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But They Have Sought Out Many Inventions: Religion, Fin De Siècle, and Stereotype Accuracy in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Slobodan Koljevic

10.46469/mq.2023.63.3.3

Published: 2023/03/01

Abstract

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs[i\] is a survival horror game developed by The Chinese Room and published by Frictional Games. Set in Late Victorian England, the game intimately deals with the issues of religion, moral depravity, and sacrifice, using its characters as the medium. In doing so, it necessarily tries to portray the beliefs and religious life of Late Victorians. Those portrayals are reviewed in the present paper, with the proposal that the minute accuracy of those portrayals might not be wholly rationally designed. This minute accuracy can be explained by the same psychological processes underlying stereotype accuracy. Keywords: Amnesia, Stereotype accuracy, Portrayal accuracy, Victorian studies, Video games, Aztec religion

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