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Fantamorto - Fantasy Football with the Dead

Death prominently features as a component of games and video games. From the representation of historical figures to mourning fallen in-game companions, games often invite us to confront mortality in ways that are not only punishing for players, but can be emotional and invite reflection.

Game designers experiment with loss and grief through narrative events, while philosophers of games have examined notions like being-towards our virtual death of the idea of permadeath - the design choice where a character’s death is final and irreversible. In these discussions, death is never just a narrative detail; it becomes a lens through which games explore consequence, attachment, and the meaning of failure.

Dead Pools and the case of Fantamorto

Professor Stefano Gualeni of the Institute of Digital Games recently published a new article examining dead pool games. Dead pool games are folk games where players predict which public figures might die within a given period, often scoring points based on accuracy or timing. The premise is unsettling and sometimes controversial, but it is also undeniably game-like. Dead pools involve rules, strategies, and competition. More importantly with the passing of actual, notable people instead of fictional characters or distant history.

His study traces their structure and cultural role, and then turns to a particularly quirky Italian variant of dead pool games: Fantamorto. Borrowing the format of fantasy sports leagues, Fantamorto asks players to assemble a “team” of public figures and earn points when one of them dies during the season. What initially sounds like dark humor becomes, on closer inspection, an intriguing example of how game systems can transform even the most serious aspects of life into structured play.

Looking at Fantamorto also raises questions concerning the ethics of game design. What happens when real deaths become part of a scoring system? Does the presence of rules, friendly competition, and humor trivialise mortality; or does it simply reveal how play has always coexisted with humanity’s most serious concerns?

If you are curious about the strange places where play, ethics, and mortality meet, Stefano’s new article published in Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research offers an unusual and thought-provoking starting point.

Game Studies at the Institute of Digital Games

The Institute of Digital Games at the University of Malta is active at the intersection of the digital humanities, creative practice, and emerging technologies and examines questions such as these. As new forms of media contribute to shaping how we remember, represent, and interact with the dead (from AI simulations to online memorials) games offer a particularly revealing lens to understand societies, understand societies, understand notoriety and process mortality. You can also try HAMM-3R, a short, new philosophical game about mediation theory designed by Stefano Gualeni and developed by Ahmed Khalifa.