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# Video Games as Fairy-Stories: Tolkien and Subcreation (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 1)
- URL: https://mythicmindfellowship.com/video-games-as-fairy-stories-tolkien-and-subcreation-mythic-mind-games-ep-1/
- Published: 2025-05-27T13:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T04:59:30.000Z
- Author: Andrew Snyder

Mythic Mind GamesEpisode 1

# Video Games as Fairy-Stories: Tolkien and Subcreation (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 1)

Dr. Andrew Snyder

27 May 2025

[Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYzzMFDus9U&ref=mythicmindfellowship.com)

## In this episode

Can video games be more than empty amusement? Tolkien’s On Fairy-Stories suggests they can: as secondary worlds of subcreation where escape, recovery, and a return to the primary world are possible.

In this opening episode of Mythic Mind Games, Dr. Andrew Snyder introduces the show’s manifesto. Drawing on Tolkien’s account of fantasy as subcreation (not mere make-believe), he argues that rightly ordered games can participate in the perilous realm of fairy-story: places where we meet truth, risk getting lost, and may bring recovered value back into ordinary life. He contrasts cinema’s finished spectacle with the participatory imagination of books and players, asks when games edify versus merely amuse, and sets the philosophical warrant for reading video games as paths toward wisdom rather than only entertainment.

### People

**Dr. Andrew Snyder**Host and speaker

### Key themes

- Subcreation, not mere make-believe
- Escape, recovery, and return
- Rightly ordered games

## Related

- [**Legend of Zelda Mythopoeic Narrative (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 7)**Watch on YouTube](https://youtu.be/vU3OBUUitis?ref=mythicmindfellowship.com)
- [**Legend of Zelda (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 6)**Watch on YouTube](https://youtu.be/kuyYT%5F8nsiM?ref=mythicmindfellowship.com)

## Books mentioned

- [**Tolkien On Fairy-stories**J.R.R. Tolkien](https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780007582914?ref=mythicmindfellowship.com)

## Go deeper

The Cosmos

### [The Primum Mobile](https://mythicmindfellowship.com/cosmos/)

The Ninth Heaven

Find it on the Cosmos

The Inkwell

### [Video Games as Sub-Creation](https://mythicmindfellowship.com/video-games-as-sub-creation/)

Are video games an unhealthy escape from responsibility and real-world achievements, or might they serve some real-world good?

Read the essay

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[Next in Mythic Mind GamesKOTOR II: Kreia, the Exile, and Killing the Force](https://mythicmindfellowship.com/kotor-ii-kreia-the-exile-and-killing-the-force-mythic-mind-games-ep-2/)

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