Roll for consent: Trigger warnings and consent negotiations in video games

Consent remains a misunderstood and often ill-defined concept, with discourses frequently centring solely on its sexual dimensions. This article looks at how consent negotiations are represented as a dynamic discussion between the player and non-player characters, as well as through accessibility settings and content notes used in the communication between the game and the player. Drawing from discussions about content notes’ function in fiction and their understanding as a form of informed consent, this article juxtaposes narrative consent negotiation in non-sexual, but still just as intimate, scenarios in Baldur’s Gate 3 with uses of interactive content warnings in Dead Space and Until Dawn horror games, noting that video games both also already are equipped in tools allowing for negotiating consent with the players.