The Purposes and Meanings of Video Game Bathrooms

Through an archaeogaming framing and an object-inventory method, the purposes and meanings of video game bathrooms are put forward with a framework. The framework assesses each video game bathroom based on its immersive qualities, ludic affordances, and ideological commentary. By analyzing games and establishing the framework, this article addresses how designers employ these affordances to use bathrooms as representative spaces. While bathrooms in video games contribute to a sense of place through environmental storytelling, they also represent situated perspectives on privacy, cleanliness, dirt, gender, and other ideological concepts. This article places video game bathrooms in a larger history of bathroom representations in media. However, unlike other media, video games enable players to view themselves in different bodies within bathrooms, engage in potentially taboo behavior, and interrupt conservative or traditional understandings of bathroom use. This enables designers to take spaces that are political, in some cases even dangerous and antagonistic, and make them playful.