Schlagwort-Archive: Political Games

Methode

Sind digitale Spiele politisch?

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von Eugen Pfister

Ja.

Empfohlene Literatur (Auswahl):

  • Bevc, Tobias. Computerspiele und Politik: zur Konstruktion von Politik und Gesellschaft in Computerspielen. Berlin: Lit, 2007.
  • Bevc, Tobias, und Holger Zapf, Hrsg. Wie wir spielen, was wir werden: Computerspiele in unserer Gesellschaft. Konstanz: UVK, 2009.
  • Bown, Alfie. The PlayStation dreamworld. Theory redux. Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity, 2018.
  • Dyer-Witheford, Nick, und Greig De Peuter. Games of empire: global capitalism and video games. Electronic mediations 29. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
  • Görgen, Arno und Tobias Unterhuber (Hg.). Politiken des (digitalen) Spiels. Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven. transcript Verlag, 2023.
  • Murray, Soraya. On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space. Paperback edition. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
  • Pfister, Eugen. „Der Politische Mythos als diskursive Aussage im digitalen Spiel: Ein Beitrag aus der Perspektive der Politikgeschichte“. Digitale Spiele im Diskurs, 2018. https://doi.org/10.18445/20180418-082700-0.
  • Pfister, Eugen, und Arno Görgen. „Politische Transferprozesse in Digitalen Spielen: Eine Begriffsgeschichte“. In Politische Transferprozesse in Digitalen Spielen: Eine Begriffsgeschichte, 51–74. transcript Verlag, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839453285-004.
  • Pfister, Eugen, und Tobias Unterhuber. „The revolution will (not) be gamified“: Marx und das Computerspiel. Game Studies. Glückstadt: vwh Verlag Werner Hülsbusch, 2022.
  • Holger Pötzsch, Thomas Spies und Seyda Kurt (Hg.), Spiel*Kritik. Kritische Perspektiven auf Videospiele und Kapitalismus, Bielefeld: Transcript 2024.
  • Schrape, Niklas. Die Rhetorik von Computerspielen: wie politische Spiele überzeugen. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2012.
  • Sicart, Miguel. The Ethics of Computer Games. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2011.
Sind digitale Spiele politisch? weiterlesen →
Methode

On Political Communication in Digital Games

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The following essay is based on the second part of my keynote speech at the FROG conference 2017 on October, 14th 2017 at the Wiener Rathaus. The first part “Keep your Politics out of my games!” can be found here, as well as an impromtu reply by Tobias Winnerling. The third part “Games Are Never Innocent” on political myths in games can be read here.

by Eugen Pfister

Why a better Understanding of Politics in Popular Culture matters

It is true, not all video games have a conscious or an intentional political message but they communicate political aspects nonetheless. Games are not developed in aseptic laboratories under vacuum and without contact to the exterior. They are the result of their culture and society of origin. Their developers are not creating games ex nihil but are falling back on the world they know. They are – most of the time – recreating the world they are used too.  To give you a simile: just think of the “aliens” in the Star Trek Universe. Therefore all games can be analysed for traces of a political discourse. Video games are an excellent source for ideological values and worldviews in mass media.

Classical political history traditionally focuses on political elites, on parliamentary protocols, memoirs of politicians, party programs, diplomatic correspondence, campaigning etc. This sources however represent only the political action and thoughts of a very small elite. The mass of the citizens however has to stay unheard by most of the historical researchers. If we are really interested in the popular understanding of a good government – what makes a good head of state for example – it’s not enough to analyse newspapers and TV reports or to question a sample of hundreds or even thousands on people with predetermined questionnaires. To fill this blank, this yet unanswered question of what people expect and how they understand their government, it helps to take a closer look at popular culture, and especially the so called pulp genres, like horror, science fiction, etc. On Political Communication in Digital Games weiterlesen →