This analysis was taken from an academic research project of the same name.
The Culture of Populism and/in Video Games:
Aesthetics, #Gamergate, and a New Political Rhetoric
Video games and populism have a nebulous relationship that has yet to be analyzed and investigated, especially in the realm of aesthetics. I aim to explore how video games, as aesthetic objects, employ a similar fantasy of power that populist leaders sell to their would-be voters. This investigation builds upon current research on the aesthetics of populism and aesthetics of video games, and maps out where the two intersect. Secondly, the existence of populism within gaming culture online will be examined through the #Gamergate controversy of 2014 and 2015. #Gamergate will be shown to be a cultural and historical bridge between populist-videogame aesthetics (what’s in the games), and the infiltration of gaming aesthetics into populist rhetoric in the political sphere (what’s in the populism). Particular notions of interactivity, as exceptionally utilized by video games, will be revealed to have imbedded themselves within a new populist rhetoric that relies on online troll-culture—which fueled the #Gamergate populist revolt—to gamify political image-making. To turn political figures into walking interactive-fictions. This new gamified rhetoric is only able to exist sustainably—to create a stable interactive fiction much like a video game—within politics.
Power/Fantasy (Populism in Video Games)
In order to uncover the connection between a populist aesthetics and video games, if such a connection exists, it is necessary to first define exactly what this connection would entail. Certainly, it cannot mean that the experiences of populism and video games would end up being the same experience. They cannot effectively, or affectively, be the same thing. The connection then must be at least one step removed from their directly identifiable characteristics as aesthetic experiences. Like comparisons between any two objects of aesthetic interest, the connection will rest on what they have in common regarding the subject, or appreciator. More specifically, what the appreciator expects of the object. This is because the aesthetics of an object, once determined and widely understood, can be applied as reasons for one to experience that object. This is obvious for any medium. One decides to play a video game precisely because it is a video game, and not a film. Once one knows what to expect from a particular medium of aesthetic experience (film, television, concerts, etc.), the expectation becomes the reason for seeking it out in the first place. The next step is to then define what it is about that expectation that the subject finds desirable. What does it do for them? This leads to the primary question regarding video games and populism in this context: what, if anything, do the expectations of their respective participants have in common? Or, finally, what do these aesthetic experiences promise?
The short answer to the above question is simple: the fantasy of power. More specifically, video games and populism seem to offer power—in the real sense—to those who are not fully familiar with their aesthetic properties or purposes. For those in the know, the promise becomes not the power, but the fantasy of acquiring or having it. An even more refined line can be drawn between video games and populism regarding the nature of this relationship between fantasy and power, but that must come after a dissection and comparison of each object in its own right that proves the existence of this common promise.
Power and Fantasy in Populism. To begin, the affects and aesthetics of populism must be analyzed. This in itself is a research project taken on by many academics today and in no way can be fully summarized here, but a few key texts remain helpful in underlining exactly what some people find attractive, or expect, in a populist movement. In his book, The Populist Persuasion, Michael Kazin emphasizes from page one a fundamental aspect of populism. He writes:
From the birth of the United States to the present day, images of conflict between the powerful and the powerless have run through our civic life, filling it with discord and meaning … That is the most basic and telling definition of populism: a language whose speakers conceive of ordinary people as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly by class, view their elite opponents as self-serving and undemocratic, and seek to mobilize the former against the latter. (1)
Kazin’s goal, as made clear by the subtitle of his book, “An American History,” is to firmly place populism as a fundamental aspect of American politics, beginning in the late 19th century. In doing so, and in introducing his book this way, with “images of conflict between the powerful and powerless,” he sketches out the basic characteristics of populist movements: what they do, what they promise, and who they target.
Unlike other aesthetic experiences, populism does not just cater to its appreciators by virtue of its being populism, like how a video game promises gamers that it will contain a ‘video game’ experience. Rather, because it is rooted in politics, and only exists by means of its ability to “mobilize” its particular “powerless” group of people against a powerful elite, it can be said that it contains an aesthetics of catering (Kazin, 1). Without having a specific—here meaning in the form of the movement’s content, a group that actually exists—target, a movement ceases to be populist, by definition. It is in this way that populism, unlike other forms of politics, is necessarily about the people it targets, for without them—as an actual specific group of people—it cannot exist. Here is where we can see the latent promise of populism in both its forms. It promises political, and often times cultural, power to a specific group, and in targeting that group, promises them another form of power as well, power over the movement itself. Put in video game terms, this group is put in a position wherein their input now matters, and is in fact necessary.
There are many things—many techniques—to which a populist leader must adhere in order to properly mobilize his or her group of choice, but all of them must be in service of the movement’s greater promise. Johannes Voelz, in his article entitled “Toward an Aesthetics of Populism, Part I: The Populist Space of Appearance,” discusses the critical importance of rallies within populist movements. He writes that they are important because “populist movements depend on the claim of eliminating the difference between representative and represented” (204). For Voelz, the rally serves as the affective temporary coming to life of the populist movement’s “claim to (non-)representation” (204). Why can’t a populist leader simply promise his or her specific target group power, but through typical represented means? This is, of course, rather obvious: a populist leader cannot claim to present a liberation from a more powerful elite class while simultaneously outwardly identifying with such a class. In other words, for a populist movement to work, its leader must not be (appear) more powerful than his or her followers, which is to say that the followers themselves must have an equal amount of power with their leader. Indeed, each aspect of the populist rally serves to bolster this promise. In opposition to more traditional republican candidates, Voelz writes that “Trump rallies architecturally create the impression as if he were positioned in the midst of his supporters” (214). Trump’s speech is regarded similarly: “If not even Trump can foretell how things will develop, being located jointly in the indeterminate present takes on an equalizing force. In that sense, unscripted, improvisational performance makes available an experience that can well be described as democratizing” (Voelz, 214). While the particular content of each populist movement may vary, what cannot vary is the positioning of its content and aesthetics around the promise of power. However, populism’s nature as one of promising power means that its performance—and experience—ends at this promise.
In the beginning of the second part to Voelz’s article, he and Tom Freischläger write that “populism is driven by the fantasy of a type of representation that paradoxically represents itself as non-representation, i.e., as an unmediated presence and fulfillment of the popular will in the representative” (261). It is here that the authors hit on something crucial when attempting to sketch out an aesthetics of populism: that there is no real power to be had. This is not to say that a populist leader cannot win and make good on some of their promises. Rather, the performance of populism itself is one of promising, not giving or bestowing. In terms of the appreciator or subject, when they follow a populist movement, it is not because they know they will receive power, but because they know it will be promised to them. The promise is the product. In order to make it seem as though the promise were more real than a promise can be, however, populist movements and leaders deploy precisely the techniques mentioned above. In effect, they build up the “fantasy” that power is already to be had just by participating in the movement, and that this power reflects what will be had in the future when the movement succeeds. It is a cycle of promising, over and over again, that the power is real. What is real, however, and what keeps people coming back, is the fantasy.
Much, much more can be said and added to the discussion of the aesthetics of populism, but for now, it has been made sufficiently clear that, through its very nature, the aesthetics of populism must necessarily be in service of the promise of power. In this way, one could say that populism, as an aesthetic experience, promises the promise of power. This is in fact the only perspective from which it can deliver on what it sets out to accomplish.
Power and Fantasy in Video Games. Power fantasies within the content of video games are well documented and continue to be ripe for philosophical and cultural inquiry. However, the primary focus here is on video games as aesthetic objects, on the question of whether there exists a power fantasy in the flavor of populist aesthetics that video games as a medium contain. Similar to the aforementioned research on populism, there is no dearth of inquiry into the topic of video game aesthetics, but again a few key texts will have to be sufficient for this particular investigation.
The first and most obvious characteristic of video games is their interactivity. In many ways, it is interactivity above all else that defines them as a medium. Nathan Wildman and Richard Woodward write in their contribution to The Aesthetics of Videogames titled “Interactivity, Fictionality, and Incompleteness,” that “the choices of appreciators play a constitutive role in determining what is and what is not true in the story in ways that go beyond what is found in more traditional, non-interactive works” (118). It is important to mention here that although the authors mention a story (they are speaking of Dark Souls in this context), what they say applies to any video game as such. The input of the player determines what is true within the game, be it whether a Tetris line is cleared, or whether a Minecraft house has two windows or three. It is at least partially this interactivity that draws one to playing a video game. One wants to play a video game when he or she doesn’t want to watch a film or play a board game.
An argument can be made here that many activities in day to day life require input, and are then seemingly interactive, therefore any argument built atop the interactivity of video games must apply to these as well. The answer to this is twofold: first, that there are essentially lower forms of interactivity, as described by Aaron Smuts, that really should not be considered interactive at all, and second, that video games do indeed offer a more impactful kind of interactivity than, say, picking up a tennis racket and going to the park. In his article “What is Interactivity?”, Smuts writes, “to be interactive, something must be responsive in a way that is neither completely controllable nor completely random” (54). He uses the common example of conversation to make his point. If a person were to reply completely at random to another’s words, uttering new nonsense that has no relation to the attempted topics of the other speaker, the conversation would hardly be considered interactive. Put another way, the normal speaker would not feel as though the nonsense speaker was really interacting with them. Similarly, if this person were to simply repeat each and every word spoken to them, this master control over what they say next would not be considered properly interactive either. Smuts concludes his example by remarking, “these two pathological poles of human conversation indicate that neither random reactions nor predictability bordering on limited control are characteristic of interactivity; rather, it must be that a certain kind of responsiveness absent of control and predictability is necessary for there to be interaction” (63). In this conception, typing on a keyboard, watching a film, or pouring a glass of milk cannot be considered interactive activities, for the control one has over them is either too great or nonexistent. However, the previously mentioned game of tennis, a good old-fashioned game of Monopoly, and a host of other recreational and leisure activities can still be considered interactive. The next step, then, is to define what it is about video games that makes their sort of interactivity different than the many activities that still fall under Smut’s conception. In a familiar turn, this will be a promise.
First, however, another small detour must be made, one that may function as a concession. This comes in the form of acknowledging the unbelievable variety in types of video games. A variety so immense, that it is borderline impossible to say any unified thing about them aesthetically, or even ontologically, other than they rely on code and require basic input—input that in many games falls outside of Smut’s conception of interactivity. On the other end, there are video games that serve to function as the video game ‘version’ of pre-existing board games like chess, so-called transmedial games (Bartel, 9). And lastly, there are games that essentially function like board games or puzzles, but exist within the digital sphere (the aforementioned Tetris comes to mind). Yet, with all of this taken into consideration, there still seems to be a form of interactivity within a large number of video games, perhaps the majority, that separates itself from both the lower forms of interactivity and the forms offered by real-life games and board games, including tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. It is this type of interactivity that bears remarkable similarity to the promise of power within the aesthetics of populism, as we shall see.
An interesting case for this type of interactivity can be found in Grant Tavinor’s article about the critically acclaimed video game, Bioshock. He opens the article, titled “Bioshock and the Art of Rapture,” with a quote from the opening of Bioshock itself: “with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well” (Tavinor, 91). As outlined in the article, Bioshock is a game that drops the player into the middle of the ocean after a plane crash, where they then find a strange lighthouse jutting out of the sea. The lighthouse has a door, and inside, a bathysphere, or submarine on a track, which takes the player down into an under-sea city called Rapture. The introductory quote is said by the character Andrew Ryan, the creator of Rapture, in a video about his exploits the player is forced to watch as the bathysphere lowers. Following Ayn Rand philosophies, Ryan built Rapture as a place where one is free to build and invent what he or she pleases, and to reap what one sows. It is in this context that Bioshock lays out for the player both the promise of its own content and world, and the promise of video games writ large. Of video games in general, but addressing Bioshock’s appearance as an open-world game, Tavinor writes, “freedom to explore a virtual world and to make one’s own decisions about how to surmount the problems of gameplay has long been valued in videogaming” (100). This may come across as common sense, but it sketches out the basic appeal of video games: that they allow you to make real decisions in a fictionalized space. And not only that, the “virtual world[s]” of which Tavinor speaks also seem to promise something broader: a sense of true freedom.
Regarding the ability of players to make decisions within fictional worlds, Espen Aarseth sketches out an ontological argument for video games’ uniqueness:
[Video games] contain content that is different from the elements we recognize from older media. These elements are ontologically different, and they can typically be acted upon in ways that fictional content is not acted upon. This does not mean that they are necessarily real, merely that they belong to another ontological category than, say Tintin’s dog or the pyramid floating over Paris in Hergé’s and Bilal’s comic books, respectively. We respond to them differently, they are constructed differently, and the social exchanges they are part of are different from the social uses of fiction. (36)
Aarseth incorporates Tavinor’s point that players can make their own decisions into the larger argument that these decisions are truly acted upon something. Something that is not wholly real or fictional. This may seem like a small matter, but in video games, wherein the things being acted upon are objects and worlds which do not exist in our real sense, but may mimic our reality in impressive ways, the power and freedom seemingly granted by video games takes on a new dimension. The power becomes real and not real at the same time. Jesper Juul dedicates his book, Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds to a similar premise. He writes: “The interaction between game rules and game fiction is one of the most important features of video games” (1). Indeed, it is this type of half-real power which points to the aesthetics of populism.
One interacts with a video game because one expects a) to be able to interact with it successfully and b) is seeking out an experience of successful interaction, where one’s decisions or actions have power to determine outcomes in concrete ways, in worlds of ostensible freedom. Fitting in with Smuts’ conception of interactivity, one does not have full control over outcomes in these scenarios. Still, though, the outcomes—good or bad for the player—are determined by the player’s input. It is in this way that video games can be said to promise players an experience wherein they have, if momentarily in a fictionalized space, power. Where this system comes remarkably close to the aesthetics of populism is in the fact that this power is only half-real. Like populist movements, video games do not deliver true power, but the promise of it. And in the performance of these experiences—on the side of the populist leader in populism and on the side of the procedural and algorithmic code in video games—lies the attempt to cover up their very nature as being only promises. Populist leaders like Donald Trump use the rally to affectively convey the idea that there is no mediation between voter and leader, and as allegory for the political power one will achieve if the movement succeeds. Video games, despite their rigid systems built in code, devise sneaky techniques and game worlds that attempt to convince users their freedom is real. Speaking of this attempted illusion, Tavinor states, “to satisfy the desire for freedom on the part of the player, such games often encourage a kind of pseudo-freedom: giving the player as much freedom as possible within the determinate framework of the narrative and game, and indeed, striving for an illusion of freedom” (101).
This contest between freedom and rules, power and the fantasy of power, in video games is Tavinor’s point in discussing Bioshock in the first place. Directly after his statement above about the virtual worlds in video gaming, he says, “ … but problematically, the freedom to act in game-worlds is often severely constrained for functional reasons” (100). Again, this statement seems remarkably simple. However, with one key word, he makes the crucial point: “Problematically.” It is problematic that a game should reveal itself as a game, that its promised freedom and power is but a magic trick. Tavinor slips this word in because as a games scholar he is finely attuned to the promise this medium makes to its users, and what these users in turn expect. Indeed, he continues, “the authorial control that is needed to develop narratives that can sustain a coherent plot and consistent emotional tenor pulls against player freedom. … Games designers, aware of these tensions between freedom and authorial control in videogaming have designed means to avoid the problems” (Tavinor 100).
It is at this point where the aforementioned fine line regarding the relationship between fantasy and power in populism and video games comes into play. In fact, once this line is uncovered, the two aesthetic experiences drastically diverge. Like a magician, video games are in a sort of contest with players. The more they fool them into believing what they see and do is real, the more players enjoy them. Players pay to be deceived. This is the final point in Bioshock and in Tavinor’s article about the game. He writes that “in the key moment of narrative disclosure in Bioshock, the tension between control and freedom is foregrounded” (102). At this point in his article, Tavinor goes on to deliver a lengthy synopsis of the final scenes of the game which will be made more concise here. The player-character in the game, who has been able to maneuver through the city with the help of a voice on a portable AM radio, discovers in the final act that his memories from before the game’s events have been implanted, and the ‘helpful’ voice is actually his ‘master’ that has been controlling him via a specific phrase (“would you kindly”) which he is programmed to be unable to ignore. Tavinor concludes his summary with a remarkable piece of insight, however. He writes:
At the same moment that the character realizes that they are a pawn in a struggle between Ryan and Fontaine [the helpful voice], the player is made to realize that they are a pawn in the game and narrative of Bioshock … The game has manipulated us through its use of environmental nudges, game-world obstacles, and objectives we have been kindly asked to achieve, so that for the most part, we have “sleepwalked” through the game, unaware of the artifice, an actor in someone else’s artwork. (104)
This sort of twist ending and meta-analysis of gameplay, on this scale and in what is ostensibly just another first-person shooter, was the first of its kind and proved to be a major landmark in gaming history. It also illustrates perfectly the relationship between fantasy and power, and conversely, the relationship between game and gamer. Gamers look to be fooled; they seek it out. Bioshock pushed the technology of the time and used every trick in the book to get players to remark on their apparent in-game freedom. Then, at the last moment, all is revealed to be farce, and it won game of the year.
Dealing in politics, and therefore power that affects real lives, populism can afford no such relationship with those it aims to seduce. It behooves populist leaders to get their followers to truly believe in the promises populism offers. If all is revealed to be a sham, the movement ends. So, while both followers of a populist movement and players of video games approach these aesthetic experiences with the expectation of the promise of power, the notions of ‘promise’ and ‘power’ differ slightly in each. Most players of video games recognize that the power they seek in video games in self-contained, with no bearing on their lives outside the games themselves. The populist target, the one who is drawn to candidates promising power, has no such conception of their situation. Populism offers the illusory promise of real power. Video games offer the real promise of illusory power.
Gaming/Identity (Populism and Video Games)
Nick Denardi 