The Violence of Violence: Reflexive Violence in The Last of Us 2 as Pedagogical Potential

Violence in video games is regularly in the focus of public observation. What is striking here is that the debate is predominantly concerned with potentially negative effects of video game consumption, especially for juveniles. In this paper, we take a different angle. By analyzing Naughty Dog’s “The Last of Us 2” (2020), we demonstrate the pedagogical potential of a fixed-narrative game, that forces its players to make use of violence from different perspectives by switching the main characters, thereby creating moments of reflection on the existential meaning of violence. The reflexive reference of violence to itself – the ludonarrative embedding of violence in the game – thus creates the pedagogical potential to reassess the use of violence itself and to re-introduce alternative options for social interaction.