Playing to Survive, Surviving to Play

Dystopian young adult literature has become wildly popular over the past decade, and, interestingly, many of these novels employ games and gaming elements as major plot devices. Analysis of these books reveals a close connection between play and power. Using Trites’ analysis of power relations in young adult literature and Rigby and Ryan’s characteristics of engaging games as frameworks, we show that in four recent dystopian novels both protagonists and readers (albeit vicariously) build competency, exert autonomy, and relate to others as they learn to beat the game and negotiate the power dynamics of the dystopian systems they are in, whether real or virtual.