[Presentation] Political Play With Games: Relationalism and Becoming Political

The question ‘are videogames causing violence?’ is an infamously difficult to answer. This question assumes a dualist framework in which individuals and bits of culture exist as separate, discrete objects that interact independently from each other (Elias 1978; Depelteau 2013; Powell 2013). Particularly, thinking about the interactions between humans, technology and culture in a way that discusses the effects of consuming a specific form of culture has on individual behavior sees pieces of technology as stubborn, and impervious to change. In other words, this question assumes that technology unilaterally affects the human.

Relational theory instead sees connections rather than separations between humans, culture, and technology, where each constantly acts, interacts, and affects the others (Latour 1992; Barad 2007). In this way, we focus on the figuration created from this interaction (Haraway 2006). Building on this view, radical relationalism says that all objects, including humans, are made up of relations and all action takes place through relations (Powell 2013, 191). Importantly, relations become not only our basic unit of social analysis but also a process or transformation (194).

In my chapter “Moments of Political Gameplay: Game Design as a Mobilization Tool for Far-Right Action” (Brett 2021), I proposed that we shift gears into radical relationalist thought, to reframe the interaction between players, games, and political artefacts as a relational exchange. This changes our question about technology and humans interacting from ‘how does technology affect the human?’ to ‘what are the effects or exchanges that occur when humans and technology come together? In the case of people and games playing politically, ‘what political outcomes arise from the figuration created between human, political, and game?’

In this workshop, I review my findings about thinking of gameplay as a coming together of all these human and non-human parts, coagulating as a playful and political body, enacting “moments of political gameplay.” Spotting these moments of political gameplay allows us to trace the processes which reproduce a political worldview of the actors from their involvement in gameplay. This mobilizes the player-game-politics figuration to digitally enact and perform far-right play, concretize the political identities of its player, and outline the breadcrumbs that lead the player towards far-right recruitment.

To do this, I highlight moments of political gameplay through qualitative case studies from two seemingly different games: Angry Goy II (AG2), developed with politics at its forefront; and Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2), which allows the players to “do whatever they want”. AG2 allows political gameplay via politically-charged game challenges, whereas RDR2 allows the player to bring in politics through politically-charged player actions (Giddings 2009; Adams 2013; Brett 2021). Moments of political gameplay of AG2 showcase how the game and its technological and design affordances have more pull to influence the player to play politically. Meanwhile an analysis of RDR2 shows the reciprocal relational processes of how the social and political elements of the player shape the gameplay relationship. Combining analysis of AG2 with that of RDR2 helps showcase the potentiality of political gameplay within varying game worlds, whether intended to be spaces of far-right gameplay or not.