Non si può guarire: An (idea)historical approach to plague games and death in the streets

Medieval Plague Art, encompassing both literature and fine arts, is characterized by gruesome imagery, piles of rats, and the omnipresence of the deceased, finding its continuation in the depictions of contemporary digital plagues as in Dishonored or A Plague Tale. Similar to the medieval fascination for the morbid and gruesome, evident in the visual explicitness of historical plague art, the digital depiction of plagues and pandemics plays with the morbid curiosity of the player.
Within this work, we propose an idea-historical approach to the genre of Plague Games as a continuation of medieval Plague Art. We trace the fascination with the tropes “death by plague(s)” and "death in the streets" from the allegories of Danse Macabre and depictions of public dying in the late Middle Ages up to plagues as a symbol of societal decay, as present in contemporary digital games. Understanding historical plague art as a response and possible mode of coping with the experienced crisis, we can recognize a cultural continuity of the confrontation with plagues to the rise of popularity of plague-themed media within the gaming community during Covid-19.