Can the way you vote affect the video games that you play? Given the state of the world, I’d forgive you for not sparing the matter much thought.
However, over the past decade the video games we play, the technologies that underpin them and the industry that sits underneath both have attracted increasing interest from political audiences seeking to harness them – meaning that those who govern us could make a meaningful difference to what we experience.
Of course, political interest in video games isn’t new. Policymakers and officials have long scrutinised the sector, typified mostly by misplaced moral panics about topics such as video games violence in the 1990s.
Over the past decade though, and especially since the pandemic, there has been a considerable shift. Political leaders who have grown up with games aren’t only sincerely engaging with the industry; they’re also looking to grow the sector and control it.
The most obvious reason for their interest is simple: money. The global games industry generated $184bn in digital games revenue alone in 2023, according to Newzoo. With games businesses popping up in every corner of the world and driving cash into local economies, it isn’t a surprise that countries like Australia and Ireland have joined the UK, Germany and Canada in creating tax incentives to support games companies on their shores.
The interest in games isn’t simply economic; there’s also increasing interest in the impact that games technology is having across wider society, too.
Recent research by the UK trade body Ukie showed that technology used to make games – like game dev tool Unreal Engine – is generating at least £1.3bn of economic value per year outside the industry. Sectors like healthcare, the automotive industry and film production have repurposed games tech for growth, opening up questions about its potential strategic value to countries as a whole.
Finally, as we all know, games are where digital society thrives. The industry’s ability to connect and communicate with billions of players in-game and through social media has made it a channel for influence – for good, such as the World Health Organization’s Covid messaging campaign, and for bad, such as extremists abusing games by turning them into a channel for propaganda and recruitment.
This has led to policymakers seeking balance the benefits of games as a channel for communication against the potential harms they could cause, typified by the UK Government using games as a platform for tackling social issues such as loneliness while also increasing regulation of user to user conversation in online games via the Online Safety Act.
So, will elevated interest in games translate into a raft of dedicated policies at elections across the world this year? Alas, no. We may see references to video games policy as we did in the 2019 election, when the Conservatives’ commitment for action on loot boxes sparked a five-year-long bunfight in the UK that had me regularly waking up in cold sweats at night until I vacated the comms hotseat at Ukie in 2022.
Political parties may also turn to games to mobilise support, either directly via in-game activities similar to Joe Biden’s Animal Crossing field office in 2020 or through indirect recognition of the medium such as Rishi Sunak’s declaration that he too is a gamer.
But politicians will, unsurprisingly, focus on the weighty society shaping issues sitting on the minds of voters, forcing discerning video game voters to read the policy small print on areas like access to business funding, immigration policy and forthcoming tech rules to support their sectors.
That said, don’t underestimate the importance of your vote. While democracies go to the polls this year, countries that don’t allow a vote are enacting plans and policies that are directly reshaping the sector.
Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman is flushing enormous amounts of cash, and influence, through the global industry investing $38bn. And China’s efforts to impose a tight regulatory grip on its home market through content restrictions, play-time limits and spending rules may inspire similar changes elsewhere.
So when you do vote, take a moment to think about what it means for games. It could change the nature of the sector – and what you end up playing – for years to come.
George Osborn is a video games journalist and writer of the Video Games Industry Memo newsletter – sign up for it here
What to play
January is a great time to return to familiar games and appreciate them in a new light. That’s why I’ve been playing, and thoroughly enjoying, Disco Elysium: The Final Cut.
It remains the perfectly pitched RPG that I first enjoyed in 2020. But the addition of voice acting to the game’s extraordinary, and enormous, script elevates it further still - bringing even more life to the inhabitants of the decaying, troubled and utterly evocative city of Revachol.
Available on: Windows/Mac
Estimated playtime: 30+ hours
What to read
What’s the only thing scarier than the creepy AI-powered talking Mario hologram spotted by journalists at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas? Nintendo’s legal team, who have a track record of taking this kind of thing very seriously indeed.
Speaking of Nintendo, the company’s stock price hit a record high last week for reasons that show the different faces of the modern games industry. Investors are excited by the possible release of the Switch 2 this year, but they’re also reportedly feeling chipper about a rumoured cash injection from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund too …
Games industry voice chat platform Discord is shedding 170 members of staff, according to Games Industry Biz. When added to job losses at Twitch, Unity and social game make Playtika, nearly 3,000 people have been affected by lay-offs in 2024 alone.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun reports Square Enix’s leadership team believes it needs a “younger generation” of game developers to lead the creation of Final Fantasy XVII; an intriguing example of the increasingly common challenge of what happens when the games industry comes face-to-face with its increasing maturity.
What to click
‘People laughed at it’: the unlikely story behind the music of Crash Bandicoot
Kaitlyn Dever to star as Abby in HBO’s The Last of Us season two
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown review – a new gaming kingdom awaits
Pokémon pandemonium: did the Van Gogh Museum play its cards right?
Question Block
Our reader question of the week comes from Jeanne who wonders whether leading video games will - quite literally - become more straightforward.
“With all the open-world and multiplayer games — especially those that don’t really have an endpoint — is there a chance that games that are as simple as getting from Point A to B, following the narrative, and (possibly) fighting bad guys along the way will ever come back into the mainstream?”
Releasing a linear game has become a tough sell for the biggest games companies because the value of short-ish narrative experiences has decreased in comparison to other genres.
Open world games have an easier time selling because they offer more marketable bang for your buck through the broadly tedious argument of “hundreds of hours of play-time”, while successful multiplayer games can make money long after release via the sale of digital gubbins in a way that one and done adventures can’t.
There is still room for them in the market, provided the pitch is tight and the price is right, however. Cat-‘em-up Stray (which broadly hits the brief) found its audience via a middling price point and an excellent feline premise. Titanfall 2’s compelling single-player campaign, whose brilliance was broadly missed on launch, has steadily found its audience through subscription services like Game Pass which are perfect for snacky single-player experiences.
But if we do want Jeanne’s dream to come true, we’ll likely have to cross our fingers and hope that the success of the TV adaptation of The Last of Us encourages execs to commission more linear narrative games in the hope of ensnaring a prestige telly production.
If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.
