Fabrizio Matarese (University of Turin)

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All games are defined by a set of rules which in practice allow the playing of any number of matches. Ritual, which is also ‘played’, is on the other hand, like a favoured instance of a game […].

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1966, p. 30.

Abstract

This paper explores how Elden Ring and the broader FromSoftware Souls series integrate both cohesive and competitive elements to create a unique gaming experience. By employing a qualitative close reading of game mechanics and aesthetics through the lens of procedural rhetoric, this paper analyzes the game’s design, narrative, and social dynamics. I argue that Elden Ring stands at the intersection of entertainment and ritualistic experience, embodying both liminal and liminoid characteristics as defined by the anthropological theories by Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner. The Souls games experience bridges the tension between unifying ritual and disjunctive competition, offering players a space for both personal mastery and communal cohesion. Drawing on ritual and game theory, this study demonstrates how the combat process, aesthetics, the cooperative multiplayer system, and challenging mechanics foster an ambivalent experience that both involves a return to balance and drives for transformation.

 

1. The Core and Mystery Of Souls Games

Over the last fifteen years, it is challenging to name a subgenre of video games that has generated an aura of mystery, a devout community, a significant impact on the industry and extensive scholarly discourse comparable to those of Souls games. The “Souls franchise” developed by FromSoftware under the direction of Hidetaka Miyazaki can be counted as cult classics and, at the same time, thought-provoking gaming experiences. The rise of the distinct and influential Soulslike video game subgenre – originating with Demon’s Souls (2009), crystallized by Dark Souls (2011) and extended with Elden Ring (2022) – has reshaped expectations of interactive storytelling, challenge and world design, to expand beyond their original authors. These games are defined by harsh difficulty, cryptic narratives, interconnected environments, and a melancholic grandeur. Scholars have examined their mechanics, psychological impacts, cultural resonances, and communal dimensions, thus revealing Souls games as complex cultural artifacts worthy of serious study. The following review summarizes the main academic perspectives on Souls games before proposing a new analytical lens based on anthropology and performance studies.

Souls games have at their foundation a deliberate, demanding design. Tibor Guzsvinecz (2023) demonstrates a strong correlation between core mechanics – high-stakes combat, stamina-based action, extra penalties on death, and non-linear world design – and player engagement. His follow-up study (2024) coins “Soulsification” to describe how these mechanics have been adopted across genres and to underscore their robustness.

Soulsring (portmanteau word used to refer to both the Dark Souls series and Elden Ring) storytelling rejects linearity in favor of environmental cues, item descriptions, and ambiguous dialogue. Marco Caracciolo (2024) argues that this fragmented approach transforms players into active interpreters through the act of piecing together lore from scattered clues. Crucially, this interpretive labor is communal: online forums and wikis become collaborative spaces where players construct meaning together through hermeneutic articulation. Complementing this focus on collective interpretation, Dom Ford (2024) proposes “mytholudics,” a framework that treats the series as modern myth, identifying recurring patterns – desire and purpose, godhood and divinity, fire and dark – and casting Souls communities as folkloric storytellers who collectively sustain and elaborate a shared mythic core.

Cameron Kunzelman (2020) discusses how aesthetic modulations and accompanying game design ideas are used to generate subjectivity. Aesthetic categories such as Soulsborn (i.e. Soulslike) profoundly influence not only our understanding of narrative and game design elements, but also the players’ experiences and attitudes toward work and productivity. The constant emphasis on personal improvement, trial and error, and repeated effort within these games mirrors neoliberal ideals that value individual action and meritocracy. Daniel Dooghan (2025) expands on this approach by interpreting the economies and cycles of Dark Souls as allegories of capitalist accumulation and hard work: players can conquer the game’s challenges, which symbolizes capital’s rewards for diligent labor. Van Nuen (2016) states that the game employs post-Panoptic gameplay, blending continuous surveillance with playful exhibitionism. This creates a hybrid experience of both subjectification and empowerment for players. The notoriously difficult game world forces commitment and perseverance, and the multiplayer system acts as a metaphor for digital surveillance. The narrative’s opacity thus enables polysemy; mythic, economic, and existential readings coexist, inviting players to unearth, debate, and collectively author the story.

Contrary to assumptions of masochism, Souls games can foster positive psychological outcomes through structured adversity. Petralito et al. (2017) show that fair, learnable challenges transform death into motivation, yielding mastery, game flow, and satisfaction. Andreas Theodorou (2020) deepens this aspect by linking death to narrative themes – cycles of decay, existential futility – making it integral to the game’s mythos. Most strikingly, Väkevä et al. (2025) found that players with depression draw therapeutic metaphors from Dark Souls, such as perseverance against despair, resisting “hollowness,” and achieving small, meaningful victories. The games thus offer not just stimulating challenges, but also emotional scaffolding and community support.

Souls games engage profound psychological and philosophical themes. Jamie Madigan (2020) emphasizes that these games can encourage players to adopt a growth mindset to persevere and even learn from negative feedback. In the worlds of Souls, failure can be a lever. Fabrizio Matarese (2025) frames Dark Souls gameplay as a Stoic exercise: players learn to manage negative emotions, focus on what can be controlled, and cultivate fortitude amid chaos. The implied player is one who embodies patience, discipline, and wisdom. Daniel Illger (2021) explores dialectical tensions between life and death, presence and void, suggesting that the game blurs these binaries to evoke a lifelike death – a cyclical state that permeates the world and player identity. These interpretations reveal Souls as spaces for ethical reflection and existential inquiry.

The meaning of Souls’ worlds is shaped by cultural and communal contexts. Pan et al. (2024) examine the player’s multicultural responses, by identifying different focal points and emotional expressions in the specific readings of each culture. The interplay between global artifact and situated interpretation ensures that the games remain open-ended, dynamic, and globally resonant.

Immersion in Souls’ worlds stems from meticulous environmental design. Andrea Andiloro (2022) analyzes how Dark Souls creates “placeness” – a sense that game locations are meaningful, lived-in spaces – through lighting, sound, architecture, and recurring motifs (“refrains”). This atmospheric depth transforms the player journey into emotional and narrative experience, where each area tells its own story of ruin and grandeur.

Daniel Vella (2015) identifies a core paradox: mastery in Dark Souls depends on mystery. The ludic sublime –  which arises from the impossibility of fully understanding the game system underlying the diegetic world – fuels curiosity and constant engagement. Timothy Welsh (2020) expands on this concept, emphasizing the cyclical nature and influence of the community in “remastering”: the abundance of paratexts, guides and tutorials can transform the experience from sublime to efficient. Dom Ford (2020),  considers the aesthetic impact of giantness in Dark Souls – colossal architecture, towering bosses, and oppressive scale – which evokes awe and insignificance, thereby reinforcing themes of struggle, inadequacy and the sublime.

Recent scholarship examines how Elden Ring (2022) refines the formula. Mateusz Felczak (2025) critiques the “git gud” ethos, arguing that the game offers flexible paths – Spirit Ashes, open-world exploration, build diversity – that broaden accessibility without diluting challenge. Rendle & Pasternack (2025) examine its subversion of “heroic nostalgia”: the fallen-from-grace, exiled figure of the Tarnished is no triumphant savior but a fractured figure in a world of faded glory, offering a melancholic, morally ambiguous take on fantasy. These studies confirm the genre’s capacity for innovation and critical reflection.

Overall, the literature reveals that Souls games are multifaceted experiences that intertwine mechanics, narrative, psychology, and culture. In light of their multi-layered complexity, it would be interesting to examine Souls games through a new analytical lens based on anthropology and performance studies. Drawing on van Gennep’s and Turner’s works, the anthropological framework that I employ illustrates how the player’s journey through these hostile worlds evokes archetypal processes of transformation and incorporates elements of rituality. Van Gennep’s rites of passage (2019) – separation, liminality, incorporation – offer such a lens. Victor Turner’s concept of communitas (1995) – the egalitarian bonds formed in liminal spaces – mirrors Souls co-op and community lore-building.

Furthermore, this framework captures both the transformative and balancing aspects of the experience, by placing it in the performative context and exploring Elden Ring (and more generally the Souls series games) as poised between Turner’s principles of ‘liminality’ and ‘liminoid’. By these terms, the scholar referred to two different transitional phases with anthropological and performative meanings; in my opinion, both concepts contribute to shaping Elden Ring’s game experience as characterized by the double aspects of cohesion and competitiveness.

In sum, Souls games are more than entertainment with a twist of pain; they can be ritualized spaces where players confront failure, seek meaning, meet acolytes and undergo a transformation before emerging changed. Academic inquiry has illuminated their many dimensions, and the use of an anthropological lens reveals a deeper structure: modern digital experiences that echo ritual elements.

 

2. The Link Between Ritual and Play

The relationship between ritual and play can be conceived as a profound structural and functional affinity, a theme developed along a trajectory of 20th-century anthropological and performance theories. Johan Huizinga laid the foundations, positing play not as a banal activity but as a primary cultural matrix from which culture and civilization emerge. Ritual and play share the fundamental characteristics of being conducted within a delimited space-time, of being governed by explicit rules, and of embodying a sense of “otherness” compared to ordinary life (Huizinga 2014).

This premise receives its most influential anthropological articulation from Victor Turner, who identified the liminal phase of ritual – a state of anti-structure “betwixt and between” (1995: 95) – as the fertile ground in which normal social hierarchies dissolve and a profound egalitarian bond is generated. Turner also explicitly linked this liminal state to the domain of play, arguing that ritual is a form of “serious play,” an activity performed with established rules and profound social consequences, which dissolve the rigid boundary between the sacred and the theatrical. He connects his core themes of liminality and communitas to concepts of “play” and “flow,” a psychological state of deep concentration and absorption.

Turner’s work is central to the models developed by performance scholars like Richard Schechner, whose comparative analysis of ritual and theater demonstrates that both rely on “restored behavior” – living behaviors that have been separated from the performers who enact them and repeated, rehearsed, and reconstructed, thereby solidifying the conceptual link (1989).

A complementary structuralist perspective is offered by Claude Lévi-Strauss, who conceptualizes ritual as a specific, privileged type of game. He contrasts games with rituals, emphasizing their distinct social functions despite shared formal elements like rules. Lévi-Strauss observes that, while conventional games are defined by rules that permit countless variable outcomes, “ritual, which is also ‘played’, is instead like a favoured instance of a game” (1966: 32). This privilege stems from its unique cognitive function, which he illustrates through the metaphor of the bricoleur. Just as a bricoleur creates new structures from the creative recombination of existing materials, ritual operates through bricolage, integrating disparate signs and events into a coherent symbolic order. The fundamental difference lies in their outcomes: games inherently produce disjunctions, clearly establishing winners and losers and thereby focusing on differentiation. Ritual, conversely, aims for synthesis and social cohesion, unifying disparate groups or entities and fostering communal connections.

Games thus appear to have a disjunctive effect: they end in the establishment of a difference between individual players or teams  where originally there was no indication of inequality. And at the end of the game they are distinguished into winners and losers. Ritual, on the other hand, is the exact inverse; it conjoins, for it  brings about a union […] (1966: 32).

Lévi-Strauss’s analysis therefore highlights the cognitive processes underlying cultural practices, positioning myths and rituals as games with particular characteristics that incorporate mechanisms essential for shaping and preserving the very structures of human society, a perspective that emphasizes their role in maintaining stability.

 

3. Rites of Passage: The Architecture Of Transformation

In the anthropological study of ritual and identity transformation, Arnold van Gennep’s seminal book The Rites of Passage (2019) remains foundational, structuring ritual processes into three sequential phases: separation, margin, and incorporation. Van Gennep conceptualized the separation phase as a time when individuals abandon their established social roles. The phase of the margin (liminal) is characterized by a state of ambiguity and dislocation, in which participants are deprived of their previous identities but not yet recognized in a new role. Finally, in the incorporation (post-liminal) stage, individuals reintegrate into society with a renewed status or identity.

This foundational structure extended beyond anthropology to shape comparative mythology, most notably in Joseph Campbell’s (2008) The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell adapted van Gennep’s outline to frame the hero’s journey, defining liminality as a narrative process of becoming – a transitional zone where one is neither one nor the other but in the process of becoming (Larson, 2020: 1363-1364).

Victor Turner built on van Gennep’s model emphasizing the fluidity and social ambiguity of the liminal phase. Turner’s work popularized the term “liminality”, transforming it from a descriptive stage in a ritual process into a powerful analytical concept for understanding a wide range of human experiences. For Turner liminality is not just a transitional state where individuals are betwixt and between, but also a site for the emergence of communitas – a transient, egalitarian solidarity among participants who, stripped of hierarchical distinctions, co-create meaning through shared vulnerability. Turner’s analysis frames the concept of liminality as a dynamic interaction between structure – the set of social positions, roles, and norms that order everyday life – and anti-structure – characterized by transformative potential and the temporary erosion of social classifications – in which identity and social roles are negotiated in a dynamic manner (1995).

Turner further problematized liminality by distinguishing it from the concept of liminoid, which he associated with modern, non-ritualistic experiences of play and spectacle (1982). While liminality is rooted in traditional, collective rites (e.g., initiation ceremonies) that reinforce and renew the social order, liminoid experiences are characterized by their voluntary, temporary, and often commodified nature. Liminoid states, such as festivals or performative arts, offer participants a sense of liberation from societal constraints without necessarily leading to a permanent transformation of social status. Turner argued that liminoid experiences are “modern” in their detachment from institutionalized ritual, prioritizing entertainment, aesthetic immersion, and personal expression over the symbolic regeneration of social roles. This distinction is pivotal for understanding how digital environments, including video games, mediate liminality and liminoid experiences.

 

4. Liminality and Liminoid in Video Games

This conceptual tension is central to contemporary game studies. Matthew Horrigan (2021) argues that while the overarching gaming session functions as a liminoid event – defined by its voluntary, commercial, and reversible nature – it frequently employs the “signs of the liminal” to create depth. He identifies the “ritual of avatarization” as a process that, though liminoid, facilitates “moments of similitude” where the boundary between player and avatar temporarily dissolves. This distinction corroborates the dual-layered analysis of Souls games proposed here: the broader experience aligns with the liminoid, yet the fog wall and boss arena function as potent liminal devices that simulate the intense, transformative ambiguity of a traditional rite of passage. This perspective complements Devin Proctor’s (2012) conception of game inhabitation as a rite of passage, wherein the player becomes a liminal entity exploring projective identity betwixt and between worlds. The ritualistic potential is further amplified by what Alison Gazzard and Alan Peacock (2011) term “ritual logic,” wherein the repetitive cycles of failure and mastery enact performative rituals that structure player understanding. Moreover, as Debra Ramsay (2020) observes regarding spatial and temporal ambiguity, games often “smear” the boundaries of reality, a concept vividly realized in the precarious transition across the fog wall in Souls games, signaling a shift from the liminoid play session into a heightened, enclosed liminal arena.

 

5. Methodological Framework: A Procedural Reading of Ritual

The theoretical division between liminal and liminoid elements informs how play and storytelling function as sites of experimentation and identity change. For the purpose of this discussion, when I refer to “Souls games” I am specifically targeting video games created by FromSoftware, namely Demon’s Souls, the Dark Souls series, and Elden Ring. The commodified nature of Souls games – designed for mass consumption and structured around commercial entertainment – aligns them with liminoid characteristics. However, with their iterative cycles of failure and mastery, combat dynamics and the emergence of an invested community, they resonate with liminal qualities. This tension invites critical inquiry into Souls’ gaming experiences: albeit modern, voluntary, and hedonistic phenomena, they also incorporate ritualistic elements.

The following analysis will explore these themes using Elden Ring as a case study, examining how the mechanics, aesthetics, and player communities of the genre negotiate the boundaries between Turner’s liminal and liminoid models to produce both modes of exploration and change in individual identity and social composition through experiences of communitas.

To bridge the gap between anthropological theory and game design, this study employs a qualitative close reading of Elden Ring, utilizing Ian Bogost’s concept of procedural rhetoric (2007) to interpret how game rules and mechanics persuade players to enact ritualistic behaviors. The selection of gameplay elements for analysis is not arbitrary; rather, it follows a theoretical sampling logic derived directly from van Gennep’s and Turner’s frameworks. Specifically, this analysis isolates three distinct layers of gameplay that structurally correspond to the phases of the ritual process: spatial transitions, performative action and social dynamics.

Regarding spatial transitions, the “wall of fog” and the entrance to the boss arenas are analyzed as limen or thresholds, marking the separation from the ordinary world to the sacred arena.

Performative action essentially concerns the combat cycle and boss encounters. These are examined as a liminal phase, characterized by flow, restored behaviors, and testing of the subject.

Finally, social dynamics: multiplayer systems (ghosts, gestures) and the construction of community tradition are analyzed as a manifestation of communitas, the egalitarian bond formed through shared experimentation.

By mapping specific characteristics onto these ritual stages, the analysis demonstrates how Elden Ring (and Souls games more generally) functions as a ‘ritual machine’ capable of producing transformative experiences within a commercial entertainment product. This approach allows for a systematic analysis of how the game’s procedural rhetoric reinforces the narrative and psychological themes of the liminal stage.

 

6. Boss Fights, Flow and the Liminal Experience

Elden Ring, released in 2022 by FromSoftware and Bandai Namco, is the latest installment in the Souls franchise that has enjoyed massive success with audiences and critics alike, winning numerous awards and selling more than 30 million copies. Directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki with worldbuilding by George R.R. Martin, the game is set in The Lands Between – a name that suggests spatial ambiguity and environmental hybridity – where players embark on a quest exploring a vast open world to repair the Elden Ring and become the Elden Lord. Gameplay involves traversing the world on a steed, exploring dungeons, and battling numerous enemies and terrifying bosses with weapons and magic. Checkpoints, called Sites of Grace, facilitate fast travel and character progression through rune acquisition (which allow players to level up and purchase equipment). The game features an online multiplayer system for cooperative and player-versus-player combat.

It is essential to delineate how the Souls franchise – particularly Elden Ring – can be positioned within the framework of anthropology and performance studies. As outlined in the methodological framework, the analysis proceeds from the macro level to the micro. The macro level interprets the entire gaming experience, consisting of various sessions, as a liminoid phase. Beyond this overarching view, I posit a second level of analysis and argue that boss encounters represent heightened liminal moments. The specific study I propose is based on the user experience, audiovisual analysis, and the procedural rhetoric (Bogost 2007) of this phase of the game.

During gaming sessions, the player voluntarily suspends their social identity in the ordinary world – the separation phase – to enter the game’s diegetic universe by embodying an avatar. During the game, the player exists simultaneously on multiple levels: they do not cease to exist as a human being on earth, but perceive, act, and participate in the reality of the game world. In this sense, the player is a liminal entity, existing betwixt and between two worlds. At the end of the gaming session, the player returns to their ordinary experience and to their conventional social role: this corresponds to the phase of incorporation, in this case without a change of status.

 

6.1 Limen: The Fog Wall

The transition into a boss arena, often marked by a visually distinct threshold – such as the fog wall – does not feature exclusively in Elden Ring but is rather a recurring motif in Souls games. This act of passage is a key moment during gameplay and signals a shift into a heightened state of challenge and psychological vulnerability. The act of “traversing the mist” – as it is alluded to – further reinforces this liminal transition, suggesting a descent into a space outside ordinary reality. The boss arena is actually an enclosed space that can only be exited in two ways: either by defeating the enemy or by losing the avatar’s life. The boss fight, therefore, becomes a ritualistic liminal space, demanding a transformation in the player’s approach and resilience, mirroring the archetypal journey into the unknown. This structural encounter resonates with what Erik Davis describes as the “technological mundus imaginalis,” (2004: 244) where player avatars confront “threshold-dwellers”, modern equivalents of the keepers of the gates found in shamanic traditions. Despite the commodified nature of the medium, these boss encounters evoke the mystic peregrinations of myth, suggesting that the spiritual business of overcoming guardians is alive within the architecture of the game.

6.2 Combat Dynamics and Flow State

The combat dynamics within Elden Ring can be seen as a dance-like performance, where players engage in learned actions honed through practice and repetition. This deeply engaging and codified experience directly fosters a state of flow, as described by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (1974). Flow, characterized by complete absorption, clear goals, immediate feedback, and a balance of challenge and skill, is particularly prevalent in liminal spaces – transitional periods removed from everyday concerns. Boss fights in Elden Ring perfectly embody this liminal setting. Upon entering the arena, the player is immediately confronted with a heightened sense of isolation. The familiar world of exploration and discovery is replaced by a confined, often visually arresting space dedicated solely to the confrontation. The player’s usual concerns – exploration, narrative progression, resource management – are momentarily suspended, replaced by the singular focus on survival and victory. This liminal situation creates both a divide between players – between those who lose and those who win – and a sense of communion, the perception of going through the same trying and potentially transformative experience.

The rhythmic routine of defense, evasion, and counterattack becomes an instinctive behavioral pattern acquired through repetition. It is here that the combat system operates as a form of “ritual logic” (Gazzard & Peacock 2011), where the player’s engagement relies on the intertextual understanding of genre conventions and the repetitive mastery of mechanics. The fight develops by trying and retrying the actions to be performed until the definitive victory over a boss (which does not always happen on the first attempt, on the contrary). The process of defeating a boss becomes an ever-better ritualized performance, characterized by “restored behavior” – performances that are not spontaneous but are instead deliberate repetitions of previously enacted behaviors – that reflects both individual skill and collective ingenuity (Schechner 1989). In this context, the ritual logic of the game provides the structural framework that allows these strips of behavior to be successfully rearranged and reconstructed by the player. If at the basis of any video game there are actions (Galloway 2006), in the case of Souls the actions are configured as restored behaviors both in the fight with the bosses and in the use of gestures.

 

6.3 Phantoms, Gestures and Restored Behavior

Echoes of this restored behavior are also visible in the phantoms of avatars controlled by other players, which can be occasionally glimpsed as they move around the game world, or which can be deliberately rewound and replayed by activating a player’s last actions before death by pressing on bloodstains. A loading screen, which explained details about the game and its system, reads the following: “You may occasionally see faint, white phantoms. These are traces of players in other worlds and the actions they recently performed”. Being crucial ways of communicating with the avatars, emotes and gestures have long been integral to MMORPGs for facilitating social roles, cosmetic expression, and coordination. Although they appeared in earlier works, their significance is particularly marked in games like the Souls series due to the limited communication options available within these contexts.

In Elden Ring, gestures also interact with gameplay mechanics, unlocking features related to covenants or solving puzzles related to NPC quests.¹ Additionally, they signify community identity through membership symbols and popular memes. In narrative contexts, gestures contribute to rituals and storytelling, gaining symbolic significance due to the absence of voice communication.

Overall, emotes and gestures are crucial for social interaction, gameplay functionality, group identity, and immersive experiences in these games. Gestures can also be considered “restored behaviors” as they are codified performative actions that are repeated countless times. The phenomenology of these gestures is fully in line with Schechner’s definition: “Restored behavior is living behavior treated as a film director treats a strip of film. These strips of behavior can be rearranged or reconstructed; they are independent of the causal systems (social, psychological, technological) that brought them into existence. They have a life of their own”  (1989: 35).

 

7. The Role of the Community: Communitas

Elden Ring is a challenging game that discriminates between players: winners and losers, those who finish the game and those who quit halfway, those who love it and those who hate it. The selection creates a hierarchy. Many of the game’s features (Colosseum, PvP, the challenge for the best build) seem designed to rank players. This, Turner would say, is the world of structure. Beyond these elements the game also fosters a powerful sense of unity.

The communal experience promoted within the Elden Ring community resonates strongly with Victor Turner’s concept of communitas. Turner posited communitas as an intense feeling of social unity and equality, often arising in liminal phases of ritual or transition. The collaborative, real-time co-op mechanics of Elden Ring, where players can summon allies to aid in boss battles, directly embody this principle. This shared struggle against formidable adversaries transcends individual skills, promoting a sense of shared vulnerability. The necessity of coordinated strategy and reciprocal assistance cultivates a sensation of equality and shared responsibility, mirroring Turner’s description of communitas as a state of intense solidarity and existential sharing.

Moreover, the community’s active engagement in lore-building constitutes another vital modality of communitas. Beyond the game itself, players collaboratively reconstruct the fragmented narrative of the Lands Between. This off-game activity involves piecing together cryptic item descriptions, interpreting ambiguous environmental details, and constructing elaborate theories about the world’s history and characters. This shared intellectual endeavor fosters a sense of collective authorship and imaginative participation, while the collaborative construction of meaning reinforces a sense of belonging and collective identity within the Elden Ring and Souls community. Both the in-game co-op and the out-of-game lore-building activities, therefore, contribute to shaping a profound sense of communitas, thus transforming the player experience into a shared experience of meaning-making and social cohesion. The shared hardship and collective achievement within the community, facilitated by these in-game features, thus cultivate a powerful feeling of belonging and meaning, mirroring the transformative social dynamics inherent in ritualistic gatherings.

 

8. Conclusions

Examining Elden Ring through anthropological approaches reveals a fascinating duality. From the fog walls of boss arenas, signaling a limen crossing, to the ritualized performances of combat, where gameplay actions become “restored behaviors”, Elden Ring – and Souls games more generally – actively constructs liminal experiences. The collaborative gameplay and the examination and reconstruction of diegetic tradition evoke a sense of communitas reminiscent of a structured ritual.

However, to fully understand the complexity of this ludic experience, we must also acknowledge its limitations. The game’s inherent commodification, its design geared toward mass consumption, fun and entertainment, undeniably align it with liminoid characteristics. Structured progression, defined goals, and the inherent competition for success – the “git gud” ethos, the pursuit of the “best” build and PvP dynamics – contribute to creating a structure designed to differentiate players and foster a sense of hierarchy. This intrinsic structure, driven by market forces and the players’ desire for validation, positions Elden Ring as a product of a consumerist culture that seeks to categorize and classify.

This tension between liminal and liminoid elements echoes the insights of Claude Lévi-Strauss, who stated that while rituals unite what was previously separate, games inherently produce disjunction, establishing winners and losers, defining boundaries and hierarchies (1966: 30-33). Competitive games intrinsically embody this disjunctive quality. Souls games actively create a space for differentiation, rewarding skill and perseverance while punishing failure. However, its communitas aspect, by contrast, aims for synthesis and cohesion, unifying disparate groups and fostering community connections. In Turner’s words, these games are both structure and communitas.

Ultimately, playing Elden Ring, and Souls games more generally, is an experience that transcends simple categorizations. Although commercial games, they also retain a trace of the transformative potential of ritual – albeit contextualized in modern liminoid experiences that shift consciousness more than social status. The game’s uniqueness lies in its ability to seamlessly integrate these opposing forces, creating an immersive experience that deeply resonates with human psychology. Elden Ring offers a compelling case study – a testament to the power of games to not only entertain but also facilitate psychological transformations and social communion, bridging the gap between leisure and mystery in the digital age.

 

End notes

1. The “Ring of Miquella” gesture was also one of the bonus items for those who pre-ordered the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, released on June 21, 2024.

 

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Ludography

Dark Souls, From Software, Japan, 2011.

Demon’s Souls, From Software, Japan, 2009.

Elden Ring, Bandai Namco Entertainment, From Software, Japan, 2022.

 

Authors’ Info

Fabrizio Matarese
University of Turin, Turin, Italy
fabrizio.matarese@unito.it

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.