Power Play

What began as entertainment is now a global force shaping politics, culture, the economy, and even warfare. The evolution of video games from a niche pursuit locked onto expensive devices to a mass form of popular entertainment that is accessible everywhere, interwoven with digital technology and sitting at the heart of a thriving cultural and commercial economy, has made it a perfect place for states and non-state actors to advance their goals online. In Power Play, games industry expert George E. Osborn explores the burgeoning foreign and domestic movements to spread influence through video games, showing that our failure to date to take games seriously has led to a culture of complacency around their true impact and importance on the geopolitical stage. Software revenues in games alone are set to reach $200bn by 2025, not even accounting for games-adjacent hardware, ensuring that the sector maintains an economic position larger than every other form of mass media - film, TV, music, publishing, and traditional media - combined. The games industry has become one of the major fronts in the battle over Big Tech, with businesses like Google, Apple, Meta and Microsoft simultaneously thriving within the games industry. The organization of games communities has inspired American political messaging; extremist organizations such as Hamas, ISIS, and the American far right have used communities within games to aid recruitment; and countries like China have wrestled with the regulation of games as a key part of their efforts to control the digital economy. Military simulation games like ARMA 3 are being used to spread misinformation about the Israeli/Gazan war. Nvidia's emergence as a trillion-dollar AI superpower stems from its beginnings as a creator of hardware and chips for video games PCs. Our cultural attachment to games has deepened through the emergence in the last decade of the sector's digital communities, showing how games and the game platforms around them - such as Discord, Reddit and Twitch - have become spaces for people to congregate, discuss society, and ultimately to shape it to their views. But how has this come to pass? In this ambitious new book, Osborn reveals the inside story of how video games achieved such a surprisingly significant role within our digital society. As well as talking to video games developers and experts, Power Play draws on the insights of academic researchers, policy makers, journalists, public health officials, representatives of the armed forces, counter terror experts, and representatives from wider civil society to represent the games industry's deep and far-reaching influence across society and provide clarity on how to ensure the positive world of play isn't overrun by its challenges.