with the PC. The physicality of the governing metaphors present throughout the narrative help to ‘embody’ the player in the world of the game and create these subtle connections.

Within the world of DAO, the player is given rein for narrative exploration and, accordingly, the developers have provided a narrative framework within which the player and PC can function. An essential element of a game – regardless of the medium – is the internal coherency of its ruleset; the game itself ‘creates order, is order’ (Huizinga 2002, 29). With such open-ended dialogue trees and character choices, it would be easy for the player to become lost within the array of options available to the PC; this metaphorical structure provides an interpretive framework within which the player can assess and govern his or her own choices. Blood is the unifying factor; it’s the element that creates the internal consistency that allows for not only a satisfying narrative experience, but also a mimetic one, the implications of which can be carried beyond the closed world of the game and into the flesh-and-blood world of the player’s daily life.

1 A great deal is owed to the tireless guidance of Roger Travis and Eduardo Urios-Aparisi for the work presented here.

2 This construction is a conceit of cognitive metaphor theorists; a more colloquial and expected way of expressing this same concept would be to say that ‘blood is life’. Within metaphor theory, however, metaphors are expressed in the target-is-source construction.

3 DAO has been praised for its mechanical adaptability. The developers have released a patch for the PC edition of DAO which allows the player to skip the combat entirely, if he or she so desires, in order to focus on the narrative content if that is of more interest.

Arsenault, Domenic and Bernard Perron. 2009. ‘In the Frame of the Magic Cycle: The Circle(S) of Gameplay.’ In The Video Game Theory Reader 2, ed. Bernard Perron and Mark J. P. Wolf, 109–32. New York: Routledge.

BioWare. 2009. Dragon Age: Origins. [Multiplatform]. Electronic Arts. Redwood City, CA.

Bissell, Tom. 2010. Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, Kindle edition. New York: Pantheon Books.

Gregersen, Andreas and Torben Grodal. 2009. ‘Embodiment and Interface.’ In The Video Game Theory Reader 2, ed. Bernard Perron and Mark J. P. Wolf. New York: Routledge.

Kövecses, Zoltan. 2006. Language, Mind, and Culture: A Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lord, Albert B. 2000. The Singer of Tales. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Musolff, Andreas. 2007. ‘What Role Do Metaphors Play in Racial Prejudice? The Function of Antisemitic Imagery in Hitler’s Mein Kampf.’ Patterns of Prejudice 41(1): 21–43.

Travis, Roger. 2010. ‘Performative Play Practices: Are Stories and Games Really the Same Thing?’ Living Epic, 8 November. livingepic.blogspot.com/2008/06/performative-play-practices–1-are.html