My thesis aims to explain the almost unbroken popularity of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim through the lens of irony. The game has several active communities (such as the Reddit pages r/skyrim and r/SkyrimMemes), where posts often mention the game in an ironic tone. In this paper, I suggest that the ironic nature of the conversations and mentions of the game often stem not from the users themselves, but from the ironic elements of the game and that posts about these elements contribute to maintaining an active community. Consequently, I examine the elements of the game that may underlie the irony observed in the posts and propose the introduction of a new concept of irony in video game research: procedural (programming-based) irony. After clarifying what procedural irony is, I also discuss the notion of post-irony, which is mainly linked to the analysis of content about or related to games, since post-ironic content is regularly found among users belonging to online communities. Several examples of irony connected to game mechanics and narrative design are presented in the paper, followed by a discussion of how ironic elements in games are reflected in the content created about the game. Nostalgia also plays a role in sustaining active communities, since nostalgia evoked by ironic content is likely to make players return to play the game repeatedly, thus giving a chance for the active gaming community to survive.