Description
As videogames become a mainstay in popular culture, there is a need to take a critical approach to their long-term impact on how we construct the ‘future’: videogames have the capacity to behave as not just sites of knowledge construction, replication, modification, or rejection, but also sites of interactive speculation, where individuals immersively ‘play’ within futures. However, popular culture, and videogames more so, are an often-overlooked element in international relations (IR), due to being viewed as artifacts of ‘low’ politics. Building on an emerging literature of videogames in IR, this research challenges perceptions of high-low valuations of cultural artifacts as well as pushing analysis of videogames beyond their tangible offerings such as recruitment and training.
Taking a constructivist approach to IR and utilising a survey and several focus groups with videogame players, the research produces an assessment of how videogames fit into the wider cultural network of meaning-making in relation to future conflict, and how players relate games to other fictions and cultural artifacts. Finally, it produces an analysis of the place for videogames in relation to war and conflict, their positives and drawbacks, and an overall argument for why videogames- and popular culture more broadly- matter to how we think about war and conflict.
Keywords: Videogames; futures; war and conflict, culture; constructavism
