Video games are the new contested space for public policy
Video games are the new contested space for public policy
Video games are the new contested space for public policy
By Joshua Foust
March 25, 2021
Summary
Video games are not only a contested cultural space in America, but also a contested political space in which governments and corporations, journalists and activists, and players of every stripe, are competing to tell stories and shape perceptions about the world.
Video games' cultural impact skews young: According to the Entertainment Software Association, 70% of people under the age of 18 regularly play video games.
While America's Army did not result in a recruitment boom, by the 2010s, as the number of new enlisted flagged, the U.S. military revisited video games as a way to boost its numbers.
In 2018, the Pentagon created a new service track of professional video game players to compete in the growing field of esports-professional, competitive video game play.
Kjellberg's success-and the controversy around him-speaks to the centrality of video games and video game culture in online life.
Video games began as a new way to play with computers but have evolved into rich texts filled with politics and arguments for how the world should work.
As an inescapable part of public discourse and an enormous media market we ignore at our peril, video games are not just video games: They are the site of political contention, of negotiation over social boundaries, and of free speech itself.
Reference
Foust, J. (2021, March 25). Video games are the new contested space for public policy. Retrieved July 07, 2021, from https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/video-games-are-the-new-contested-space-for-public-policy/