Ever since its inception, the video game industry has been beset by controversy. There have been grave concerns about the perils of gaming addiction and moral panics regarding violence and sexualization in games.
Despite these controversies, video games have become a ubiquitous part of our culture and are played around the world. Digital tools for creating video games like Unity and Unreal Engine content have become widely available. Now, anyone with an internet connection and a laptop can create their own video game, which has led to a burgeoning indie gaming scene. However, it’s also caused a more surprising side effect: political influence, disinformation, and even radicalization.
“Popular culture is influencing the way we see the world,” Dominik Swiecicki, a counselor posted by the Psychological Defense Agency at the Embassy of Sweden in Tallin, told The Daily Beast. “We’re reading books or watching movies, where certain countries are non-existent, or certain ethnicities are portrayed as good or bad; we can assume that playing video games will also influence our view of the world.”
Just as films can be used to promote a particular ideology, so too can video games. For example, since 2002, the U.S. Army has developed and released more than thirty games in the America’s Army series. These games are notable for being the American government’s first significant use of video games as a platform to promote recruitment.
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