On the absence of imaginative resistance in games

I introduce David Hume’s notion of “imaginative resistance” and offer a brief summary of currently available understandings and explanations of imaginative resistance. I examine these in order to determine how they distinguish, if they do, imagination resistance in fiction from imaginative resistance in games. I find imaginative resistance of the sort found in fiction is relatively rare in games and speculate as to why this is the case. I conclude that while fiction is characterized by a suspension of disbelief, games are characterized by a more actively reinforced disbelief. This conclusion has significant implications regarding the function of imagination and belief in games: games and fiction engage belief in different ways. Imagination in games appears more powerfully engaged, and belief in games appears more voluntarily engaged (i. e., less “correlated with truth”) than in fiction.