Video games and the engaged citizen: On the ambiguity of digital play

Abstract

This chapter questions how video games may aid civic engagement by youths. It does so by critically examining recent empirical fijindings on this topic, noting that such fijindings are often couched in a too optimistic view of the possibilities for civic engagement through games. It backs up this claim by connecting digital play with informational capitalism, proposing that this analytical connection should be complemented by foregrounding the subversive origins of play as a ‘challenge’ or ‘duel’. The chapter ultimately suggests that play carries radical potential in terms of a transgression of oppressive social structures, but that this potential can only be tapped by pushing playful engagement beyond the logic of the cybernetic control mechanisms on which it is currently predicated.