Games, Activism and the Art of Destroying Shit: The Sequel
By Mae van Veldhoven, Kyle Thompson and the Anticiplay community
The Games for Better Futures events are (bi)monthly online and offline get-togethers for people who are interested in games for better futures, and futures for better games. Here, our aim is to connect games to direct political action and societal transformation, while also taking into account the transformation necessary within the gaming sector in order to achieve this. Follow us on Twitter or join our Discord to stay up to date on our events, or sign up for the mailing list below!
Games, Activism and the Art of Destroying Shit: this was the theme of our latest Games for Better Futures get-together. This incredibly inspiring session consisted of a general discussion among participants, followed by a game-building exercise around the topic. The results: lots of inspiring ideas, and a part two of this event on January 17th 2023!
In this previous blog on the topic of Games, Activism and the Art of Destroying Shit, Dr. Joost Vervoort wrote about the need to go beyond positive, constructive imaginations of futures — the need to “unmake” and dismantle current systems that are no longer serving the planet and us. With regards to games, this engagement with the radical, the political and the dark is often what attracts players in the first place. Yet what we’re seeing with many sustainability games is that they often stay in the safe lane of merely raising awareness, rather than letting players engage with the power struggles and conflicts that uphold these unsustainable systems in the first place. Especially when funded by organisations who are part of these incumbent systems, like universities, governments and companies, games rarely ever go beyond this sort of lecture mode. In another blog, Joost compares these games to chocolate covered broccoli, while games could be so, so much more.
The first part of the meeting discussed exactly that: what if games would actually engage with activism and power dynamics? What would this look like? In pixelated form, caught in the headquarters of Status Quo Inc, participants discussed the following questions in groups:
1How can games focus on the need to destroy, challenge, fight with, and dismantle current destructive societal systems?
2How can the joy of and engagement with challenging and dismantling current systems be done in a way that is integrated with real life action?
3How and why can games like that actually be funded, built and supported?
This general discussion was followed by a game building exercise based on the questions above. As in most sessions, participants worked together in Miro to bring their game idea to fruition. This approach was inspired by the Futures Wheel method used in futures-thinking and scenario building exercises. Normally participants start out with a so called “seed” of the future, for which they need to envision first and second order effects. In this case, a societal challenge became the central seed, while participants were invited to think of how this challenge would be embedded in game mechanics, a narrative, real life action and the gaming industry itself through funding. You can read some of the experiences and game ideas below.
KYLE
My group chose to focus on ways to funnel money out of polluting corporations and into transformative efforts. We discussed games similar to Invisible Inc. or Evil Genius that would involve siphoning money by billing large corporations small fees for non-existent services, establishing advertising firms that would charge enormous fees, or creating investment schemes that would attract the vast amounts of gray market money laundering that currently is invested in carbon credits, crypto currency, real estate, and other sites of speculation that are ecologically destructive. The games space is filled with spy games and strategy games that involve outsmarting your opponents, but we rarely see this in the ecogames space, and we got a lot of creative energy out of coming up with these ideas.
We also talked about living with the destruction caused by climate change and using destruction to build better futures. This gave us ideas like an altered reality game similar to Pokémon Go or Utrecht 2040 that would allow the player to visualize urban spaces where destructive infrastructure like stroads (large multi lane streets that combine street and road characteristics and are extremely unfriendly to anything other than cars) could be replaced with something better. This would not only involve tagging spaces but altering the urban reality depicted in the game. We also imagined the possibility of using virtual reality to see how the space the player is standing in looked prior to colonization and capitalist development, and how it might look in a desirable future of climate adaptation where people lived in some kind of balance with their new environment. This would help to create a sense that things were different in the past and could be different in the future.
Finally, we came up with the idea of repurposing the destructive games industry practice of microtransactions to help fund “DLC” (in the games sector, add-ons to a game release that are available for purchase, often at prices designed to encourage impulse buys and to the detriment of the cohesion of the game design) for neighborhoods. Allowing communities to crowd fund the destruction and reconstruction of parts of their lived spaces that they wanted to see changed.
MAE
In the spirit of activism and destroying shit, my group focused on a game that invites the players to break out of a certain pattern — a status quo if you will. Drawing inspiration from The Stanley Parable, It Takes Two and the movie Groundhog Day, we eventually came up with a game that would emerge the player in a situation where they are essentially stuck. The basic premise is that you’re going to see a friend for a drink, but the friend never shows up. Slowly but surely, you unravel a web of socioeconomical and climate related issues that prevented your friend from meeting you. As it turns out, it would’ve been impossible for them to meet you. Why? Because they are stuck working two jobs. Why? Because otherwise they don’t have the money for a drink. How come? The spiral continues.
The objective of the player here is essentially to challenge the current structures that are in place while experiencing the “brick wall” that is often seen in change and activism. The player will actively fail in changing certain situations, setting the player back to the beginning as some sort of groundhog day mechanism. As our game began to take this direction, we realized that a key element here would be to make the failure “fun” in a way. What would be the payoff that would make players try again and again? Great examples of this that came up were the Soulsborne games and Elden Ring. You get defeated, again and again, becoming more and more hollow and less human in the process — yet, many players are set on trying a fight again and again. For me personally, the satisfaction comes from figuring out ways to actually kick some ass. Knowing where to be at the right time, in the right place, dodging on certain cues and delivering the final blow sticking to this strategy. One could see the parallel between such games and social movements: however powerful the enemy might seem, destruction is possible — you just have to find the leverage points.
Our solution to invite the player to try again: implement little changes in an area you’d come back to once you fail. Even though you’d fail miserably, you as a player trying would still be making a difference. In the end, the main objective of the game would — next to destroying shit — be to combat your apathy towards certain issues in the world. As somebody in our group pointed out: the biggest challenge to overcome today does not lie with the people who are simply denying the severity of contemporary sustainability issues. It’s the apathy of the people who do realize there are structural problems at hand that slows down any progress towards changing these systems. In our game, the player would embody a person who is severely apathetic at first, and who has to overcome this in order to actually achieve change — resulting in a personal transformation, as well as a societal one.
TAKE-AWAYS
Overall, it was a great session full of creative energy and collaboration, and we left with a feeling of expanded horizons of possibility for games and futures. One of the main take-aways was an important question that came up several times during the session: in case of destruction, revolution and unmaking, what will actually replace the unmade structure? How can games show this, or perhaps more importantly: how can players envision and engage with this? And, as one of the participants pointed out, how do we make sure people and non-human beings are not left behind in such transformations?
Another take-away was that bridging the games industry and activist circles could prove incredibly helpful. For example, activist organisations might already know where the leverage points for specific societal challenges lie, which could provide opportunities to connect games to real life transformation. This idea of co-designing games with such organisations also fits into the idea that collective action is needed — also in the form of imagining and feeling the future together. This relationship between activism, games and real life action and transformation is exactly what we’re aiming to achieve with the making of our climate courthouse game.
So, if you’d like to get involved, talking about games, activism and the art of destroying shit, you can sign up for our next online event here. This will take place on January 17th, from 7PM-9PM CET. Note: this meeting is open to anyone, whether you joined the first meeting on this topic or not! We hope to see you there!
Anticiplay is an NWO Vidi-funded research project that aims to establish a new design paradigm for the gaming sector in collaboration with CreaTures EU. You can find our mission statement here! In short: we’re all about Games For Better Futures and Futures for Better Games. Follow us @anticiplay on Twitter, and feel free to engage us with any questions, games that you think are inspiring, and anything else!
